3 CHEERS.....
SHEPLER'S COMES THROUGH!!!

MACKINAW CITY - The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mackinaw, to be decommissioned Saturday, June 10, after 61 years of service on the Straits, will have a new home as a museum at the old Chief Wawatam dock in Mackinaw City, thanks to ferry line owner Bill Shepler.

Shepler said he plans to sign a letter of understanding today with the Icebreaker Mackinaw Maritime Museum (IMMM), a Cheboygan-based nonprofit group founded in 2004, to berth the icebreaker at the old railroad dock for use as a museum.

He said the Mackinaw will make its final voyage to the Mackinaw City dock on June 21, leaving its historic home port of Cheboygan for a two-hour trip through the Straits to its new berth with up to 500 people aboard, who will be asked for a donation for the privilege of being part of history.

“The Mackinaw saved the war for us,” Shepler said of World War II, when the icebreaker kept the shipping lanes open to move vital iron ore from Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula to steel plants in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

Construction of the ship was authorized 10 days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and when it entered service in 1944 it was the largest, most powerful icebreaker of the time, he said.

Shepler said the ship was “over-designed, overpowered, over-everything and never broke down.”


“It could rip through 3 feet of blue ice at 4 knots. The crew, which worked around the clock, would attach 2-inch thick cables to stuck freighters and pull them out of the ice,” Shepler said.

“In 24 hours we've saved the Mackinaw, but we have tons of work ahead of us,” he said of the IMMM's effort to establish the cutter as a museum, adding that over years the dock will be rebuilt using funds generated by the tours, commercial sales and the historic last trip.

Joe McGuiness, commander of the Mackinaw, said he was “thrilled” with Shepler's offer and couldn't be happier for the museum group, which he said had fought valiantly to keep the ship in Cheboygan.

“They ran every angle, every possibility to do so into the ground,” he said. “In the end the properties weren't appropriate. One was a brownfield site, the other a wetland.”



IMMM President Michelle Hill said the decision for her group was a difficult one that would make many local people unhappy. But she said, McGuiness told her that when faced with difficult choices, his advice was, “Make the decision that's best for the ship.”

She said the group decided to follow McGuiness' advice.

“This was the way to save the Mackinaw,” she said.

A spokesman for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the IMMM had requested a permanent berth on the old state ferry dock at Mackinaw City, but the department could only agree to a 3 to 5 year lease.

“Bless them for coming forward,” McGuiness said of Shepler and Dick Moehl, president of the Great Lakes' Lighthouse Keepers Association based in Mackinaw City, both of whom will become part of the seven-member IMMM board.

“Shepler is a quality outfit and he will bring a lot of new blood and new ideas to the board,” he said.

Shepler said he hoped that the alumni of the ship's crew will become guides to lead tours of the ship, which will offer videos of its icebreaking activities and a retail shop.

Contact Marilyn McFarland, executive director of the Mackinaw Area Visitors Bureau, for more information at (231) 436-5664.