Description

Signed by the author Richard Hill

Reader Views 2009 Reviewers Choice Award Winner

A deckhand’s coming-of-age story of sailing the Great Lakes steamboats during the social and political turbulence of the early 1970s, Lake Effect is a vivid and memorable account, told in an entertaining narrative style, of life aboard the giant ore boats.

Come along for the journey- Stand watch in the rivers-whoop it up at the bars in port-sail through formidable November storms-Chop ice off the hatches in a January blizzard-Meet the crew’s colorful characters- Savor the light-hearted sea stories of a deckhand’s life

            In the early 1970s Rich Hill sailed on four different US Steel freighters as a deckhand and deckwatch. Then years later, he enrolled in the Great Lakes Maritime Academy as a deck cadet and sailed on the 1000-foot Columbia Star. This humorous yet poignant memoir follows this voyage of self-discovery.