Issue 149: March/April 2023
With the mainsail hoisted and our 6-hp Mercury pushing us toward Lake Michigan, we scooted out of Pentwater Lake Inlet with high hopes. My 15-year-old brother, Matt, hanked on the headsail and was ready to hoist. From the helm, I (21 at the time) looked at the wind waves ahead and liked what I saw — a 10- to 15-knot southwesterly. Perfect conditions for sailing north up the Michigan shoreline.
Our plan was to sail overnight 80 miles to the Manitou Islands, but plans aren’t always straightforward or easy on a sailboat. Shortly after dark, the wind died and then did something sailors know well on this big body of water. It completely changed. In a forecast-defying shift, a strong northerly breeze was suddenly kicking up steep waves that we had no interest in fi ghting aboard our family’s 1987 Hunter 23.
Instead, we turned around and plotted a new destination in a completely opposite direction — toward Chicago. After an overnight stop and then a night sail, we arrived in the Windy City on a hot summer afternoon and docked our seemingly diminutive craft on the seawall next to the Chicago Yacht Club (see photo). Dwarfed by skyscrapers and much larger yachts, we weren’t where we thought we would be, yet as young sailors, we felt accomplished to have made it so far. Heck, we never imagined we’d be doing this when the boat came into our lives years earlier.
When I first saw the new-to-us sailboat that my dad had purchased sitting in our driveway, perched atop its trailer, it looked massive through my 8-year-old eyes. I couldn’t wait to climb aboard. In 1991, my parents and three siblings and I began sailing the Hunter on lakes in Iowa (yes, there are lakes in Iowa). We spent most weekends driving to the boat, heading out for a sail, eating a packed lunch aboard, and then driving back home, sometimes two days in a row. And when my parents asked how I’d like to celebrate my 11th birthday, all I wanted was to go out for an overnight cruise with my dad and a couple friends, anchor in a cove, and sail back. That’s what we did. And that is how lifelong cruising and sailing dreams get started.
When the Hunter, which by this time had accrued the moniker Crosswinds, (though it was never offi cially put on the boat), was brought to a marina in Pentwater, Michigan, near our family’s new home, we couldn’t wait to get her out on bigger water. Matt and I started small on Pentwater Lake, only venturing out when the winds and seas allowed. Little by little, mile after mile, we pushed our boundaries farther up and down the Lake Michigan shoreline, gaining experience. We learned at what wind speed the boat liked to be reefed. Then we had a sailmaker friend put a second reef in the main so we could sail in more wind. We fiddled with the fi nicky outboard. We slept aboard at the dock and pored over chartbooks under lantern light in the cockpit. All of it, now, is a collection of memories that I’ll carry with me forever.
As happens, though, I moved on to bigger boats and bigger waters. My dad and other family members sailed the Hunter from time to time. Matt made voyages across the lake to Wisconsin and pressed her into service whenever he could, with friends or solo, day or night. Soon, the inevitable bug of a bigger boat crept in and our family’s beloved sailboat was sold 21 years after my dad fi rst parked her in the driveway — replaced by a larger version, a Hunter 39.
But this past summer, with all of us gathered back at the lake again, we told sea stories and reminisced about the good times we’d had on that old Hunter 23. About where it had taken our family and the sailors we’d become since. To all of us, the consensus was simple: “Man, we should have never let her go.”
Whatever boat you own and are working on now, remember, it might be that one too.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
