In the last hours of daylight with thunderstorm-driven waves lapping at his boat, the Deep Thought, Richard Wells just wanted to make it to the slip he and his wife had rented for a two-night stay at Milwaukee’s McKinley Marina.
His Garmin navigational tool told him he was “right on top of it,” he said. He could see breakwater rocks. He could see the U.S. Bank building when he looked toward shore.
In unfamiliar waters and having never navigated a boat on a Great Lake, Richard thought it would be best to anchor and wait out the storm.
But the boat ran out of gas and landed along the shore between McKinley Marina and Bradford Beach on Oct. 12, nearly three months ago. It is now lodged in an ever-growing sheet of solid ice.
Wells’ wife, 63-year-old Sherry Wells, had attempted to toss the anchor but was hit by a wave and thrown against the railing, injuring her shoulder.
With his wife cold, wet and injured, and the boat running out of gas, he called the marina to ask for help.
Ice surrounds a stranded boat on the Lake Michigan shore in Milwaukee on Tuesday, The Chris-Craft Roamer named Deep Thought has been stranded by Bradford Beach since Oct. 13.
Richard, 62, maintains the boat was inside the breakwater when he made the call. He needed gas and he needed to know where to refuel and find the slip.
“My issue is being told to leave the breakwater,” Richard said. “They should not have inexperienced people answering calls. I will take responsibility for what happened. I was the captain of the boat. But they did not give me good information.”
In the three months since, Milwaukeeans have warmed up to Deep Thought, renaming the boat and creating a virtual marker on Google Maps under its new, unofficial name, The Minnow, a nod to it meeting the same fate as the boat in the popular 1960s TV show Gilligan’s Island.
The Wells slept on the boat for two nights. They were able to shower and use the bathrooms at the marina, but felt they were treated poorly.
“They basically did everything they could to ignore us,” Richard said.
Daniel Steininger, president of the Daniel W. Hoan Foundation and a former board chair of the Port Milwaukee, was driving along Lake Drive when he said he saw the boat the morning of Monday, Oct. 14. He parked and walked down to the shoreline, where he found Richard and Sherry sitting on the rocks.
There, he learned of the couple’s larger plan to take the boat home to Big Creek, Mississippi, a town of about 125 people located near Grenada Lake, by piloting it from Manitowoc, down Lake Michigan to the Chicago River and to the Mississippi River. A two-night stay in Milwaukee was built into the plan.
Sherry said her favorite beer is Old Milwaukee. She wanted to tour Milwaukee breweries and try others.
After talking with the couple, Steininger said, he reached out to some local attorneys to ask if the couple could file a lawsuit against the county. He learned a $50,000 cap on cases against government agencies essentially makes such cases financially unattractive to attorneys, he said.
“These are decent, nice people who made the mistake of going out on Lake Michigan in a storm,” Steininger said. “I think like most people in Milwaukee, I saw people who were hurting and felt I needed to help them.”
Milwaukee County and U.S. Coast Guard respond to incident
Jeff Orlowski, the Milwaukee County Parks’ director of recreation and business services, said he has been repeatedly reassured by his staff that they did everything they could to help guide the Wells into the marina.
Orlowski said it is his understanding that the boat did not have working navigation equipment — Richard says it did — and that the boat was south of the marina when Richard first called for assistance, not in the breakwater.
“From what I have been told, it sounds like they were south of the marina and missed the Government Pier landmark,” Orlowski said. “Our staff did the best they could over the phone to get the boat to safe harbor.”
Orlowski said the abandoned boat, at this point, “is not a county issue.” He said it is a U.S. Coast Guard issue.
“We just want to see some resolution,” he said. “We tried to help them the best we could.”
Lt. j.g. Santiago Tamburini, the public affairs officer for Sector Lake Michigan U.S. Coast Guard, said the agency first learned the boat was beached on the Lake Michigan shore between McKinley Marina and Bradford Beach on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 13, when it was noted in the pollution report.
The agency was concerned about the possibility the boat could or already had leaked gas or other fluids.
Tamburini said the agency now is concerned to read in a local news story (that has since been updated and changed) and on a GoFundMe page that the Coast Guard is charging the couple around $400 for each day their boat is abandoned on the shore. He said that is simply not true and hopes the couple is not incorrectly being told they could be charged by someone else.
The GoFundMe, Rescue the Stranded SS Minnow, is no longer active.
“We are not charging anyone any fees right now. We do not have jurisdiction over this boat. It is strictly between the salvage company and the owner at this time,” Tamburini said. “At this point, we are monitoring to make sure when the salvage is done it is done safely. That is why we check in on salvage company and the owners.”
Monitoring the situation has become increasingly challenging, Tamburini said, because the Wells are no longer answering his phone calls or returning his calls.
“It has gone radio silent,” he said.
Salvage company remains committed, expects nothing in return
The same is true for Jerry Guyer, who owns a number of local maritime businesses including Silo Marina, a salvage company. Guyer and his crew made their last attempt to salvage the boat on Dec. 30. Guyer told the Journal Sentinel that, given the weather, the boat is likely to remain where it is until spring.
Guyer told the Journal Sentinel on Wednesday that the Wells had contacted him the week they ran ashore. He said he only spoke with Sherry, never Richard, about three times. He estimated it has been about a month since they have answered his calls.
He removed their belongings from the boat, dried them out and is storing them. He said he would like to be able to return their possessions to them.
“They have no reason for to fear me. I have no plans to go after them legally,” Guyer said, despite having spent $18,000 on salvage efforts. “I think this situation is just overwhelming them.”
Guyer said regardless if he ever hears from the Wells again, he will continue to try to salvage their boat. He is motivated by professional pride, he said, and this week was working with another man on building a suction pump he thinks he could use to dredge out sand from behind the boat in the spring.
“It would be a two-step operation − dredge out the sand, then pull the boat out,” Guyer said.
Back in Mississippi, the Wells are struggling to rebound from the loss of the boat and their dream to live on it.
There is no insurance money coming in, either. The boat had last been surveyed by an insurance company over a year ago, making that survey too outdated for the Wells’ agent in Mississippi. Richard said the plan was to bring the boat home and then insure it.
“We love the water. Living on a boat is still our dream,” Sherry said. “One way or another, we will survive this.”
Jessica Van Egeren is a reporter and assistant breaking news editor for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at jvanegeren@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: stranded boat Lake Michigan Milwaukee Deep Thought