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GOB122_SeptOct18.indd 1 7/26/2018 12:58:56 PM www.goodoldboat.com Learning Experience

Whencethe Magic Ladders?

Good planning, instinct, careful observation, or luck? by Thomas J. Misa n Good Old Boat there is an our responsibilities as mariners and surface is 38 degrees. Singlehanding entertaining trope, or recurring members of the sailing community. on Superior for the summer months, I narrative pattern, that shapes I am mindful that anyone falling in lasts many Learning Experience stories: A wilderness and cold water around 15 minutes, loses conscious- let’s call it Calamity Overcome. It’s a It’s mid-June and, despite the long ness, and then dies of hypothermia. sailing story where the writer messed midsummer days, Lake Superior’s All 29 crew members of the Edmund up and lived to tell us about it. It goes Fitzgerald, memorialized by Gordon like this. A series of simple mistakes Lightfoot’s 1976 hit song, went down leads to a buckled foredeck, sagging and never came back up because the shrouds, and a threatened dismasting. water was too cold . . . “The lake, it is Or heavier than expected weather said, never gives up her dead,” echoes leads to severe pitching that clogs the in my mind. fuel line during a Lake Michigan storm. I’m approaching my first true wilder- More recently (“Between a Bridge and ness anchorage, Susie Island. To say a Hard Place,” May 2018), backing up the least, it’s pretty, but foremost in my against moderate seas without a firm mind right now is the desire for a ladder hand on the wheel leads to a jammed of about six feet or so to keep me above rudder and a Mayday call. Once the the deathly cold water. Despite what calamity occurs, the narrative tension my paper chart and depth finder are revolves around the skipper’s efforts to telling me, the GPS screen spells certain resolve the dire situation. Sometimes, doom. In my mind a terrible grinding after the first couple of paragraphs in and gnashing sound echoes across these stories, I fairly scream: “Don’t the still water. Somehow, Sunyata, make forced errors!” I want to explore an alternative narrative pattern, let’s Thunder Cape’s Sleeping Giant reclines call it Calamity Avoided. I think it on a blanket of fog, at top. Some Superior contains an important moral about anchorages are remote but snug, at left. www.goodoldboat.com September/October 2018 Good Old Boat 47 www.goodoldboat.com Learning Experience | Whence the Magic Ladders?

Despite the warm glow, the waters of Lake Superior are bone-chilling, even in summer, at left. Jacklines on deck are a wise precaution. Sunyata is safely afloat, below, but the GPS might have her ashore.

my S-2 9.2A, drawing 5 feet, continues A couple of weeks later, more or less straight into the deep inlet I’m sailing out of Thunder in Susie Island. I picture her fiberglass Bay and the water has keel leaving behind a hideous sitzmark warmed to around 40 degrees. on the rock bottom. Hypothermia had recently The ladder in my mind comes claimed three boaters from a childhood story where a boy (including two NFL players) is watching a painter high up a ladder in 68-degree water off Florida leaning against a barn roof. The boy when their vessel capsized sees the ladder slide off the roof, but during a posted small-craft instead of the painter suffering serious advisory. injury or even death, the falling ladder In Canada, banks of fog fades away and a second ladder, seem- sometimes clear off midday, ingly real, stays safely in place. The revealing the stunning shoreline of Good Old Boat and elsewhere that protected painter is entirely unaware. rocky precipices and narrow passages heavy seas have a way of clogging The boy believes benevolent magic was between headlands and islands of all fuel filters, disabling engines, cracking at work. I wonder: do sailors have such sizes. But then the fog bank descends windows, flooding lockers, breaking magic ladders? and I am alone in an inland sea of gray. hatches, snapping sail hems, bending If so, the magic ladder for mariners One evening, the downbound freighter booms, and stretching shrouds, stays, is less a supernatural phenomenon, and Federal Seto — I can feel the rumble of or halyards to the breaking point. I think it’s not even purely blind luck. its deep-throated engines but cannot Although I’ve installed jacklines It’s knowing when to trust your senses possibly pinpoint its direction — sends fashioned from sturdy climbing and see the outlines of tall trees far up out sécurité advisories; its radioman webbing and secure carabiners, all that above the fog to avoid an island’s warns “visibility zero” off Passage protective gear is a hassle to use, and shoreline, or when to “hit” the shore Island. But the next morning it’s the perhaps I’ll be tempted to tie down of Susie Island because that’s actually distinct thrill of heavy seas whipped a loose anchor on the pitching bow. where the water is deep enough to up by strong northeast winds with a The 30-minute clock that ticks when safely anchor. Calamity Avoided is long fetch. The 1,000-foot-high bluff of you’re alone in the frigid water might often a matter of attentive chart work, Thunder Cape’s Sleeping Giant blocks start for a variety of reasons, most of an accurate depth finder, and wide- the two Canadian weather channels, them avoidable. open eyes and ears. so the only weather forecast I have The Susie Island episode echoes the comes from the far-distant Keweenaw Saved again many more stored in the GPS. In two Peninsula, and they must have it all My longest passage of 55 nautical miles and a half months on Lake Superior wrong. Anyway, perhaps only sissies across open water led to the summer that summer, I had the good fortune to pay attention to predictions of 10-foot season’s only expensive mistake. By “hit” bottom more than a dozen times. seas on Lake Superior. late August, it was time to be heading Once, when Sunyata was tied up safely It’s easy to imagine how this home to Pikes Bay in the Apostles, and at Malone Dock, the screen showed scenario might unfold. We know from my dutiful attention to bad weather her 150 feet inland. the Calamity Overcome stories in meant that I was running a bit late.

48 Good Old Boat September/October 2018 www.goodoldboat.com www.goodoldboat.com

Strong winds and heavy seas kept red blazes, lined them up, and ran in to day in heavy fog, fairly shouted over me at Isle Royale’s idyllic Chippewa Copper Harbor. channel 16: “Loon: you are on the Harbor, where the well-protected inner wrong side of the buoys! Keep the bell basin is a fine place to hole up in heavy A network of ladders to the left!” Loon was negotiating a weather. By then, I’d abandoned my I believe magic ladders come in several tricky entrance to Siskiwit Bay, I think, original hope to circle the far side of the forms. One is careful, even obsessive, and the wrong side of a bell buoy would Keweenaw Peninsula then motor up the preparation. Defense in depth is have meant a hard grounding and a Keweenaw Waterway, and instead necessary for singlehanded wilderness chapter of Calamity Overcome. Instead, I was headed from Isle Royale to the sailing. Stout jacklines, reserve diesel, the alertness of a sailor-colleague “wicked rock shoals” at the entrance to fuel stabilizer, radar reflectors, extra brought about Calamity Avoided. It’s in Copper Harbor. food supplies, spare nylon propeller, our power to do the same. Halfway through the open-lake heavy anchor and stout rode, tools passage, a west wind came up, enough to overhaul everything on board Thomas J. Misa, a native of Port freshened to 20 knots, and kicked — I deliberately planned and prepared Angeles, Washington, attended schools up 3- to 4-foot waves that made my all these. My boating brother, aboard for on the East Coast, then taught the 135 genoa far too much sail. For most two weeks in Canada, was often posted history of science and technology for of an hour, I tried to coax it in, but at the bow, and in the vaguely charted three decades in the Midwest. His the wind and waves were too strong. Slate Islands threaded us through website is tjmisa.com. Recently, he and “If you’re thinking about reefing . . .” narrow shallows. his spouse, along with Sunyata, relo- I might have clipped in to my lifelines Simple luck is a magic ladder of cated to Lopez Island in Washington’s but, strangely, I did not. Finally, I took a sorts. There was my botched Bahamian San Juan Islands. So now, Sunyata leaf from the storm-tossed Pardeys and moor in tiny McNab Harbor, where sails in the Salish Sea. executed a “heave-to.” That stopped a release line fouled the second my wild ride, but the genoa did one anchor. (Bahamian moors in place extra round of flapping in the wind and for three other overnight wind shifts h Sa oot iling twisted itself around the year-old head- kept Sunyata off nearby shores.) Sm stay. (It didn’t see a second summer Luck led to the satisfying end to an Need a and my pocketbook is the lighter.) exquisite 40-mile sailing day from Little Suitably shortening up the genoa to Lake Harbor across Nipigon Bay and RuddeR? what Bayfield sailing captain Beth Cozzi down Nipigon Strait, along those laser calls a “bikini jib,” I proceeded onward range markers, with a sail-in anchorage Foss Foam to Copper Harbor. at Moss Island — a quarter hour before Products After this excitement it was early severe north winds raised impressive of florida, inc evening, and the wave-tossed 11-hour whitecaps. Shallow Nipigon Bay kicks passage had evidently worn me down. up a 4- to 6-foot wind chop at the drop We have over 400 moldS The sailing directions from Bonnie of a hat, but we’d long passed that here are just a few Dahl’s Superior Way, the NOAA chart, danger point. Or perhaps the magic of the manufacturers and even my handheld GPS all agree ladder had worked its wonders and that the entrance to Copper Harbor is let us proceed safely into a protected Beneteau endeavour CSY clearly marked by range markers for a anchorage. hunter leopard Watkins course of 190 degrees. I needed only to The sailing community itself forms Catalina morgan Cal line up the red/orange markers and slip a magic ladder too. That summer, Irwin Caliber o’day into the long and west-wind-protected I had a dozen or more instances of bay. Unaccountably, I saw bright lights Calamity Avoided. The singlehanding As the world’s something like the red-laser range captain of Peregrine warned me off Celebrating largest producer marker I’d passed through three times a shallow approach at Grand Marais. of rudders, in Canada’s Nipigon Strait, only these A vintage-Chris-Craft restorer caught Yrs we have made over lights — if I’d followed the dangerous me at Red Rock, Ontario, before my 40 60,000 since 1978! mirage — would have sent Sunyata bow pulpit could shear off the dock’s straight on to the “wicked rock shoals” electricity and water pedestal. Larry www.newrudders.com and certain damage. I might then have and Judy on Allegro pointed out Otter written about Calamity Overcome. Cove as a valuable hurricane hole. I am 352-529-1104 But, just then, a magic ladder did grateful for this protective community [email protected] its thing and gave me a second chance. and thankful for its portable wisdom. Foss Foam Products of Florida, Inc. I looked again, carefully this time, and I am even thinking more positively 7060 Hwy. 41 North, Williston, FL 32696 finally saw the pair of small orange/ about the sharp radio message one www.goodoldboat.com September/October 2018 Good Old Boat 49