Bringing Zeke E Boy Home (Leg 1)

We’re so excited!

Originally we planned to drive up to Cheboygan, Michigan on Wednesday morning, but we were so excited to see Zeke E Boy in the water that Scott & Mary (Kyle’s parents) agreed to come to our house a day earlier, which meant that we could leave Tuesday late morning. Despite summer road construction, we made great time on the road, and started working through our commissioning checklist. Because it was my first time ever sleeping on a boat – and because we were so excited for our new adventure, we woke up very early – like around 4:30 am, and continued working through the checklist. Had I known that I wouldn’t have a good night’s sleep until Thursday evening, I probably would’ve tried to sleep in a little longer …

Let’s Go

Kyle and Scott worked through the remaining items on our checklist and shortly before 2 pm, we decided that we were going to leave that evening!  Our whole timeline was shifted forward.  Our original plan was to leave Wednesday morning around 4 am local time, but we had 3 things going for us: we completed the list successfully, we had a good tail wind through the Straits of Mackinac and if the entire trip was successful we would hit New Buffalo harbor within a window of storms.  We now realize that we were pushing it! 

Scott needed to get his belongings from the hotel where he and Mary were staying, while Kyle and I cleaned up and took our last showers before the trip began.  The Duncan Bay Boat Club is a very nice marina with clean, spacious showers and laundry facilities (even though we didn’t need them at the time).  I would love to come back and stay again in the future. 

⚓Anchors Aweigh!

We cast off around 2:45 pm CT / 3:45 pm local time on Wed, May 25, 2022 with overcast skies, steady rain and 20 knot West wind with gusts to 25 knots. Fortunately, our sailboat has a really good bimini and dodger to protect us from the elements. Considering how hard it was raining, we stayed fairly warm and dry.

The weather and wind continued to pick up and there was dense fog as we traveled through the Straits of Mackinac.  We passed 2 Mackinac Island ferries who were flying through the water, which brought on even more waves.  As we passed under the Mackinac Bridge, I was filming a video and looking up – not out at the horizon, so I started feeling queasy.  I silently grabbed a bucket (just in case), but thankfully never needed to use it.  Once you start feeling sick, it is difficult to feel normal again; no one felt like eating dinner that night.

Hold On, the Wind is Picking Up!

The wind continued to pick up as we were heading to Grays Reef, and it was still at our backs, but the waves were 3 to 4 feet and the boat was beginning to broach while on autopilot. This means that the following waves were overtaking us from behind and would pick up the stern so we would speed up but because the waves were faster than our heavy boat, the pressure was to round up into the wind. Essentially it felt like we were out of control being tossed back and forth! The autopilot is great, but it’s reactive. Human piloting can navigate a smoother course, but with a lot more effort.

So Scott took over to manually steer the boat through the storms. Apparently Kyle and Scott made eye contact after reading the gauges and didn’t say a word. At this point, we were up to 50+ knots of wind, which Kyle only told me about the next day. Our max hull speed is around 8 knots, but we were surfing down the front side of the waves at 11 knots! I think they were doing everything they could to keep the boat on track. This was more wind than Kyle had ever been in on purpose, and I was pretty much resolved to die. Interestingly, during this crazy time, the motion sickness went away for a few hours – although I had a sinking feeling of fear in my stomach pretty much the whole trip. Who knew sailing would provide a new, unexpected weight loss plan with a lack of appetite?!?

Oh no, the horizon is gone

Around 11 pm CT, it was now pitch-black, and I lost any view of the horizon so the motion sickness came back. I decided to go below deck and lay down to feel better and maybe sleep that night. The waves continued to build and the boat rocked and rolled and dropped and shook all night. Once when I was almost asleep, I felt a little mist of water on my face. Hmmm, that shouldn’t happen. I’m completely enclosed in the main stateroom in the bow of the boat, I should not be feeling any water on my face here! Turns out it was because the entire front of the boat was diving under water from the waves! Occasionally I would have a satellite signal on my phone and all I could tell from the weather and map apps was that we were in a solid red squall, and we had nowhere to stop. We had to keep going.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock ⏰

Every hour I would look at my phone hoping that we were a little closer to morning … 12 am, 1 am, 2 am … I tried to read, I tried to sleep; the only thing I could really do was pray. And I’ve never prayed like this before! I prayed for Jesus to calm the storm like he did in Mark 4:35 – 41. When it didn’t seem like the storm would stop, I prayed for Jesus to calm the storm inside of me! I think that worked because I finally got up to pee around 3 am, which was an incredible feat on a boat in the middle of a storm; I came back to bed and I passed out until about 4:30 am … good morning, time to get up!

It’s a brand new day

I went back up to the cockpit to find out that both Kyle and Scott were up all night dodging at least 2 freighters and steering us through the storms.  While it was beginning to lighten up, the fog was so thick that we couldn’t see very far.  I got to witness dodging a freighter.  It was so foggy we couldn’t see which way the boat was heading, we could just hear the fog horn.  We went off autopilot but got completely turned around trying to avoid the ship.  Thank goodness our navigation equipment worked!  We got back on autopilot and headed in the right direction.

Planning does help

Overnight, Kyle made the decision not to stop in Charlevoix but to continue to Frankfort, Michigan for our first stop.  This was our original target destination for the first planned stop.  Luckily in mid-April, Kyle & I made a scouting trip on land to 12 harbors / towns along the eastern coast of Lake Michigan starting with Frankfort at the top and down to South Haven at the bottom (as we were already pretty familiar with St. Joe) to help us on our route home to New Buffalo.  We took lots of pictures of each of the marinas, but we didn’t have the pictures readily available on our phones to view … oops!  But at least we felt somewhat familiar with the route.

Poor Zeke E Boy

While the wind and weather calmed down from the storm, there were still 2 – 3 foot waves and even more dense fog as we entered the Frankfort harbor. A series of unfortunate, or maybe fortunate (see lessons learned), events occurred and we ended up glancing off a wood piling with ropes around it. Luckily, there was no structural damage to the boat; it was only cosmetic to the bow pulpit and the navigation lights were crushed and no longer worked. We were not going fast and the engine was idling as we were trying to navigate to the marina. Fog, a new harbor entrance and complete exhaustion were the culprits to the accident; thankfully, we worked together to recover and continue.

Thank God we made it

We arrived soaking wet, cold and extremely tired to Frankfort Municipal Marina on Thursday, May 26th at 12:30 pm CT, 21 hours and 47 minutes after we left Duncan Bay Marina, and with very little sleep in the last 30+ hours! The folks at the municipal marina helped us tie up in the thick fog. We would love to visit Frankfort again – of course, under better circumstances and with more cruising experience!

Sleep and Food – Stat!

But we were thankful to be alive! We needed food and sleep. Our plan was to rest up and leave the following morning to continue our journey home. We had quite a bit of time to do this. Since I was able to sleep for a few hours the previous night, I wanted Kyle and Scott to be able to rest. Many of our clothes and towels were soaking wet, so I walked to a laundromat to dry them. I came back to the boat and slept for several hours. In addition to not sleeping, we didn’t eat for about 24 hours so any food would’ve tasted good, but we heated up frozen pulled pork butt and baked beans, which was amazing!

Lessons Learned

Kyle & I took a walk around town – trying to feel a little more settled after bouncing around on water and rehashing our near catastrophic accident. In the end, we are grateful for many things about the accident. First of all, it could’ve been much worse. It was only the boat that suffered damage; no crew were injured or lost. Second, the damage, while an expensive inconvenience, was not structural to the boat. In fact, it prevented us from pushing for another 24 hour stint because we couldn’t drive in the dark without navigation lights. And if we hit a few more feet to the right, we would’ve hit a concrete wall! Third, we changed our marina entry protocol so that regardless of weather conditions (raining, fog, sunny, etc.) we would ALWAYS raise the front and side dodger panels to completely see where we are going! And finally, the experience humbled us and made us more cautious on our future endeavors – hopefully saving us from future accidents. We are sailing cruisers – not sailing racers. We won’t push past what our experience and skill level is.

Let’s keep going!

We were hoping for better days ahead . . . we also needed more research on the weather forecast and a more solidified plan for the next leg, but more sleep was the first priority! In all of our winter preparation for this journey home, we knew that the first leg was going to be the most difficult. We just didn’t know how difficult until we actually experienced it!

I guess, you never know unless you try!

Tell us what you think

THANK YOU for the love, support and prayers during our journey home. We’d love to hear what you think of our 1st actual sailing adventure on SV Zeke E Boy. Please add your comments, feedback and encouragement below.

– Kara from Zeke Life

Live like Zeke
You’re such a good boy!