The Lee Shore

It had been calm when I went to sleep, a calm that was supposed to have lasted into the next day. But by 0300 it was blowing hard from the northeast and Hope, my Seaward 22, was tugging at her anchor.

I was at the western end of Lake Erie, lying uneasily behind a spit of Canadian sand called Pelee Point. It was too precarious a place to stay in a rising breeze. I had two choices: find my way in the dark into an unfamiliar marina about eight miles away or head to my home port, Ohio’s Huron River, 32 miles across the lake.

The weather forecast steered my decision toward Huron, with the promise of northeast winds gradually building to 10-20 knots in the afternoon giving me an easy broad reach home. I would be off the water long before the heavy weather arrived later that evening. Or at least, I