Twin O/B Sonic

Just stumbled on this while cleaning out my desk yesterday.

A group of us left Marblehead Ohio and crossed Lake Erie to Leamington Ontario for a couple days. Plan was for myself and one other boat to head north from there for the next week.
Weather turned to crap though and we got weathered in at Leamington.
After day #2 I woke up in the cuddy w/the bow hatch open and noticed it was dead calm?? Jumped out of bed and realized we'd been so busy having fun that we didn't notice it was nice for the first couple hrs each morning.
I put a plan together to fuel up and tie down night #2 then haul ass butt crack of dawn morning #3.
One boat agreed w/me.
Two others decided to head out afternoon #2 against my strong disapproval. A 26' trailerable cruiser and a 22' cuddy.
Was rolling serious 6' to 8's and knew it was bad when the new owner of a new 41' Tiara bragged (while paying 2nd night of dockage) about heading to Put in Bay and was back 30 mins later, ghost white! We could see his back deck from the break wall!
My idiot friends left that afternoon anyhow. We walked out to the break wall to watch them leave and it looked like a crane was hanging both boats by the bow eye! It got worse.
It started pouring rain w/fog and visibility went to zero and I knew they'd be in trouble quick.
We ran back to my boat and listened to them on the VHF. Cruiser boy had a real VHF, cuddy boy had a hand held That means 5 mls of range in perfect conditions. Those conditions maybe a mile or two?? My fear was they'd lose sight of each other, veer off course and disappear.
They did exactly that. I was untying to go look for them when they came back on the radio to report they were OK.
Conditions were so bad they aborted their attempt at U.S. mainland and instead weathered in at Scudder Harbor at the north end of Pelee Island 15 mls away.
My buddy that stayed behind (22' cuddy w/a 454) and I stuck to our plan and this shot was taken the next morning as we headed out. Notice the water. He could run 60 so we did, all the way to the south side of Kellys Island (35 mls) for breakfast which was only a couple mls from our trailers. Glass calm the whole way.
Here's the funny part. We pulled in mins after our friends that had left the day before! My buddy that ran w/me went straight to the others table and got in cruiser boys face for risking the lives of 3 other people that trusted him. Almost fisty cuffs.

Anyhow, thought this was a cool shot and brought back all those memories when I found it. This is probably 15 yrs ago.
Hope y'all enjoy.

glassdave

iTrader: (1)

Always love the "tales of the great lakes" our little pond here demands a great deal of respect and requires good judgment always.

Had a similar situation a few years ago when trying to make a gathering in Kellys over labor day. Tried to leave friday afternoon only to barely make our lighthouse (three miles maybe) only to be turned back in head on eights or tens. When my buddys anchor on his San Tropay flew off the deck and was flailing around we decided it wasnt gonna happen. Npw having grown up on the lake i know about this window of calm of which you speak and around seven in the morning i told my friends we needed to get moving. They were dragging azz around the marina so i decided to make a recon mission to check conditions, looked good so we diched 'em lol. We got out to the lighthouse and found the wind still blowing a bit but shifted to SE instead of the treacherous NE we had the day before. This allowed us to run in quartering seas at a quite fun forty or so mph all the way to the cut through at Marblehead. Things got fun there though, we hit steep close eights head on and had to drop down to plowing speed. It took longer to get the last six miles then all of the first thirty. So steep that the nose of my ScarabIII would dip in the oncoming wave and roll water down the deck then as the stern came up over the wave my three blade Mirage props would grab air and cavitate back in the water and occasionally i would have to go into neutral to get it to stop and hook back up in the water. Scared the schit out of me the first few times as i thought i blew both couplers. Got in and got docked and made it up to the Pump and had my first celebratory brandy Alexander in hand when my phone rang. The guy putting on the event says we bumped everything back a day and everyone was going to try and make it out tomorrow. He was only seven miles away but through some of the worst water Eire has to offer, the waters off Ceder Point and Sandusky Bay. My reply was "see ya when ya get here" He was surprised we made it from the other side of the islands, we go a break in that the waters are shallower and had favorable winds for much of the run.

mitchie

Classic story... Great adventure. Thanks for sharing.