In Distress

    “Lake Michigan should not be taken for granted,” Derrick P. Thames

I received a Facebook message from former mid-Nineties IUN student Jill Semko Underly, who taught Social Studies at Munster H.S. and is now a school superintendent in Wisconsin. “You made a great impression on me,” she wrote. I realize my influence on students pales in comparison to gifted public school teachers, but words of praise from those who still remember me is gratifying. Jill participated in an oral history project that culminated in publication of “Tales of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Indiana Dunelands” (Steel Shavings, volume 28, 1998, my favorite issue). She interviewed Ken Jania, who at age 17 set sail from Burns Harbor en route to St. Joseph, Michigan. Several hours out, a sudden storm descended on them with 50 mile-an-hour wind and a precipitous temperature drop. Ken Jania recalled, as told to Semko:

We went from glass water to 15-foot waves in five seconds. Waves were coming over the boat; it was a driving sleet storm. The storm hit so hard that it took the boat and laid it down. It tried to right itself, but the sail was full of water. When the boat came up, it tore the sail. Within 15 minutes, the top of the boat was covered in ice. The sails were just shredded. Denny [the sailboat owner] had this little dingy that he towed behind his boat, which was gone, probably sunk. We were in distress. Denny’s radio didn’t work because it got covered with freezing water.

The 15-foot seas, going up and down 30 feet, caused everyone except Denny to become seasick and close to hysterical. We were almost thrown overboard every time a wave hit. Denny said we had to get the sails off, in order to turn the boat. He asked me to go up an icy pole and try to get the sails off. I climbed up with this belt and pulled on the sail. Finally, it came down. After we got the sails put away, Denny sealed the cabin, which had about a foot of water in it. Denny, Jack, and I were on deck, and others were working the pumps, trying to get the water out of the cabin.

Finally, with the little 10-horsepower motor running, Denny got the front of the boat in front of the waves, and the boat was actually surfing. The front was out of the water riding the waves and would come down with a crash. Everything would shake. I thought I was going to die. The boat was getting heavier and heavier with water. After surfing about eight hours, we came near the coast, but Denny couldn’t see the lighthouse. It was gone. The wind had destroyed it.

Denny told us to keep an eye out for the breakwall. All of a sudden, BOOM! The back of the boat hit the breakwall. We had surfed right over it into the Coast Guard harbor. It was snowing and sleeting very hard now, and as the front of the boat came down inside the harbor, we landed on a pole. It went right through the bottom of the sailboat and came up on deck. Once the Coast guard figured out what was going on, they rescued us and we called our parents. We stayed there three or four days of repair before sailing back to Burns Harbor.