The reality set in around midmorning Friday as the schooner Manitou cleared the mouth of Grand Traverse Bay and began tossing and pitching in the open waters of Lake Michigan.
Obviously, this would not be a luxury cruise with whims indulged, comfort paramount and the awkwardness of sea life buffered by pampering. Instead, the 17 passengers could expect to toss and turn with the ship as the winds had their way with the billowing sails.
Their floor show would be the creaking of two thick wooden masts, their main diversion good conversation, their payoff a thrilling ride on a rolling deck very much like those on the ships that glutted the Great Lakes a century ago.
”People who go on trips like this know what they`re in for,” Hunter Raiford grunted as the deck almost bucked him out of his boat shoes. ”We`re all in this together. Those who are used to getting their room cleaned every night and being waited on should understand it`s just not going to happen.”
Raiford and his wife, Barbara, had brought another passenger with them from their home in Sturgis, Mich. The 5-month-old fetus was just starting to show on Barbara`s waistline and now and then her face became a little more gray than pregnancy alone would warrant. But her smile stayed fixed, while anti-seasick acupressure bands on her wrists and regular doses of saltine crackers kept nausea at bay.
Hunter, a schoolteacher, and Barbara, a potter, had ridden a windjammer in the Caribbean (”more of a party boat,” Hunter recalled with mild disdain); they were familiar with the Malabar out of Traverse City, a similar vessel offering day trips. So if they felt no threat to their tiny papoose, how much danger could there be?
Eager to climb aboard
Nearly everyone else-all but two of them from Michigan-seemed to have had some experience as well. Some skippered sailboats of their own or had ridden one of the many big pleasure sailers that ply the East Coast from Key West to Maine. They were eager to climb aboard when the first such trip became available on the Great Lakes. And for the most part, they seemed to know what they were in for.
Malabar owner John Elder, 38, whose Indianapolis-based family had summered and sailed around the Leelanau Peninsula through his childhood, brought the Manitou to Michigan June 15. That day, the ship-built in 1983 as a replica of the old schooner types-sailed majestically into the Northport harbor after a long passage through the eastern waterways from its former home in Lake Champlain, Vt.
Elder had brought the Malabar to Traverse City in 1987, where it has done a thriving business. It allowed him to get out of stock-and-bond trading so he could pioneer the windjammer business in the Midwest.
”There`s something you can`t get on a smaller sailboat that you can on a larger sailing ship like this,” Elder says. ”There`s a lot of mystique and character.
”Both of these vessels on the Atlantic coast would have been called coasting schooners. These are the cargo schooners, very similar to the ships that sailed in the Great Lakes 80 to 100 years ago.”
Passengers on the Manitou began sampling the mystique and learning characteristics of the lake/ocean schooner around lunchtime of the first day out. Chief cook Annie DeMaria and assistant Krstie Atwood placed ceramic bowls and plates on the deck over the main cabin for an outdoor meal. Foam-tipped swells suddenly pummeled the vessel, and the dishes started sliding perilously close to overboard.
Those who hadn`t dived toward the ship`s two heads (lavatories with the only showers on board) scrambled to recover the dishes. In the process, a few lost their appetites and missed a fine whitefish chowder, but for most of the passengers, the rough seas seemed to whet their hunger for action.
At meal time, fair weather or foul, the dinner bell soon brought a Pavlovian reaction, as the galley crew produced fresh baked goods, succulent fish and turkey entrees and hearty soups in and upon the wood-burning stove. Fruits and vegetables appeared in abundance at regular mealtimes.
A mixed bag of weather
During a three-day, 35-mile cruise from Northport to Beaver Island with an overnight anchorage in Omena (about 5 miles from home port) on the return, the weather lurched from extremely hot and calm to brisk to rather rough, with a wee-hours thunderstorm Saturday morning.
John Elder`s Traverse Tall Ship Co. schedules the three-day voyages early and late in the summer season, charging $399 a person, double occupancy. Most of the summer is taken up with six-day trips (at $799) that could range from the Manitou Islands, some 10 miles offshore to Mackinac Island-some 75 miles from the Manitous-with hiking trips and water activities in various ports along the way.
The early sailors received only a sampler, but even that relatively short experience covered a wide range of conditions.
The first adjustment came on the evening before their departure, when passengers arrived in small groups and found the decks festooned with a buffet of cheese, fruit and crackers. The crew put out an assortment of wines from nearby Leelanau Cellars Vineyards, including a few bottles of Tall Ship Chardonnay, made especially to honor the Manitou and its maiden season on the Great Lakes. After bon voyage, however, the drinks were strictly b.y.o.b.
That part seemed soft enough, but a tour of the quarters below decks disabused anyone of the notion that this would be some kind of no-sweat wine- tasting cruise. Each porthole-free cabin holds two narrow bunks and a bedstand with a plastic basin, two plastic cups and two hotel-size bars of Ivory. Towels and wash cloths hang above. Light comes from a bare bulb or a tiny skylight, depending on the hour. At full capacity, the ship sleeps 24.
While the passengers mixed on Thursday evening, members of the crew pulled baggage carts and loads of supplies down the pier.
Al Lehmkuhl`s wife, Cindy, booked the cruise as a surprise 40th birthday party. Back home in Battle Creek, she had told Al where they were going only the day before, so he wouldn`t pack his golf clubs. As a result, Al had the least preparation of anyone. Soon after climbing on board, he approached the skinny deck hand with the glasses and said, ”Gee, I`d like to meet the captain; wonder when he`ll get here.”
So Al Lehmkuhl, 40, was one of the first passengers to make the acquaintance of Capt. Dave McGinnis, 27, thin, blond, bespectacled and very much in charge.
Excursion-schooner salts
McGinnis, it turned out, belongs to a rather widespread fraternity of excursion-schooner salts who work the East Coast ships. When John Elder and his backers bought the Manitou (originally called the Homer W. Dickson), McGinnis came along and brought with him first mate Eric Pfirrman, 25, a grinning, affable workhorse with a tendency to hoot ”Hee-haw!” when the going gets good.
”I was in art school in New York, studying photography, and I got burned out on it,” McGinnis told a passenger Friday morning as he steered the ship toward open water. Most of the crew members had similar stories-studies interrupted and careers put on hold or permanently altered because they had fallen in love with life on the big sailing ships.
The Manitou is 114 feet long, but McGinnis has piloted craft larger than that, and he guided the Manitou on its long, arduous spring journey through inland waterways to Lake Michigan.
His first voyage from Northport had been slow and calm, requiring a lot of boosts from the diesel engine. Weather reports indicated that this trip would be different, and as soon as the dishes started sliding toward port side Friday afternoon, McGinnis knew his Great Lakes shakedown had really begun.
At breakfast that first day, the captain had recited a long list of safety rules and ended his little speech by urging everyone to pitch in.
He could not predict the itinerary so soon. One of the unique characteristics of that part of Lake Michigan is abrupt wind shifts.
”I do know we`ll be heading north,” he assured the passengers, as they chewed on tasty ham omelets and hash browns.
Under bright skies and slow breezes, McGinnis piloted the Manitou toward open water. Carolyn Chapas, of Naperville, who had announced that she wanted to get away from the hassles, phone calls and fax machines of her sales job, stretched out on the deck and said blissfully, ”This is exactly what I wanted.”
By lunchtime, of course, she and the other passengers were lurching across the deck, balancing their soup bowls, running below to put on jackets. Yet their grins seemed to indicate that this was what they wanted, too.
Passengers can get involved
Later that day, as Beaver Island hovered into sight, the heat and balmy breezes returned. Passengers helped furl the sails and drop anchor while making their plans for shore leave, but they could see from the miles of pine trees that they would have a vast territory to cover in a short time.
John Kruch stood ready to help. The short, bearded crew member had spent some of his spare hours looking over volumes of island lore. Kruch, a former park ranger, would be the Manitou`s designated guide, ready to steer anyone interested to the most significant Beaver Island features.
A few passengers did rent Jeeps and spent as much time as they could tracing vestiges of Mormon renegade James Jesse Strang, whose ”kingdom” in the 1840s dominated the 15-mile-long stretch of pines and farmland.
Some others wandered the truncated town of St. James, from which they could see the Manitou anchored off in the distance.
A couple even ventured into the Shamrock, a raucous saloon with tasty seafood, a jukebox selection frozen into the Patsy Cline era and customers who never gave that big old ship in the harbor a second glance.
Crew members made a few runs to shore in the rubber dinghy, loading up with people who were grateful they could trade bouncy Jeep seats for a ride on the waves and get back to their little community on the Manitou.
By this time a pleasantly insular seagoing mentality had set in, and land was not so much a destination as a point on the chart. On board, they could resume telling their stories, reading their books, taking their turns at the rigging and doing chores down in the galley, which produced meals superior to any available on that shore, at least.
Soon, Beaver Island meant little more than a string of lights off on the horizon, and home was a gently swaying vessel full of new friends sharing an adventure.
Long after the last of them had trundled off to bed, a noisy thunderstorm raked the harbor with sheets of rain and brilliant light. It left the area long before dawn, but as the passengers stretched and yawned their way toward breakfast, a few of the more experienced sailors among them could sense that something was in the air besides the smell of coffee, sausage and biscuits.
Winds picked up and a chill set in. Members of the crew, who seldom wore anything more than shorts and T-shirts, appeared bundled in sweats and rain gear. The normally casual Capt. McGinnis also failed to conceal a pinched expression as the protective wall of island diminished and a line of squalls began an unimpeded march toward the Manitou`s port side.
Hardest part of job
”The most difficult thing about this job,” he later confided, ”is the planning and the charting to make sure the trip is as enjoyable and comfortable as it can be. If it were just myself, I wouldn`t care. But you don`t want to destroy people who aren`t used to this.”
So all morning long, he tacked and maneuvered and adjusted the sails while waves and rain beat on the ship. Two or three passengers fought with their twisted innards in the privacy of their bunks. Nearly all the rest took up positions amidships and rode the bronco with varying degrees of delight.
Dave and Barbara Hall, of Ann Arbor, Mich., brilliant in their yellow slickers, hugged the forward mast and let the spray wash over them. At the rockiest moments, when the prow shot skyward then dipped to scoop up water, Barbara yelped with joy.
Jean Strickler, of Lansing, Mich., hunkered behind a skylight and watched the Halls with profound shock.
”Isn`t it possible the boat will tip over?” Strickler asked.
A crew member assured her the Manitou could withstand far worse and said the U.S. Coast Guard would ban it from the lakes if it couldn`t always keep its keel down.
Strickler brightened, stood and started whooping, too.
The subsequent calm air and glassy seas came as a letdown. The cottages and docks of Omena pulled the boat from its exploits, and the only excitement it could muster was among the people who stood in their yards and waved from their marinas and aimed video cameras from their cars. On these waters, a schooner makes a triumphant entrance no matter where it has been.
But some of those on board could begin to understand what Dave McGinnis was trying to express when talking about the differences between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes.
”I`m glad the lakes are so large,” he said, ”but it`s still hard to get used to them. Knowing there`s land even 200 miles away feels kind of claustrophobic.”
After the slow, struggling passage from Beaver Island, the anchorage in Omena turned out to be a scant five miles downshore from the home dock in Northport. McGinnis would make another decent sail out of that short distance the next morning, but if he had taken a vote, a majority of the people with him might have said, ”Keep on going.”
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Inquiries on Great Lakes windjamming may be addressed to Traverse Tall Ship Co., 13390 W. Bay Shore Dr., Traverse City, Mich. 49684; 800-678-0383 or 616-941-2000.
