Rescue Diver, Goat Wrangler, Minister—The Many Jobs of an Indispensable Captain

Whiskey Island — What’s an enjoyer? Or rather, more properly put: Who is a Michigan enjoyer? Someone who lives here and loves Michigan as she is. Indeed, there are millions of enjoyers, and you, dear reader, are most likely one yourself.

But there might be other more symbolic, more representative, more archetypal, or more crucial definitions of what it means to be an enjoyer. There are people who embody a place, a county, a town, a lake, a little corner, an ethos, an attitude, and a side or spirit of Michigan so acutely and profoundly that they become archetypes.

I first met Captain Mike Weede last summer. I needed to charter a boat from St. James on Beaver Island to the east side of currently uninhabited High Island to shoot photos of the train tracks running into the lake and the old rusting debris left over by the House of David religious sect who lived on the island in the early 1900s, and Weede was the only one who would take me.

Weede owns and manages Paradise Bay Dive Shop in St. James, Beaver Island. There are guys who run fishing charters from Beaver, but he’s the only one who runs exploration charters to the outer islands. If you want to get to Garden Island, High Island, Gull Island, Ojibwa Island, or Whiskey Island, there’s only one way to get there and it’s on The Resolute with Captain Mike Weede.

Earlier this summer, after having loaded my camera gear on The Resolute, while waiting to leave St. James, a guy on the dock yelled over to Weede who was taking care of some last minute preparations before heading out. Someone apparently dropped their phone in the lake and the guy on the dock was asking Weede if he could get it. Weede, who is in his 70s, went below deck and returned with a wet suit, goggles, and an oxygen tank.

He slipped it on, zipped it up, and hopped in the water. He swam under our boat and down and around the dock for a few minutes before finally discovering the lost phone sandwiched between two tires fashioned to the metal wall of the dock. He handed it to the guy on shore, swam back to our boat, slipped off the gear, and we were off five minutes later.

In addition to running charters to uninhabited islands and locating missing cellphones which have tragically fallen off the docks in St. James, Weede leads diving adventures and snorkeling trips for those who want to see the shocking number of shipwrecks hidden below the the aquamarine water of northern Lake Michigan.

We were coming around the northern point of High Island when Weede told me a story about some teenagers who got stuck out here on a sailboat a few decades back. They were out around High Island and hadn’t returned by the time they should’ve been back. This was before the age of cellphones so one of the fathers called Weede up and asked him if he could go find them and help them out. Turns out, a storm came in and their boat flooded. They had beached it and couldn’t get it sailing again, so they dragged it in the water along the shore to the northern point where he found them stranded. He got them on the boat, tied it to the back of The Resolute, and towed them back to Beaver.

This is something else Weede does: rescues and retrievals. People get stuck out in the lake, they get stranded on the islands, their engines stop running, their boat gets flooded, their arms get tired after kayaking too far with no plan for how they are getting back, and so they call Weede. And he loads up, heads out, and brings them back before dark.

On our way back from Ojibwa Island, Weede told me that when we hit Garden on our next trip out we can hike our way through and around much of the island. Unlike most of the islands, there are mowed trails that are kept-up fairly regularly on Garden. I asked him who mows them. He said he does. He’s got a mower he keeps on Garden in a little shed. I asked him who pays him. He said no one. He does it because no one else does.

A few years ago, there was a lady who owned a few goats on Beaver Island. I’m not sure exactly why, but she couldn’t keep them anymore and wanted to get rid of them. She called Weede.

He hog-tied them, put them in the back of The Resolute, drove out to Owjiba Island, loaded them in the skiff, buzzed up to the shore, landed, untied them, and set them free.

The goats lived for a while in peace and harmony on lovely Ojibwa Island until Weede got a call from the guy who owns Ojibwa. He said the goats were crapping on the porch of the old abandoned lighthouse. So Weede went out, grabbed the goats, tied them up again, loaded them back in the boat, and took them over to Whiskey Island where he set them loose.

He told me he used to buzz by the shore whenever he had a chance and he would see them out there every once in a while though he hasn’t seem them for a couple years. What happened to the goats no one knows. Weede asked the people at the CMU Biological Station in St. James what they thought. They told him they think, “They are living their best life.” Weede thinks coyotes came across on the ice from Garden and had a bit of a goat feast one day. I don’t know anything Weede doesn’t know, but I can say that when we were on Whiskey Island I didn’t see any signs of goat life.

He takes people to islands when no one else will. He rescues people who are stuck. He keeps up the trails on Garden. He retrieves cellphones. He transports hog-tied goats, and he marries people. Yes, Mike Weede is an ordained minister legally permitted to marry couples aboard his boat or on an abandoned island if they so choose. Weede, who happens to be Catholic himself, assures me it’s a serious business getting married and he doesn’t take the job lightly.

I get the chance to go to a lot of great places all around Michigan, and I get the chance to meet a lot of people while I am there. And while I’ve met a lot of great and incredible people in my work documenting the far-flung corners of our state, Mike Weede is probably my favorite.

He’s told me more stories than I could possibly include in this all-too-brief profile while steering The Resolute, grilling hot dogs on the back on the boat, bringing us to shore in the skiff, holding my camera while I load more film, and helping me reach some of the hardest to reach places in Michigan.

Mike Weede is shockingly spry for a man in his 70s—he’s about as energetic as I am—but he is not young. He won’t be around forever. I don’t write that to be morbid; I mean it to be appreciative. He’s told me he has thought of retiring. And who will do the things he does when he retires? Who will keep up the trails on Garden? Who will rescue the kayakers who are too weak? Who will take photographers like me to uninhabited islands? Who will marry people on High Island? And who will tell the hilarious stories about hog-tied goats crapping on the porch of the lighthouse on Ojibwa Island?

In the great metropolis, it’s easy to feel like people are interchangeable or replaceable with seemingly infinite numbers of individuals with fake or irrelevant jobs always coming and going without anyone really noticing anything at all.

On Beaver Island, it’s easy to realize they aren’t.

Out in the middle of northern Lake Michigan, Captain Mike Weede is indispensable, irreplaceable, indefatigable—the best of Northern Michigan.

A true enjoyer.