F
alling overboard at night is every sailor’s
worst nightmare. This exact scenario
played out last July during Chicago Yacht Club’s
annual Race to Mackinac. In just moments,
visiting Chesapeake Bay boat Meridian X went
from racing to emergency recovery efforts as
their crewman, Mark Wheeler, was thrown
overboard into the cold, choppy blackness of Lake
Michigan. Amazingly, he was recovered about
an hour later, but his near-death story highlights
many good lessons for boaters of all kinds.
Known for its blustery conditions, even Lake
Michigan takes a summer vacation; its winds
and water commonly become benign during the
warmest months of the year. Predictably, this is
when most cruisers from the southern part of the
lake head north to enjoy her picturesque harbors
and islands. This is also when the Chicago
Yacht Club holds its popular 289-nautical-mile
sailboat race to Mackinac Island.
Rare as strong cold fronts are in summer,
one was predicted to intersect the racers
during the first night of the 2017 race. As
advertised, it was exactly this type of front that
greeted the fleet about halfway up the lake.
Usually accompanied by thunderstorms and asharp change in wind direction and strength,
these “pneumonia fronts” can hit like a freight
train and take a day to blow out.
As often happens during long-distance
sailboat races, many of the boats were carrying
large spinnaker sails into the approaching front
to take advantage of the increased wind speed.
Meridian X was no different. After a spectacular
day of sailing off the wind, the boat had quickly
made nearly 100 nautical miles up the lake
when the front approached. The accompanying
thunderstorms were not directly in the area and
looked to be about two hours north, when a
sudden sharp increase in wind speed from
an unseen dry microburst that formed in the
highly unstable air mass hit the boat. A call for
“all-hands on deck” was made to help douse the
spinnaker as the wind exceeded 30 knots.
Wheeler had come off watch about 30
minutes earlier, so he was down below when
the call came. Meridian X was doing roughly 18
knots as he quickly grabbed his inflatable life vest
and harness and headed above deck to help. As
he went toward the transom behind the steering
wheel, the boat went hard-over to starboard just
before his hand reached the runner winch. Inan instant he went head first into the water. He
tried to hold onto the runner, but the boat was
traveling too fast and he had to let go.Alone in the water
According to Wheeler’s account of the events
published in a SpinSheet (SPINSHEET.COM) article,
the cold, dark reality of being in the water quickly
set in. Thankfully, he had grabbed his inflatable
life vest before coming on deck. However, he
had the inflation trigger set to manual because of
all the false activations he had witnessed during
other wet races, so he had to physically pull the
lanyard to inflate the vest. It quickly filled, but
he soon realized that because he had not taken
the time to strap the vest on tightly, he needed to
physically hold the tubes down with his arms to
prevent them riding up over his head. He tried
several times to properly buckle the vest but found
it impossible while inflated.
With the wind blowing at nearly 40 knots, the
water was extremely rough. Wheeler was forced
to concentrate on breathing without ingesting
too much water. He activated a brand-new safety
light attached to his life vest, but found that it
would not stay on; he needed to keep banging MAY 2018 | LAKELANDBOATING.COMMacRace_MAY18_2pageFINAL.indd 50 3/28/18 12:39 PM