With the Lake Ontario crossing behind me, I drove to check out the launch site for my anticipated Lake Erie crossing in spring 1996. Arriving in the evening, I sat on my car hood and watched the placid waters of the lake. A man who had been eyeing me ambled over and said I should hug the shore if I was going to go out on the lake. He introduced himself as a retired Coast Guardsman, and warned me that the lake turns ugly very quickly because of its shallow depth. He then told me that Lake Erie has killed more people and destroyed more ships than any of the other Great Lakes. I thanked him for his advice and his words stayed with me through the long winter. With the return of spring, I again trained for up to nine hours a day. I ordered a Gore-Tex dry suit and a different kayak with more secondary stability to handle Lake Erie if it did get ugly.

On the evening of June 22, 1996, I launched from Ashtabula, Ohio, with a faint southwesterly breeze. I anticipated a low-pressure system pushing in from the north along with high winds, but behind it would be calm weather. I felt that I would be able to handle the wind-generated waves since I would be paddling directly into them. Eighteen hours and sixty miles later, I would reach the other side of the lake, but not without the loss of one of my nine lives.

Clouds crowded the night sky, leaving a few random pockets of stars. Due to the cloud cover, I lacked a guiding star near the horizon that matched my course near the horizon toward which to point my bow. So I pulled a chemical light stick out of my emergency bag to illuminate my deck compass. Upon reaching the shipping lanes, I counted five ships thathad gone across my projected course, one of which had made a course correction toward Cleveland. This sent shivers down my spine; I was used to seeing freighters maintain a steady course.

A few miles into the shipping lane, my progress was slowed by twenty-mile-per-hour winds which produced two-foot waves. But I continued to slog toward the lake's center, which lay toward the opposite side of this shipping lane. I found I had to keep my deck light on continually because the light stick was not powerful enough to let me see my heading in the new conditions. To the west, I could make out a sixth ship that was heading east, but I was sure it would pass in front of me with a mile to spare. I could tell this ship was much smaller than the Great Lake freighters.

As the ship traveled closer, it changed its course to head directly for me. Its two center lights were lined up with a single red and green light on opposing sides. I paddled faster to clear its path, but the ship kept pointing directly at me. I put down my paddle, untied my VHF radio from the deck shock cord and pointed my bow back into the waves before transmitting a security hail. Again I maneuvered my bow into the oncoming waves as I waited for a reply. None came, and my heart raced. I gave up on calling the ship and, thinking we were ten minutes away from a collision, turned the kayak one hundred and eighty degrees. I paddled and surfed for all I was worth. After a few minutes of paddling, the ship was still bearing down on me, so I pulled free my flare gun and prepared to fire it. While I readied the gun to fire, the ship started to turn south. I was no longer a condemned man. Shaking from the adrenaline that rushed through my body, I returned to my original northerly course. I could see door windows and railings on the side of the seventy-foot-long ship. Its lights illuminated the lake's surface, finally widening between us, and I wondered what the bridge personnel were saying to one another. After this close call, I changed my course away from the lake's center, only five miles away, and paddled toward my destination on the Canadian coast.

After arriving in Port Stanley, Ontario, I talked to a reporter who thought the ship changed its course to investigate the light which they probably perceived as blinking due to the wave crests that blocked the line of sight between us.