The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Surviving the Michipicoten

Episode Date: June 26, 2025

Now retired, Kent Knechtel, a former second engineer aboard the freighter Michipicoten, recounts the day a 13-foot hull crack changed everything. Thanks to calm waters, clear skies, and the swift response of the United States Coast Guard, disaster was narrowly avoided. One year later, Kent reflects with gratitude and quiet resolve on the incident that marked the end of his decades-long career sailing the Great Lakes. This video is brought to you through a partnership with Detroit Public TV's Great Lakes Now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. Kent Nuktel grew up in Port Dover, a fishing community in southern Ontario on the shores of Lake Erie. He was a golf course superintendent who decided to shift careers. He started working aboard freighters and loved the move from the land to the lakes. You're out there. You're like, it's like freedom. And everybody that you work with becomes like a family member. You're all one big family.

It was awesome. I loved it. Kent started his sailing career as a deckhand 20 years ago. His first job was on the Mishap Cotton, a 698-foot freighter that was built to carry iron ore from one side of Lake Superior to the other. It was a narrower boat. It rolled a lot.

You could feel the roll a lot. It pitched a lot. So that was the big thing with it. A lot of guys get seasick like I don't. It doesn't bother me one bit. Kent sailed on a few other ships as he worked his way up the ladder. In 2018 he returned to the Mishapacotton as the ship's second engineer. The Mishapacotton was one of the largest ships on the Great Lakes when it was built in 1952 for the Interlake Steamship Company.

At the time, she was named the Elton Hoit II. The Canadian company Lower Lakes Towing acquired the Hoit in 2003 and renamed it the Misshapakotn after River in Northern Ontario. Her usual route took her along the cliffs of the big lake, navigating the ever-changing waters of Lake Superior. It's a tough lake to work on. Like it could be calm, like not calm, but you know one footers and then you turn around and you got 10 footers. It turns on you in a heartbeat. June 8, 2024 was an unusually quiet day on Lake Superior. Winds were nine to ten knots out of the west, only one foot waves, and the visibility was

good. It was the calmest day I've seen on Lake Superior. I've never seen Lake Superior that flat. In the early morning hours, the Misha Picatin loaded with iron ore was bound from Two Harbors, Minnesota on her way to the Algoma Steel Mill in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. She was about 38 miles southwest of Isle Royale when the crew discovered a problem. Freighters like the Mishapacotton carry ballast water in their holds to keep the boat stable when they're empty. But the Mishapakotn wasn't empty. Kent was on watch when he got a call from the ship's mate. There was water in the ballast of the ship.

I said, well, we got 20,000 ton iron ore on board. There should be no water in this boat. So I brought the ballast screen up on the computer and there's four feet of water in there. I said, that's weird. I said, well, whatever, I'll go down and get the ballast, I'll pump this water out. I looked over at the list meter and I saw we had about a five degree list at that time. That means the boats leaning to one side. So just in that short a time

I didn't even get out of the control room door. The phone rings again and it's the captain. He says we're taking on water. I look at the screen, it's now at seven feet. Within about a half a minute it had gone up that much. When the ship lists with a full cargo, the cargo rolls to one side making even a small five-degree list a potential threat. I hung up, I ran down, I got all the valves opened up, I got the pump going. And I was gone maybe four or five minutes at the most out of the control room.

And when the time I got back up to the control room, I looked at the screen, it was at 11'9", and I said, this isn't good. Water was coming in faster than the Mishapacotton could pump it out. Kent called the bridge and spoke to the captain. I told him, I said, we're not going to keep up with this water, we're going to have to call the May Day. And then I looked again and we were now at 14 and a half feet. And not short of time. At 6.46 a.m. the U.S. Coast Guard received a distress call from the Mishapakotan.

Aboard the ship, the captain instructed the crew to get their survival suits on. That's when Kent encountered a crew member from his hometown who was struggling, and not just with his gear. I kind of feel connected to this guy and I went over and I grabbed him and I said, come on man, I got to get your suit on you. So I got a suit on him and his tears are running down his face. He's panicking. And I said, you get your together or you die today. You got a choice. This type of emergency is uncommon on the Great Lakes, but the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald

proves that tragedies can happen. But the Fitts sank during a powerful November storm. Would the Misshapekotten go down almost half a century later on a calm day in June? Aboard the freighter, nobody knew for certain. The chief engineer on the Misha Picatin had only been on board for three days, so the task of keeping the ship upright rested with Kent, the second engineer. His job? Keeping the engines running so the pumps would keep working.

The ship was listing at 15 degrees when Kent headed back to the engine room to start another auxiliary pump. He stopped briefly to reach out to his wife Janet and his son Nick. I had no cell service at all. I sent her a text. I said, if anything happens, remember I love you and Nick. Then I wrote a note in the control room. I wrote a note.

I just said, tell God I'm sorry. Then I wrote a note in the control room. I wrote a note. It said, tell God I'm sorry. And then the next thing I was up on deck again and I saw the American Coast Guard coming. And then there's another freighter out there. That freighter was the Edwin H. Gott, one of the Great Lakes' thousand footers. She was about 15 miles away from the Mississippi cotton when the distress call went out.

At 842, she arrived on the scene. She was the first vessel to reach the Mississippi cotton. Coastline 8 on the three side, sector more than on two and alpha, Mississippi platoon, platoon for five minutes, sector out. At 913 a.m., the response boat from the Coast Guard station in Bayfield, Wisconsin arrived on the scene, followed by the National Park Service vessel, Peregrine,

and a Jayhawk helicopter from the station in Traverse City, Michigan. Lieutenant Joseph Snyder is with the United States Coast Guard station in Sault Ste. Marine, Michigan, that coordinated the response to the Misha Picatin. So feeling, you know, still very apprehensive because the vessel was still actively taking on water but it looked like they were stabilized and then at about

10 o'clock they updated us and let us know they were still taking on water and were making preparations to abandon ship and that's when everybody's hair really stood on end. And we realized that we might have a really, really substantial incident in our hands. The ballast tanks run along the bottom and sides of the ship and can go up to 25 feet in depth. The water stopped at 19 feet, 8 inches when the pressure

in the tanks matched the pressure of the lake. But according to Kent, if any more water came in and the waves increased, the ship would twist, causing a bulkhead to crack. If that happened, the Mishapakotn could roll over or split apart. Everything should stay right there. As long as the vessel doesn't twist, the bulkheads should stay in place, because it's the pressure in that tank that will blow out them bulkheads. The decision was made to evacuate non-essential crew members. At 10.24 a.m., 11 of the 22 crew members were transferred by ladder to the U.S. Coast Guard response boat.

The Misshapakotn headed slowly to Thunder Bay, Ontario, the closest port that was available to her. She was escorted by both the U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards, which provided some comfort to those crew members still on the ship. Lake Superior is a very cold lake. I've never saw that lake the whole time I've been up there, get above 64 degrees. You're not going to last long in that water even in a survival suit. You got a chance but you also have a chance of dying. The Coast Guard's there they're gonna they're staying right with us. We're fine in that respect if we do go in the water now at least they're there to pick us up.

At 7 p.m. that evening, nearly 12 hours after the first distress call, the Mishapacotton limped into the harbor in Thunder Bay. In the days that followed, divers were able to determine that the Mishapacotton had sustained a 13-foot crack in her hull, likely a stress fracture. The crack was patched and the decision was made to sail the boat to Duluth for further repairs, not tow it. The Misha Picatin will be inbound Duluth, the entrance harbor here going through Duluth

Pairs in approximately 15 minutes. On June 20, the Misha Picatin arrived at the harbor in Duluth and was met with cheers from a crowd that had been following her plight. But Kent Nectel never heard the cheers. He wasn't on board the Misha Picatin. They asked the crew to take it back to Duluth. And I said, not me.

Not after what I went through. I'm not doing it. A lot of guys did, some of the guys left, but there was no way I was doing it. Like, there was no reason for anybody to take that, that they could have told it. And I said, I'm not, I'm not doing that. They couldn't have paid me a million dollars to take it. I said, that ain't happening. They couldn't have paid me a million dollars to take it. I said, that ain't happening. No. Kent says the experience he had aboard the Mishapacotton

has stayed with him. After we got to Thunder Bay, I was mentally, I was stable, I was fine. And then I started having nightmares of the boat rolling over and I'm hanging off the side of it. And then I talked to my I called my son the one night and I was talking to him before I went to bed and That night I had a dream that

He was on the deck and I had to reach down and grab him before he went in the water And that's what I said That's it Kent chose to retire early and he's vowed never to sail the Great Lakes again. He says he often thinks about that June morning when Lake Superior is so calm. What if it hadn't been? Well, we wouldn't be sitting here. Plain and simple. It ended up with a... it had a 13-foot crack under it,

and it would have progressed right across that. It was flipped up boat. According to Transport Canada, the regulatory agency of the Canadian government, the Misshapakotten has not been cleared to resume operations. Her future is uncertain. We haven't been able to confirm with her owner, the Canadian shipping company, Lower Lakes Towing, if she will ever sail again.

For now, she's in a Wisconsin shipyard. And Kent? Well, he's still working on engines, smaller ones now, and back on land. It changed my attitude towards life, I'll tell you that. It gives me more respect for everybody around you. Yeah, it changes you. But in the respects of living my life, I just know I

got a lot more time to play golf.