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Muskegon Tall Ships Challenge Weekend! People are everywhere. Boats too. The weather is fine as well with low humidity, cool nights, and daily temperatures in the high 70's or low 80's.

This is the last of the six ports in the Great Lakes Tall Ships Challenge Festivals with the American Sail Training Association. For the crew of Pride II, it is business as usual, but with a twist. Instead of working all day followed by a full day off, everyone is getting a half day off each day. I don't know if they will think it better than a whole day after this, but they seem to like it just now. Muskegon has requested that all vessels be open for visitation from 1000 hours to 1900 hours. With morning preparations and clean up after closing, this makes for a 12 hour day. I have had pervious experience with this in other ports so I suggested splitting the day instead. Hence the day is being split at 1430 hours, which is half way through the open house time. Yesterday was the first day and the docks were mobbed. However, the ship was not mobbed as in other ports because of restrictions placed on the temporary floating docks rigged for this event, which is located at an abandoned commercial dock area. With the great weather, limited numbers on deck, and the half-day schedule, I think the crew is pleased with this watch rotation. Time will tell for sure.

The sail from Chicago was just as hot out on Lake Michigan as it had been tied up at Navy Pier. There was wind to sail with and we sailed off the dock out into the Lake with a light westerly breeze. But the wind was pushing us downwind so there was little cooling affect. Also there were Lake flies. There were so many of them, often the biting kind, that several crew wore long sleeves and pants with socks and shoes despite the heat and humidity. On a couple of occasions, the wind died altogether. These conditions were not part of the day's marine weather report. But with patience, the wind came back each time and by evening Pride II was sailing and making about 6-7 knots with all canvas set, including the studding sail. A jibe was necessary at the 0400 hour watch change Thursday morning as we ran out of Lake near the Michigan shore. Since Pride II does not go directly down wind well, we sail reaches. With the southwest wind on the starboard quarter, we were unable to steer directly toward Muskegon from Chicago. So we jibed as we got close to shore. By 0900 hours, Pride II had jibed again and was sailing in through the breakwaters of Lake Muskegon entrance.

We were able to sail right up to the docking area for the Tall Ships event. With cannons announcing her arrival, the crew got sail down and stowed while I assessed the docking situation. Several vessels were already in and a few of the longer ones had anchors out ahead of them while their sterns were close to the main dock. Floating temporary piers were placed with spaces between for the ships to back up to. All this is fairly straightforward and we could accommodate the arrangements, but my concern was the expected weather later that evening. A strong cold front was due and it packed strong winds. The direction of the wind was to change from southwest to northwest with the passage of the front. Pride II would be pointing southwest. So there were two problems to attend to: 1) prevent the ship from backing into the dock with the increasing southwest breeze as a prelude to the coming northwest breeze; 2) prevent Pride II's bow from falling off far to the south with the new and strong northwest wind when it arrived. So we placed our starboard hook far off to the right of the pier space we were to occupy. Then we dropped the port hook ahead of our dock space and backed in. Except for the engineer failing to place a fender at a critical time to prevent scraping of some varnish on the rail cap, the whole evolution worked out smoothly. After that, there was more sail to stow and more dock lines to rig in preparation for the cold front. We also had to adjust the anchor gear tension.. At one point our friend from the Chesapeake Bay, Lane Briggs in his tugateen, Norfolk Rebel, came out and dragged our starboard anchor by its marker buoy further to the right to provide a better angle to resist the northwest breeze when it hit.

At the beginning of all these tall ship events, there are questions regarding the needs of the vessels, the needs of the event hosts, the schedule for the crew's entertainment, and the courtesy events for the captains. So while I was preoccupied with getting Pride II ready for what the Weather Service was now calling a threat of 70 knot squalls, I also dealt with the questions from the event hosts and asked some questions of my own. Pride II was docked at 1030 hours but we were not done with preparations till 1700, just in time for the VIP tours welcoming the sponsors of the Tall Ship event. The problem was they could not come aboard because a custom step ladder to the ship was not completed by the host carpenters, since we could not use our own gangway because of the unusual temporary dock arrangements. So while our local sponsors, The Muskegon Chronicle, remained ashore, all the other ships were boarding their sponsors. This resulted in a conference with key host officers that ended in a compromise that let folks aboard with assistance from the crew across a 18"- 24" gap between the new steps and the ship's rail. But by this time, everyone was seeing the dark skies to the northwest which meant the eminent arrival of squalls. At the same time all this was happening, the crew were to be fed at the VIP tent ashore. The trouble was, there were thousands being fed at the same time so there were long lines for the food. Hence, sending a couple of the crew to supper at a time reduced the number of crew aboard for long periods.

When the squall hit, the wind was from the northwest at about 30 knots. This pushed Pride II over to her port putting strain on the starboard anchor. The crew quickly compensated by cranking on the windlass. It did not take much cranking, as we were fortunate to have things adjusted pretty well to begin with, and the anchor was well dug in. We then switched our priority to bracing the yards into the new wind. We had to be careful to time the bracing to negotiate the rigs of the ships alongside. But once the yards were braced to the wind, Pride II stopped leaning over so much even as the wind strength increased. I was not able to read the anemometer, but by the look of the water spume kicked up by the second wind squall, I would guess the wind got over 40 knots. There was no question we had not been hit by the strongest potential of the front. The squall pushed one of the vessels against her dock and she crushed it. This scared the hosts and the whole VIP event was cancelled. All guests were ordered off the premises including off the visiting vessels. Since we were in good shape due to our earlier preparations, I turned my attention to feeding the crew that had not yet gone ashore. Stragglers came back with word the food tent had been closed, too. So Ray put out food for those that had not eaten. With the whole crew now aboard, we stayed in an easy and relaxed standby watching videos or reading while we waited for the front to pass completely sometime around 2300 hours.

Watching for wind gusts can be done with radar if there is water associated with it. Not all wind gusts have rain and not all rain clouds have wind gusts. But when there is water in the air it can be helpful to use radar to time the arrival of the squall. With Pride II's radar, I was able to see rain concentrated in a band as far away as 70 miles. By itself that meant that the rain was very high in the air since the radar is does not pick up surface objects further than 20-40 miles away due to the curvature of the early. Rain at 70 miles meant the cloud activity was rather high and probably a thundercloud associated with the front described by the Weather Service. Over a period of an hour and a half, I tracked those clouds and found them moving just as the Weather Service said they would , rapidly to the southeast and toward our position. I estimated speed of travel at 40 miles an hour. While I could estimate the approximate time of arrival of the squall, I could not estimate the strength of a wind within it. That could only be guessed by direct observation using experience to judge the color of the cloud, its darkness, and other signs as to the possible strength of the wind squall. It was helpful to feel that my assessment of the wind potential as I saw it based on the color of the cloud jived with the predictions from the Weather Service. We had not wasted our time setting up the anchors and dock lines as we had. Having the time to do all that was indeed fortunate.

Cheers,

Captain Miles