JUNE 9, 2025 – (Cont.) Just after nightfall the hot, humid weather had transformed into the perfect storm. After putting the kids to bed, Beth and I sat down on the front porch to watch the meteorological sound and light show. A few minutes of crash–BANG was followed by gusts that stirred up the water and pushed and pulled at the trees along our shore. Suddenly, a strange whistling noise erupted, and before our very eyes, the ferocious wind picked the 350-pound hull of the Capri (plus weight of the rigging) right off the lift and slammed the boat down on its side on top of the adjacent dock.
I was too stunned to move. I’d owned and sailed the boat for exactly one day, and now in one fickle blast of air, my sailboat had followed its two predecessors to the graveyard of shipwrecks. I felt an impulse to dash outside to the mortally wounded vessel lying unnaturally on its side. In equal part, however, the lightning scared me away. No matter what the pain and distress my good boat was feeling, I knew that the stupidest thing I could do in the moment was to be anywhere close to a 20-foot-tall aluminum mast. In the moment I remembered the tragic story of a cabin owner near the Interlochen campus who’d met his end when he was moving his catamaran around in his yard and the mast, acting as a “boat-mounted electrocution pole” struck an overhead electrical wire. In the circumstances at hand, all I could do was stay put on the porch and watch the storm lash itself out.
In a miraculous instant, however, the wind reversed direction. Like some kind of intentional spirit, it shrieked around the back of the cabin, rushed toward the lake and in front of our disbelieving faces, picked the boat right up and placed it entirely upright back on the lift. After the storm passed, I rushed to the scene of the death . . . and resurrection of the Capri. A close inspection of the hull under the rays of a flashlight revealed nothing more than two or three minor scratches. Also, as the boat had been dropped back onto the lift, the starboard stay had caught on the hand crank of the platform. I easily freed the cable from the crank and saw no damage to any of the cable strands.[1]
Not having to file an insurance claim, I felt as if the Capri had earned a special place in the record of our family’s association with Grindstone Lake. Whenever a breeze stirred, I’d break away with the good ship to “sail the ocean blue.”
The rest of the family didn’t have the same affinity for sailing that I did. The boys were drawn to a plethora of other activities both on and off the water, and in breezes that were the most fun, Beth wasn’t enamored of getting splashed as a forward sitting crew member. In time, even the theoretical chance of getting wet discouraged her from sailing. On the other hand, when the wind was so tame the boat barely moved, it wasn’t “exciting enough.”
As a result of these family considerations, we decided to be on the lookout for a small boat “with a motor” (that we could claim as our own, not relying on the Alumacraft hanging upside down in its cradle way down at Björnholm). (Cont.)
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1] Twenty-eight years later, however, I happened to be sitting on the dock looking straight at the sailboat while it was at its mooring—sails still fully hoisted. A breeze was up and the waves tugged and pulled the boat. During this pounding, suddenly the starboard stay snapped and the mast collapsed. Grateful that it hadn’t happened way out on the lake, I was nevertheless unnerved and dumbfounded by the catastrophic break of the cable. The Capri was out of service for quite some time, since the replacement parts were surprisingly difficult to procure.
