Another of my fave boating stories involved a pea-soup-foggy, cold and misty night on Lake St Clair. Storms on that little sister of the Great Lakes can be something else, too, but this was just a dense effing fog. My then-friend Dave and I stood lookout on the bow, straining every visual nerve, cold water droplets stinging our eyes, trying to spot the lights of the shipping channel, so we could avoid the freighters. It was scary AF, and seemed like endless hours. It was also so cold we had to take turns dashing into the cabin to try to get the damp cold out of our skins and bones, before running back out to stare hard all around us again. I eventually saw one of the channel lights, then its mate, and we made it safely home. That came close to being PTSD-inducing [and you have all my empathy!].
My BF went out on a friend’s sailboat which got caught in one of those, “Where in TF did that massive black cloud come from?!” Lake St Clair storms. He has no idea how they safely got through it, but they did. It had been a lovely, sunny Summer day, w/no rain forecast. Weather forecasts make LSC and the Detroit River laugh.
Mom’s parents were seriously into boating, and occasionally got caught in storms; the worst they endured was in the aptly named Thunder Bay. A wave picked up their biggish Chris Craft and spun her right around in a circle. Many of the waves were so big, they couldn’t see the craft they were closely following. Grandpa’s Lucky Captain’s Hat saved the day. He and mom (a teenager) were looking at each other for a moment while he fought with the wheel, both completely freaked, and he asked for the hat. He put it on, and the storm soon abated.
They - and I - never did any racing. I was just lucky enough to go out on the should’ve-been-christened Never Say Die a buncha times, often with a friend or two and always our dogs.
