Miracle rescue after storm tosses sailor overboard during 101st Bayview Mackinac Race
Day 1: High winds tear up sailboats on Lake Huron
A sudden storm carrying strong winds pounded Trident, a Santa Cruz 70, just hours after the 101st Port Huron to Mackinac race started on Saturday — washing overboard a veteran sailor lost from sight for nearly an hour.
Gusts pushed the 70-foot boat onto its side, causing the crew to tumble.
“Our deck was at 90 degrees to the water,” Skipper Kent Colpaert of Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., said during an exclusive interview with Shifting Gears at 8:45 p.m. on Saturday.
Crashing waves swept Pete Pryce of New Hudson, Mich., into Lake Huron. His crewmates worked to get emergency flotation devices into the cold water. They threw everything and anything with hope it would help.
Crew member Glenn Burton of Grosse Pointe, Mich., pointed to Pryce at all times, as safety training instructs. But then the crew lost sight of Pryce. Trident radioed for help. Competitors responded that they would suspend competition and try to locate the sailor before hypothermia set in.
Meanwhile, a crew of 13 on Trident struggled with high velocity wind, trying to get control of the boat and turn around to look for Pryce.
“We thought Pete was dead,” said a visibly shaken Colpaert, past commodore of the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit.
After what felt like an eternity, Trident received an alert that Amante II, a Farr 49 owned by Philip Velez of Saginaw, Mich., pulled Pryce aboard.
The rescue crew determined that a transfer would be too difficult and instead Pryce remained on Amante II to finish the 259 nautical mile race to Mackinac Island.
Sailors on Amante II provided dry clothes and care, said Colpaert, standing on the dock next to his boat, tied up in the Black River across from the Port Huron Yacht Club.
Both Trident and Amante 2 are registered for the Chicago Mackinac Race on July 19. This will be the first Chicago race for Trident after it completes a series of equipment repairs caused by the storm. The two boats aren’t direct competitors.
Wind, waves complicate rescue
Colpaert described in detail how things went down during the Bayview Mackinac Race on Trident on Saturday:
“We had a great start ... Actually, we saw 19.2 in boat speed. So we were really enjoying the race at that point. Then we saw some adverse weather coming up behind us. We saw other boats taking their spinnakers (sails) down behind us … The velocity of the storm came in quicker than we anticipated.
“One of our crew members, who was already on the low side, fell further to the low side. When it gets that way, the low side washes with water and it washed him off the deck. I was in the back … I didn’t see him leave the boat. One of the crew members yelled, ‘Man overboard!’
“I knew we had to deploy the man overboard equipment we had, so I climbed to the higher side. I pulled the man overboard beacon — MOB equipment — and it fell inside of the boat because of the angle we were on … All that equipment was down in the cockpit on the low side. I went back to the low side, got the equipment.
“We called on VHF immediately after deploying the MOB equipment and we pushed the DSC (Digital Selective Calling distress signal) button on our handheld VHF radio, sending an emergency call to boats in the vicinity. All within seconds of Pete going in the water.”
“When we’re on our side like that, there’s no more driving. The rudder is out of the water, so the boat is not being steered anymore. The crew is trying to douse our spinnaker and get our jib (the sail at the front of the boat) under control and doing the things they’re supposed to do.”
“There’s an inflated horseshoe ring that inflates so that when we pull the pin on it, it drops out of that white box … When it deployed off the back of the boat, I saw the beacon flash. I look out the back of the boat. I couldn’t see Pete.”
“The bottom of the box opens and it deploys like a sandbag with wings that want to fall out … It’s self inflating, so it has a Co2 canister inside of it. There’s three parts to it. We deployed it off the back of the vessel … I looked to see if it was working … We were blown so far away from Pete that we could no longer see him.”
“A squall front came through. We heard thunder. We got rained on. But the wind velocity, I don’t even know what it was at the time. It was pretty great for us to be pinned over. The waves started to build. As we got further away, you lose visual sight of your man overboard in the waves. It’s so loud you’ve got to scream to hear the next person.”
It was midday, just after the race started, and no one had their life jackets on yet.
“We had to concentrate on getting our boat under control which meant getting the sails down so we could go back to help him … We’re now so far away from Pete we can’t find him … I think about four vessels responded to the man overboard call and started a search pattern. They stopped racing.”
“It was over an hour before we could get back to that location … But everyone, to credit the crew, kept calm and cool and collected. We did our jobs. Got back to the search area, started our own search pattern and got notification from one of the other vessels that they found debris, picked up the debris but they did not find Pete. He’s been in the water for an hour. Then we get word …”
‘Debris field’ prevented a potential fatality
“Avante notified me via radio he was safe, he was on board, they’ve given him warm clothes and … he was in good spirits.”
“We got a call later from Pete … He says when he fell off the boat, he looked up and he found our man overboard stuff. He called it a ‘debris field’ because you throw everything you can off the back of the boat … Pete says he found all the stuff we dropped for him, got into it and he looked up and he says, ‘You guys were in more trouble than I was.’
“It’ll take us 24 hours to motor sail up there (to Mackinac Island). We’re leaving at zero-dark-thirty (Sunday) and meeting Pete. We’re going to buy Pete a beer.”
Also damaged: MC2, Tenacity, CNC Legacy
Trident wasn’t the only boat to return to Port Huron with storm damage on Saturday:
Talisman, a Botin/Carkeek 58 owned by Bruce and Linda Aikens of West Bloomfield, Mich., damaged equipment in the storm and returned to Desmond Marine on the Black River in Port Huron.
Incredibly, Talisman stopped to aid a sailor on a catamaran miles from shore that had flipped over — tossing a crewmate into Lake Huron north of Lexington. The man overboard spent an estimated two hours in the water, said Talisman skipper Bruce Aikens. Talisman contacted the U.S. Coast Guard, which sent a helicopter that spotted the man. Coast Guard officials told Talisman that the man was hypothermic, and likely would not have survived another 30 minutes.
“We feel so blessed. Two people are alive,” Aikins, who is based at Bayview Yacht Club, told Shifting Gears. He’s planning to race Chicago to Mackinac.
MC2, a 50-foot Reichel/Pugh, began having trouble about 2:45 p.m. when the storm hit. The wind blew at 11 to 14 knots and the boat was flying through waves on the Shore Course, which is 204 nautical miles.
“Then we lost steering … If the rudder falls out, the boat sinks. You can’t stop that water from getting into the boat,” said Joel Santerre of Northfield, Minn.
Skipper Dan Lewis of St. Paul, Minn., said, “We were fortunate not to lose anyone overboard. We saw the storm coming and we were racing ... and the storm engulfed us.”
They returned to Desmond Marina, too. MC2 plans to fix the boat, motor to Mackinac Island and compete in the Chicago Mackinac Race on July 19.
Tenacity, a Tartan 10, lost its mast. The 33-foot boat is co-owned by Dan Klaasen of Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich., and Larry Petersen of Grosse Pointe Park. Members of the Port Huron Yacht Club assisted the seven-person crew on Tenacity when they returned to the Black River. The boat is based at Bayview Yacht Club.
CNC Legacy, a C&C 41, damaged equipment. The 41-foot sailboat owned by Scott Jones of Port Huron and Matthew Jones of Washington, Mich., is based at Port Huron Yacht Club. Michelle Kinney, a crew member, posted a picture of a rainbow on Facebook at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday that said: Had to drop out of the race. Both spins are ripped and we have main cars that broke. Back to PH we go. At least Mother Nature gave us something pretty to look at.”
Michelle Kinney posted news of CNC Legacy pulling out of the race.
Paul Falcone, commodore of the Bayview Yacht Club, couldn’t be reached by phone or text for comment. An official total of boats that have withdrawn from the annual race competition wasn’t yet available. Nearly 200 were registered.
The long distance race event culminates with an awards ceremony on Tuesday, July 15, at Mission Point Resort on Mackinac Island.
Phoebe Wall Howard covered sailing for The Detroit Free Press for seven years, until 2024. Find her recent sailing stories here.
Editor’s note: She is a member of the Port Huron Yacht Club and her husband, a past commodore, is racing in the 101st Mackinac.
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Holy smokes, Ms Howard!
That’s one baddd asss story no one could make up.
Thanks for the real life drama story of the great crews and responding sailors .
PEACE
Gregg
Terrific article, Phoebe. I can feel the wind lashing. I’ve never sailed the Mack but I have had some frightening experiences on the Atlantic off the New England coast. I am so glad no sailors were lost. I was driving home right before that storm hit Port Huron and all I could think about were all the sailors on Huron at that moment. Thank you!