First Published in Latitudes and Attitudes, August 2004

It was 1984. I was nineteen and home on leave from the Navy. The highlight of my vacation was helping my liveaboard sister sail the 45-foot center cockpit ketch, Emerald Sea. We were going from Charlevoix in Lake Michigan to Mackinac Island, which is just to the Lake Huron side of the Mackinac Bridge, a long day passage.

We left Charlevoix at the first raising of the drawbridge, 6:00 am. It was a calm and quiet morning and the big lake was a little misty, but the weather was predicted to clear by midday. My sister and I enjoyed our coffee in the morning peace of beginning a passage. But the peace only lasted until my sister’s children, my two darling nieces, roused themselves from their bunks.

Shanta was six. Bright eyed and busy, she liked to talk, laugh, talk, eat, talk and sleep. Angie was 11. She had lived most of her summers on the Emerald Sea, but on this day she was less than inspired by life at sea. She was getting too cool to be in such constant confinement with adults and “the infant”, her less than endearing term for her younger sister. She thought Charlevoix was “rad”, and Mackinaw Island was “fab”, but the passage in between was “totally bogus”. She stayed funked in her pillow with her music and a teen girl magazine.

The weather began to draw from her mood. What little breeze we had began to fall off completely. We started the diesel and it rumbled with a deep echo in the heavy air. The mist thickened, and within an hour visibility fell to a hundred yards. The morning fog had retaken the lake’s eastern shore.

We discussed turning back. Gloria, my sister, used the radio to get some information. We learned that Charlevoix was also buried in fog, but the Straits of Mackinac were clear. We decided to keep going. We were off Sturgeon Bay, 10 miles or south of Gray’s Reef. Once we got around the Waugoshance Lighthouse, referred to simply as “abandoned lighthouse” on our chart, we could turn east for clearer air.

The Waugoshance Light is about as ominous and gloomy a structure as can be seen on the Great Lakes. Built up on a treacherous shoal in 1851, it was abandoned in 1912 and even used for target practice in WWII. Its base is manmade decaying rock, and a rusted steel quarters building looms up from it like a black knight’s keep. The yellow brick tower is surmounted by a dome bird cage of rusted steel. It’s a spectral oddity in the light of a clear summer day. In fog thick as butter, it was like something from a horror movie.

But on this passage it was something we truly hoped to find and see. The old light marked the east side of the channel through Gray’s Reef, a busy shipping passage. We wanted to stay on the inside edge of that channel in such fog, but if we went too far in and cut the light, the shoals would drop to three feet. We kept a serious eye on our course and position and cut the motor at regular intervals to listen for the lugging engines or mournful horns of Great Lakes freighters.

It was during one of those quiet drifts that we got our visitor. Gloria was below. Angie was moodily munching a doughnut, and Shanta was busy tangling her harness line with every bit of cordage in the cockpit. Given the chance, Shanta could tangle telephone poles. Angie was the first to shout when the bat flew under the open dodger. The girls left the cockpit as a screaming blur. Shanta didn’t really know she was supposed to be afraid of bats, but she emulated her sister perfectly, flapping her arms and hauling her tangle down the ladder as she screamed. The little bat fluttered a bit and then lit at the back of the dodger. I lost sight of exactly where as I was bent over with my hands over my head.

Gloria stuck her head out the companion way. “Angie’s screaming bat,” she said.

“It’s somewhere near where the mizzen comes through the dodger,” I said, warily eyeing the folds of canvas near the mizzen.

Gloria took a step back down the ladder. “I’ll see if I can calm Angie down. See if you can get rid of that bat.”

I turned to give my big sis a look, but she was already gone from view. Oh well, I was the teenage warrior home on leave, I should be the one to deal with unauthorized boarders. I slowly moved to the back of the dodger and looked carefully about the mizzenmast. The bat was nestled just under the cleat for the mizzen halyard. He was actually quite a tiny bat. I slowly undid the snaps that secured the dodger canvas around the mast, hoping the bat would jump at the chance to be off, but he just shivered and wrapped his leathery wings tighter around his head.

I had to wonder what he would be doing flying about so far from shore at 10:00 am. He seemed to be breathing pretty hard. He had to be in desperate need to board a ship on the open water. Perhaps he had followed a juicy swarm of mosquitoes too far out during the night and had gotten lost on his return. I considered just letting him rest for a while, but had my doubts whether Captain Gloria would share the bridge with a stowaway.

I undid a bit more material of the dodger and rolled up a chart sheet to try to nudge him on his way. At the first touch he unveiled his fury face and gnashed his tiny white teeth at me. Then he promptly turned his back and buried himself deep in the folds of his wings. I pushed a little harder and continued to push, impressed by his ability to hold on.

Finally he broke his grip and fluttered out the opening. He circled once over the dodger and then staggered through the air towards the bow, landing on the roller furling drum. He gave up the dodger, but not the boat, and I heard him squeak defiantly at me as he crawled inside the drum. But I would have the last laugh, I thought as I readied the actuator line. All I had to do was roll the genny in and out a couple times and he’d be squeaking a different tune. Of course, then where would he land? What pandemonium would erupt if he got in the cabin? I decided to let the bat be and called an all clear to everyone below.

Over the next hour we pretty much forgot about the bat. The freighter channel was narrow at Gray’s Reef, and our preferred plot was to stay just out of it, going between the channel cans and the old light. We kept careful attention to our Loran and chart depths, cursed that the boat didn’t have its radar yet, and stared into the fog, listening for horns and bells, ringing our own. But there’s no need to over dramatize the way point. We were pretty sure of our position, we’d made the passage many times over many years, and our Loran had always proved pretty accurate. Still, anybody who ever cruised by Loran in heavy fog knows “pretty sure” doesn’t give the same warm fuzzy as actually seeing the waypoint. Angie summed it up pretty well when she stated. “This fog is bogus.”

We approached the point where every indicator said we should be seeing the old stone monstrosity. We bore our eyes into the fog till they ached. Ahead starboard, then abeam, the fog fooled us as it thickened then wisped, but there was nothing there.

Suddenly Gloria jumped and pointed towards the bow.

“Where? Where?” I asked, looking for the towering shadow we sought. Then I saw what grabbed her attention. It was our bat, our visitor. He was flutter flying around the bow rail. Then he squeaked and darted away from the boat, forward and starboard about 10 degrees. We followed him with our eyes. “Take her in 5 degrees,” Gloria said. I nodded and turned the wheel a bit to starboard, staring down the flight path of our guest. The mist darkened and slowly solidified, and then the shadows finally formed into the outlines of our ominous waypoint. The fog billowed a bit as we closed on it, and for a moment it showed itself distinctly just as we were abeam, maybe sixty yards east. The fog quickly flowed back over it, and before it was behind us it was lost from view again.

But that glimpse was enough to leave no doubt. We could make our turn with total confidence of our position, thanks largely to the sophisticate echolocation equipment of our visitor.

By: R. Brintnall