“Thar she rows!”

Photo by Pam Houtteman

From staff reports

On Saturday, Aug. 27, at 7:20 a.m., a whaleboat—the likes of which hunted the world’s largest mammals in the mid-1800s in the North Atlantic Ocean—left the public dock in Glen Arbor as its crew rowed, then sailed across the Manitou Passage. The crew on board included boat owner Shane Brosier, Dan Hartman, Cliff Reppart, Cliff’s 15-year-old son Tim Reppart, David Rose, and Jonathan Rose. Their goal was not to catch a whale but to reach North Manitou Island.

Leelanau local Pam Houtteman spotted the crew at the dock and took photos. She took down Brosier’s phone number in order to send him the images, but when she asked for his name, he offered the line from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, “Call me Ishmael.”

Brosier, a Mesick resident who works at Munson Medical Center, has read the abridged version of the classic seafaring novel to his five children, ages 7 to 15. He explained that this longboat, a 29 foot, 9-inch long by 6-inch wide beauty named “Faithful-1” was the culmination of a 10-year project. He and friends began building her in August 2020, during the first year of the pandemic, and took their first trip a year later, from Empire nearly to Platte Point. The crew has sailed her nearly every week on Long Lake, west of Traverse City, but this voyage to North Manitou was only her second time on the “big lake.”

These whaleboats, made popular in literature by Moby-Dick, were launched from whaling ships in the 19th century before the harpoon gun existed. When the men saw a spout coming out of the water, they’d row or sail toward the whale, with the man at the bow holding the harpoon. The six-foot-long spear was connected to 900 feet of line. Once impaled, the whale had three choices: it could jump the boat, it could run, or it could dive. All three of those possibilities could prove fatal for the men in the longboat.

Brosier’s crew found favorable conditions on their approximately 10-mile trip to North Manitou. After rowing into open water with their 16-foot oars, they hoisted their green, square-rig sail and took advantage of southerly winds. Their trip took approximately four hours.

The next morning, they left before sunrise in order to find calmer waters, using cell phone towers on the mainland as a beacon. Once they passed Dimmick’s Point they encountered big waves, including swells between two and four feet, which Faithful-1 handled well. “We took on spray, but very little water came in the boat,” said Brosier. “This kind of craft that was born on the North Atlantic handled Lake Michigan really well.” The crew hid briefly behind the North Manitou Shoal “crib” in order to have a snack, rowed south to Pyramid Point, then sailed east to Leland. The 17-mile journey took them nine hours.

They saw no whales along the way. Brosier joked that this time of year the large mammals hang out closer to Green Bay, Wisconsin.