Old Man and the Inland Sea - 2008 Winning Article

by Marlin Bree on 7 Nov 2008 The Old Man and the Inland Sea: The story of Helmer Aakvik’s courage to go out in a rising ice storm to save his young friend and his resourcefulness in surviving against great odds in the November waters of Lake Superior, one of the 'Great Lakes' of the USA, was originally published in The Ensign magazine last year. The gripping article has won the Boating Writers International's 2008 West Marine Writer's Award. We here reprint the story in full with the kind permission of the author.



Lake Superior’s chill waters were an ominous slate gray and the lake was steaming with fog banks 40-feet high as Carl Hammer slipped into his 17-foot wooden fishing skiff and started his outboard engine. It was 7 a.m., November 26, 1958 -- the day before Thanksgiving.

The 26-year old North Shore fisherman figured he’d get to his offshore fishing nets before a storm came up, pick his catch, and get back quickly – just as he’d done hundreds of times before. He’d have to hurry.

At 8:30 a.m., his fishing partner, Helmer Aakvik – also known as the “Old Man”-- peered out the window of his cabin on the bluffs overlooking Superior and made his decision: he would not go out to the nets this morning. The 62-year-old Aakvik settled down to enjoy a second cup of coffee when his cabin door opened with a blast of wind and his neighbor, Elmer Jackson, charged in. “The young fellow is still out on his boat,” Jackson said, worried.

Aakvik looked up, troubled. A storm was coming on – one of the worst kinds – an offshore wind from the north-northwest. His fishing partner, Carl Hammer, was still out on treacherous Superior. He abruptly put down his coffee cup. “Call the Coast Guard,” he said.
As he turned to leave, Jackson looked at him carefully. “Just don’t you go out,” he warned.

* * *

Grabbing a jacket and pulling his cap down tightly, the Old Man walked down the winding path to the bluff’s edge. There was a steady wind out of the northwest, and, even in the protection of the rocky ridge behind him, the temperature was dropping. This was late November in the North Country and soon there’d be ice and snow.

On a near-vertical rock ledge jutting above the lake, he came to the ramshackle wooden fish house that he and Hammer shared. In the open end of the shed, he could see that Hammer’s boat was gone. Spruce trees swayed ominously below in the onshore breeze.

He ducked back inside the wood shack and checked around. Sure enough, the young fisherman had helped himself to Aakvik’s gas supply. The borrowing was OK – they shared supplies all the time in this close-knit Norwegian community. The problem was that Hammer had a new outboard engine that used a different ratio of oil to gas in the fuel than Aakvik’s. The Old Man had an old Lockport and an elderly Johnson, but Hammer used a newer Johnson, which needed about a half a quart of oil mixed in five gallons of gas. Aakvik’s old two-cycles required twice that amount of oil, and a too heavy oil-gas ratio would gum up his friend’s carburetor and foul his spark plugs – stalling his engine.

He peered into the can, then swirled it around. He could see the drops of water on the surface. His gas was old and had accumulated water condensation. The old man’s normal routine was to filter the water out of the gas so that it didn’t freeze in the lines and kill the engine.
Hammer hadn’t filtered his gas.

* * *

The Old Man hurriedly dressed himself in layers of wool: socks, underwear, pants and shirt. Wool was the key to survival on Superior because it could keep him warm even when it was wet. Over his wool, he put on his heavy rubber fisherman’s suit, adding rubber boots, wool mitts and a sheepskin helmet. He waddled when he walked, but he wore a proven North Shore outfit.

Aakvik never went out on that lake, winter or summer, without a good set of oilskins. Oilies were part of the equipment you needed for survival on Superior, especially late in the season when the famed “Witches of November” came calling.

As he told everyone in his broken English, “they saved your life.”

* * *

A little past 9 a.m., the Old Man stood atop the rock outcropping over the slide. His seventeen-foot-long boat was tied to a wooden slide about 30 feet above the water, located high above the shoreline rocks. Mercifully, the wind was blowing from the northwest, off the land, and not from the water. Today, there would be no problem launching the skiff.

The slide consisted of three trimmed tree trunks, each about eight to ten inches in diameter, and over forty feet long. As he attached a wire cable to his skiff’s bow, the Old Man thought for a moment and reached down and threw a hatchet into his boat. Then he added two more pieces of equipment: an old wooden fish box that weighed almost 50 pounds, and, fifty fathoms of rope.
Ready for his battle, the Old Man lowered his skiff down the boat slide into the dark waters.

As he hefted himself aboard, the little skiff bobbed up and down a little to welcome his familiar weight. The Old Man felt at home. He had built his boat along the lines of a North Atlantic dory, with a raked bow, slab sides, and, a flat transom. But his North Shore skiff was much more heavily constructed. It had a heavy wooden v-shaped chine bottom, strong sawn ribs, a beam of five feet, with freeboard of a little less than two feet.

A really good skiff reminded the Hovland, Minnesota, fishermen of boats from “the old country” – a high compliment. Like the Norwegian small boats operating in icy fjords, a Superior boat had to deal with big water – split the waves when it encountered big water, rather than trying to plow through them, and, have enough flare in the bow to lift the boat up so it didn’t founder.

His skiff was more than 20 years old, and, was well beyond a North Shore fishing boat’s useful years. It was tired: it had punched through countless waves, survived many storms, and had been dragged countless times up the slide with a full hold of fish. It had rot in some of the bottom planks, and, the screws holding the planks to the frames felt a little loose.

But the Old Man had faith. His home-built skiff had taken him out and brought him back every time. It could be relied upon to do it once more.

* * *

The first blasts of the offshore wind hit him once he left the protection of the shore, and, even in his oilskins, the Old Man felt its bite. There was no protection in the open boat and the wind was coming up sharply. The temperature was about six degrees above zero, and, it was dropping.
Atop a wave, he saw the first marker buoy flag, and moments later, he could make out a line of bobbing buoys, strung out in a row, the line bending in the wind and the waves. But no sign of Carl Hammer or his skiff. In the mounting waves, Aakvik made his run alongside the line, being careful not to foul his propeller on the nets.

At the end marker buoy, Aakvik scanned the horizon. Out here, the big lake was alive. Away from shore, the waves continued to build, and, his small boat bobbed up and down. He held his cupped hand to his eyes, to give him better vision. Still no sign of Hammer or his skiff.

One thing was certain: Hammer had not tied his boat to one of the marker buoys held in place by the heavy rock anchors – standard practice if a fishing boat had engine trouble – to await rescue.

The Old Man pulled his boat alongside a buoy, grabbed it for a moment, and turned off his engine.

And waited.

* * *

Along the bluffs on shore, the watchers with binoculars scanned the broken seas. The heavy rollers of Superior were high and mean now, with waves rearing into the lake’s notorious “square rollers.” Visibility was poor, but the wind was coming up and blowing the fog around in patches. Someone shouted that he had seen someone moving alongsid