[Capt Keller]

It was around midnight that I was rudely awakened by shouting in the dunnage room, and suddenly the the Bosun came barging into our room, and turning the lights on yelled:

"Get your asses out of bed! And Hurry up about it! The cook's stove broke lose from the bulkhead, and we've got to tie it down!"

With the bosun you never argued, you just did what he said. And if he meant hurry, he said hurry.

"I'll grab some cable and shackles," I volunteered.

"Great! The rest of you follow me. We'll need plenty of block and tackle for this job. Now shake a leg!"

It wasn't easy getting dressed the way the ship was pounding, shaking, and trembling as she went full tilt into every **** wave that Lake Michigan sent her way. But we managed, and 15 minutes later were at the after end of the tunnel when we heard a horrendous BANG! True, the ship was twisting, and rolling as well as pounding in the sea, but I didn't think it was all that bad myself. But not knowing what made that banging sound stood me straight up, and raised tha hackles on the back of my neck.

30 seconds later we found out what was making that noise. It was the cook's stove. An old fasion two ton iron, and steel propane stove, and oven conbination, that some how, nobody had ever thought to weld, or screw into the galley decking. It had just been pegged into four holes by its four legs, and had popped out of those four holes in the storm to dance all over the galley's deck. Slaming into bulkheads, cabinets, or the big stainless steel sink. It had already ripped the flex piping to the propane tank that was kept on the boat deck, and that tank had at least been shut off for safety sake. But the rolling, and pitching of the deck still made that one hell of a big piece of shrapnel to be run over by.

"Oh great, we've gotta play dodge ball with a Mack Truck," said Donald Parkinen, my room mate.

"I've got an idea," I said, and even the bosun looked my way hopefully, "see the eye bolt in the ceiling in the middle of the galley?"

"Yeah?" The question came from all directions actually.

"Well, if we can bridle the stove like a Christmas present tied with ribbon, I think I can latch a shackle to that eye with a short cable, and shackle the bridle to the other end of the cable for now."

"And just how do we go about doing that?" The bosun inquired.

"Easy," I said, "The next time it slams into the sink me and Donald will climb up on top of it. Then you guys just throw us what we need as we need, and ask for it."

"That's crazy!" Gasped the cook somewhere behind us.

"Not really," Donald said, then looking at me; "Surfs up?"

"Exactly!"

"Just make sure you guys don't leave anything hanging over the sides that is attached to you," the Bosun warned us, then nodded his consent.

And then the world stopped as the stove slammed into the sink once again. Like two surfers climbing up on a surfboard we hopped up onto the top of the ancient stove each with a steel cable that would go around the stove, and me with two heavy shackles on my belt. We got the longitudinal strap around the stove right away, then held on as she took off again slidding across the deck in a different direction. When we were up against the after bulkhead we got the opposing strap around her, and I shackled all four ends together. Just in time because she took a head dive right at the doorway where the rest of the deck gang was. Donald bruised a knuckle when his fist banged into the wall to steady himself.

"Quick!" I yelled. "Hand me a short cable!"

And the bosun gave me the exact one that I needed.

"Now give Donald that tackle," and I pointed to what I wanted on the deck next to him as the stove stayed where it was for a moment.

Thankfully it stayed long enough for us to store the gear in preparation for the next ride. And gave me time to explain what I was going to do next.

"Now this may take some time, but what I plan on doing is snagging that eye in the overhead with this shorter thicker cable already on it. I may have to get off of the stove for a second to do that, so don't anyone panic, and don't anyone come in to try to rescue me only to get plowed by that **** stove! In any case what I'm hoping is that the stove will rest over there," and I pointed to the bulkhead that it had slammed into several times already, "because it is close enough to that eye for me to reach when standing on top of the stove."

"Then what?" Asked the cook.

"Then he'll just hook up the block and tackle, and let the motion of the stove bring it closer and closer to the eye with the shackled cable in it until he can link the shackle in the cables of the stove to the cable hanging from the eye." The bosun explained as we took off again on that steel tobogan.

The plan worked, and nobody else got hurt. The stove was secured by us, and then tied down by the others once it was no longer a dangerous cannon ball. Still, the storm howled outside, and we wondered what else would happen this trip? Surely Christmas dinner was ruined if this continued.

By 0400 Christmas it looked like the storm had blown itself down to just a gale, and the Endors M. Vorhees moved a little less jerkily over the icy cold water of Lake Michigan. In fact the rolling had stopped when the wind went dead out of the south around 0500, so we were hauled out of bed once again to put the stove back in place in the galley so that the chief engineer could weld it in place, and hook the propane back up to it for breakfast.

"Jesus Christ!" Donald gasped after a quick head call. "Have you guys seen what the deck looks like? Take a look!"

As the galley was on the main deck, all we had to do was step outside through the water tight door. And I don't think that it was the subzero temperature that took everybody's breath away either when they looked forward.

It wasn't quite dawn, but there was the lume of predawn to give enough light to see the spectacular ice sculpture that the forward end had become, and was still becoming because of the icy spray from the bow hitting the waves head on. Talk about your Ice Castles, there had to be a foot and a half of ice coating the entire forward end of the ship to the top of the mast, and all the way back to hatch number 8 where it started to taper off a little. And what wasn't covered in ice had hoare frost, and snow on it. The radar antenae was a vast ghostly image of lateral icicles, rotating and at a greatly diminshed speed as if one of those advertizing signs that rotate only fast enough for you to read them in every direction. And I swear that the ship was down by the head now significantly because of all of that additional frozen water weight forward. The hatch crane itself looked like a big blob of molded ice that had become part of the deck once and for all.

"Merry Christmas," said the cook sarcastically, then turned, and went back into the galley to prepare breakfast.

"Yeah, just another day," Donald agreed sighing. Knowing full well that it was our job to get rid of all of that ice, or at least enough of it so that we would be able to unload once we arrived in Chicago, Ill. at the south dock.

As it turned out the ice measured 2 ft. thick up forward, and it took us two days to get rid of enough ice so that the dock cranes could lift our hatches, and unload us. Our hatchcrane was useless in this case even after we deiced it. We never did slow down until the approach to the breakwall, but a two day lay over before we could unload had to have cut into that tonnage bonus of the captain's. And it wasn't until the following year that I learned just how un-watertight ore carriers on the Great Lakes really are. But that's for another story.

Merry Christmas