Wind

Messing About in Boats as "Lake Michigan Wind" 2004

I was first introduced to the winds of Lake Michigan at the tender age of eleven while going out for my first sail. It was also my first race and it took place in the waters off Jackson Park Harbor in Chicago. Having just retched over the side, the race began with cries of starboard as the captain, my juvenile delinquent friend’s father, careened his 26 foot Eastwind across the starting line, dodging the bow waves of the entire fleet due to his mistimed start.

At that point, being too scared to be sick, I settled into the long race, listening to undecipherable commands and being helped by an older gentleman who interpreted for me and made sure I pulled the right line at the right time.

But this essay is about wind and that day the lake with its low clouds and white-capped 4 to 5 foot waves was riled up due to a northeaster. A wind that I had experienced as a landlubber but never fully comprehended till that faithful day off of Jackson Park.

Wind and water is a combination that tends to make up many of my dreams. Over the years as spring approaches and fall recedes, the expectant winds are awaited and as the wind clocks around from northeast to southeast, so to does summer follow winter.

For those who have no experience with Lake Michigan, she lies mainly north to south for approximately 350 miles and probably averages 60 miles athwartships. Chicago snuggles the southwest corner, in the shallower reaches of a lake that dives to 900 feet beneath your keel at its deepest center. The weather on the lake is, lets just say, abrupt.

While living in southern Florida on a rusting 33’ Mason designed sloop, I reveled the gradual nature of the weather. With the exception of a few squalls, the weather came in slowly; politely introduced itself and then proceeded to hang around for weeks on end. This is not an option on the Great Lakes. If I can anthropomorphize; the weather on the lake tends to be vindictive. I forever find myself looking over my shoulder, searching for where the next blow will come from and it usually does come.

We in the Midwest happen to live at the convergence of two monumental weather systems that collide and do battle over our heads. Great masses of cold dry air from Canada regularly meet the warm moisture laden air from the Gulf of Mexico, to which the added vagaries of the jet stream make one paranoid as hell about the weather. The winds that concern me here are not from the cardinal points of the compass but from the edgy combinations of NE, NW, SE and SW.

First let me talk about the most benign of these winds – the southeast. Warm gentle breezes that are so steady you barely need to man the helm. Great sailing winds, the perfect wind to invite your mother-in-law out for a sail.

A few summers ago these SE winds predominated and oh what a glorious summer they made for. While we sweltered onshore, a mile out in the lake the thick polluted air gave way to 10-degree cooler 15-knot breezes. We just left the diesel on a little longer to reach the blessed wind before raising our sails for peaceful close reaches all summer long.

Even in the most perfect of summers the blustery southwest winds occur. Stirred up by traveling over the entire south side of the city and hitting the shear cliffs of downtown Chicago’s skyscrapers, they sweep sheets of 20 to 30 knot winds out onto the lake like the drying sheets flapping on the clothesline in your mom’s backyard.

It took years of coast hugging agony to realize that if I just sailed five miles further out, the wind would be strong but no longer gusty; the perfect combination for my heavy 31’ Swedish sloop. The dreaded southwest winds on summer afternoons became welcoming. These same winds are also responsible for the unseasonably warm weather in the spring and fall and on an occasional winters day, make it feel like spring.

Then there are the northwesters. On a couple of late season cruises they blew in and left the boat covered in snow. The barometer usually drops in anticipation of these winds. And as opposed to the southwesters blowing over a hot turbulent city, these winds come across the Great Plains and the Canadian artic.

Due to Chicago’s location on the western shore, the lake remains flat even with the high velocities of the northwest and southwest winds. As I man the tiller, I watch intently the darkening surface of the rippling blue grey water as the wind churns up the wavelets and I await its effect on the rudder. As the gust hit the sails the reason for the term weather helm becomes obvious.

Finally there is nothing like a northeaster out on the lake. Waves roll in from Beaver Island some 300 miles away and the wind that has been unimpeded for all that distance hits full force. No wavelets here, no gusts, just grey white-capped rollers breaking with wind blown spray. These are the winds that cause you to double reef and keep you hoping you can get the boat into the lee of some outreaching headland.

My father had multiple barometers hanging around the house that he would tap once or twice each day. He never bothered to explain it to me and I never bothered to ask, but nonetheless, now at fifty, I find myself doing the same thing. Tapping away I have noticed that commencing in the late spring and ending in the early fall, the barometer is stuck, unmoving and hovers around 30. Then one day in September I will tap the glass and the needle will abruptly drop. It is then that I start to plan for winter.

Having been lulled into complacency by the heat of August, I begin to realize that it is all over for another year and await the first northeasters of the upcoming dreaded winter season to appear. While winter negotiates between the northwesters and the northeasters, I start ruminating on arcane subjects, such as the wind - fair winds to one and all.