"gudmundur" wrote
My little boat is only a 15ft 4Winns open bow Catalina (Like the
current Horizon models). I would like to do some 'near shore' diving
on Lake Erie, no more than perhaps 1 mile off shore. Is this boat
just to damn small? Off course I am sensible enough to only go out
on a calm day.

I am thinking back all those years ago when I was only about 12,
and my family had a 22ft Trojan cabin cruiser at Conneaut Harbour,
and I felt that even the 22 footer was 'challenged' once off shore
a distance. I think I have seen bigger waves on Erie in a storm, than
I have at Virginia Beach.


I grew up boating and sailing in Erie, PA, and I was in the North Atlantic
above 60 degrees in winter storms before I ever felt waves worse than Lake
Erie's. Erie's waves are so steep, that they can swamp or capsize almost any
small boat. More than a few times a year, boaters vacationing from
Pittsburgh bring their neat bass boats and other calm water fishing rigs up
to Walnut Creek (West of Erie), and die there. They fail to realize that
even if the rapidly changing conditions on Lake Erie don't take advantage of
their poor judgment, even the river and creek inlets just yards offshore can
become just as deadly in as little as an hours time. Diving alone from a
small boat is suicide anywhere, but just because there are no sharks G
doesn't make it a safe place to work alone. Many summer days Lake Erie can
be flat calm at 6am, uncomfortably choppy at 10am, have a line squall make
frightening wave heights from 1-2pm, and be nearly calm again by sunset.
Wave heights at the Mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia Beach by
comparison, rarely exceed 10' even in hurricanes, but it also rarely calms
from the sloppiest disturbed tidal current/wind patterns I have ever seen.
It just doesn't freeze-over here :-)

Jack
Virginia Beach