(Read Pt. 1: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/stranded-deserted...)
The next words I heard were, "Guys, I have bad news. The boat is...broken." Harriet and I shot awake to see Nick's exasperated face peeking into the tent. Are you kidding me.
We threw on clothes over our swimsuits, and ran down to the shore to see the damage. Our rudder, the piece of the boat responsible for steering, had been completely ripped off its hinges by waves much larger that morning than they had been the previous afternoon.
"Oh...my...goodness..." I stammered. Suddenly, rule #1 of sailing camp flooded into my mind: "Never leave the boat unattended without taking off the rudder." I knelt down to inspect the damage, but also to catch my breath. How could we have been so stupid?
"So what do we do?" Harriet asked.
"Well, we could try to brave it, although this weather isn't necessarily ideal," Nick responded.
"Is it realistic to assume someone could rescue us?" I pondered.
"Let's call the house," Harriet said.
"Good idea," I agreed, dusting the sand off my knees, and half-jogged to camp to retrieve the radio.
I winced before speaking into it, "This is Boston Whaler calling the Gerrishes. Over." No response. It was seven in the morning, to be fair. I tried again.
"Hello? Over," said my uncle, Nick's father, from the other end.
"H-hi," I stammered. "We have bad news. Over."
"Oh no," he remarked. "You're stuck? Over."
I winced again. "...yes. The rudder was ripped off. Over."
A pause. "You didn't take the rudder off last night?" My uncle was experienced in all sorts of boating, and if anyone was going to help us off this island, it was going to be him.
"Hold on, your dad wants to talk to you," he said over the silence. "Over."
"Hey Irene," my dad addressed. "So you're stuck, huh?"
"Yes, dad, I don't need a reminder," I retorted. "By the way, you're supposed to say 'over' at the end of your message. Over." I sighed.
"Oh, sorry. Over."
"It's fine. So what do we do now? Over."
"Well, you guys have paddles, right? You could use those to steer."
My jaw dropped. Here my dad was, a totally inexperienced boater, giving me, a trained sailor, advice.
"Are you crazy? Have you seen those waves out there? Over." I looked out at the lake. Whitecaps dotted the cerulean expanse.
"Yeah, but..." his voice trailed. My uncle's voice appeared on the other end again. "Hey, Irene? How bad is the damage? Over."
"The hinges have been ripped off."
Silence. Then, "Okay, we're going to call you back as soon as we can. Sit tight, and don't do anything else dumb! Over."
"Roger that. Over and out."
I trudged along the dune to the shore, where my cousins were bailing the water and sand-filled vessel. After tossing out buckets full of a green blend of water, rocks, and algae (which took much longer than expected), we hiked to the top of the sand dune where the reception was best, and awaited our family's call. In a futile attempt to cheer ourselves up, we listened to BBC's "Airplane" from Nick's phone, trying to forget our imminent stupidity and ignorance. We observed dark cloud formations to the south. A storm was coming.
Finally, a loud ring interrupted our episode. "Come in, Boston Whaler. Over." It was my uncle.
"We're here," Nick said. "Over."
"So here's the plan. You're going to walk to the Northern side of the island, where it will be easiest and fastest for us to rescue you. Over."
The North side of the island was certainly far off, but that didn’t matter to us. We preferred a walk to being blown out to sea in a rudder-less boat.
"What do we say?" I said timidly, away from the receiver.
Nick looked at me. "Thank you, Papa," Nick said. "Over."
"You're welcome, kiddos. Now, are you going to be okay? Will you have your radio on? Over."
"Yes, we will. Over," Nick asserted.
"Alright, well, be safe and I'll see you soon! Over and out."
For a split second, we exchanged subtle looks of acknowledgement that our adventure was about to become a lot less fun before scrambling down the dune to pack up camp. We wolfed down a few sausages and beef sticks and called it a sufficient breakfast. And finally tossing our sealed containers filled with sleeping gear and food into the front of the boat, we began our hellish journey.
By this time, the waves had reached a height of approximately six feet, which, for Lake Michigan and three young adults trying to walk a sailboat along the shoreline, are quite tall. The water was frigid, the wind strong. Threatening clouds inched towards us across a vast blue sky.
But we walked on.
“How much farther?” I would wonder. A spit that jutted far into the water up ahead held promise of High Island’s northern edge, meaning our journey was coming to a close. Once we rounded the spit, however, we would see another one just like it a mile down. This continued for the next five hours.
In the meantime, Harriet, Nick and I made up self-deprecating lyrics to sea shanties Harriet had taught us on the way over. “There once were three sailors, who thought they could do it right…” We would laugh after each of us half-heartedly sang poorly constructed rhymes before realizing that the lyrics were perhaps more painfully realistic than we’d assumed. With smiles and spirits fading, we would walk on.
The water got colder. The wind got stronger. The waves got bigger.
After what seemed an eternity, we finally made it to the northern edge. There, the water was calmer (we'd faced a vicious Southwestern wind), but just as cold, unfortunately.
Having inched along the comparatively calmer shoreline in a drained silence, suddenly, Nick broke it to say, “Is it just me, or do I see a boat?”
Harriet and I peered out at the lake. Sure enough, a tall metal vessel dotted the horizon. In a frenzy of excitement and relief, we waved our paddles, shouting, “Hey! We’re here!”
I let go of the boat to unfasten my lifejacket, submitting a silent prayer of gratitude, and flashed a valiant smile at the lake we'd soon be abandoning.
But despite our hopeful wishes, the boat wasn’t turning towards us; it seemed to be passing.
“Guys, I don’t think that’s our boat. Or if it is, they missed us,” Harriet said.
“Well, great. This is just what we need,” Nick sighed.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We bank on our rescue already being where they said they’d meet us,” Harriet suggested before giving the boat a push, putting us back on our previous course. I buckled my lifejacket in a gesture of embarrassing defeat.
The most frustrating part of our journey was about to greet us without welcome. The northwestern side of High Island is conveniently adorned with a very long, skinny strip of land about 5 feet wide. Now, had we had help, we could have lifted the boat across these five feet instead of walking the boat around the spit. But we didn’t have help. So we had to take the long way.
After rounding the spit rather tediously and slowly, we were immediately berated by the heaviest winds and biggest waves we’d encountered the entire trip. The spit was entirely exposed to the cold, Southwestern wind, leaving us vulnerable and more miserable than before. To make matters even worse, our rescue party was nowhere to be seen.
It took a greater effort on our behalf to stabilize the boat, for the waves toppled over us with a new ferocity. The bay we’d entered also got deep rather quickly, leaving us to completely submerge ourselves in the chilly water as we protected the sailboat from damage to its hull.
We started talking about staying an extra night or two, seeing as it was already late afternoon and our search party hadn’t yet arrived.
“We have enough food for about two more days, if we eat sparingly,” shouted Harriet over the roaring lake. “Water is more important, though, and we’re running out of that.”
“Hey! We should use the radio!” I realized aloud. I hopped into the boat. Fumbling for the radio in its waterproof bag, Nick and Harriet tried their best to keep the boat from rocking excessively.
Into it, I said, “This is the Boston Whaler. We are wondering where you are! Over.” If they’d been freaked out enough to send a plane over after we’d left a transmission when the weather was pleasant, I wondered how they’d receive this one. If they’d receive this one.
My guess was they hadn’t because we didn’t receive a response for a good minute.
“Irene, we need to keep going,” Nick pleaded.
He was right. I shoved the radio back into its bag and splashed back into the waves.
“This bay might not be a bad place to camp in,” Nick declared. “We just need to get this boat out of the wind!”
But shelter was still a ways off. The spit was so. Long.
Shivering, I began to think of the hundreds of other ways I could be spending my life had we avoided this catastrophe. Perhaps we would be enjoying ice cream cones, a tradition after celebratory events. A glitch-free sailing expedition would certainly qualify as a ‘celebratory event.’ Or maybe we would already be home, answering questions about our journey that our parents were dying to ask over a dinner of roast and mashed potatoes. Either way, we would probably be a lot warmer. And less hungry.
I imagined the boat we saw earlier, emerald and majestic, glinting in the afternoon sunlight as it rounded the northern tip. My cousins would exert joyous cries of, “Hey! We’re here!” as they loosened their grips on the boat, stopping in their tracks as they understood we wouldn’t need to continue our wretched adventure.
Then I realized that they had stopped, and I was trying unsuccessfully to continue moving the boat along the spit. Not only had they stopped, but they were shouting. “Hey!” they called and waved to a tall boat rounding the spit. I hadn’t been dreaming!
“Hey!” I joined in, waving my arms with energy I struggled to muster.
After clambering on board (which was an adventure in itself—but that’s a different story), the following twenty minutes involved a blur of hugs, wrapping ourselves in towels, and scarfing down a long-awaited dinner of roast beef and cheese. I’d never been so happy to see roast beef or a towel in my life.
My cousins and I didn’t speak to each other or anyone else the entire boat ride back, even though we were infinitely grateful for our rescue. I can’t necessarily speak for my cousins, but I just couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering.
We got a lot out of that adventure. A story for parties, a couple of college essays, and hypothermia, mostly. But there’s one thing we learned from our strenuous trip that Nick, Harriet and I will never forget for the rest of our lives: to take the rudder off when we beach the sailboat.
