Man the Sails!

When I lived in Michigan, I bought a 27 ft Hunter sailboat on eBay. It was in Chicago and I had to have it moved to the Upper Peninsular of Michigan. I worked out an arrangement with a marina to store it in Oconto, MI, which was about 60 miles south of Escanaba where I lived. The boat had to be taken out of the water in October each year because that part of Lake Michigan froze over during the winter. So at the beginning of the summer, I went to Oconto to get the boat and sail it back to Escanaba. I had planned on sailing the boat about 30 miles the first day and finish the trip the next day. The boat had a small diesel auxiliary engine and I motored down the river from the marina out into the bay near Oconto. I was headed straight into the wind, so I had to motor instead of sailing. After a few miles out into the lake, the engine quit running. I raised the sails and sailed off in the direction I didn't want to go. I didn't have the option of returning to the marina under sail. The river was too narrow and shallow to tack. I sailed in that direction for about 6 miles until I reached a point where I could tack and sail past a light house that was jutting out into the lake. With all the tacking I had to do, I was making very little progress. I continued to tack back and forth in the direction I wanted to go. It was getting darker and I decided I needed to find some kind of sheltered water to anchor overnight. By now it was dark and I had not found a suitable place to anchor. Then all of a sudden a storm came out of no where. I put a rope around the tiller to try to hold it on course while I reefed the mainsail. In the process of doing that, the boat came to a sudden halt and the bow dipped down into the water. The boat twisted around broadside to the wind and it laid over on it's side. I was struggling to get to the sheets without being thrown overboard to cut them loose and let the wind out of the sails. I finally managed to do that and realized I had run aground. With the boat at a 45 degree angle and the wind and rain tearing at the sails, it was a nightmare to keep from getting thrown off the boat while I was trying to secure the sails. After getting the sails and the boom secured, I sat in the cockpit with the rain beating furiously against me. I was too exhausted to think at this point. After a few minutes, I decided to abandon the boat. I had a dinghy that I was towing behind the boat. I pulled the dinghy up to the boat and put the boat's anchor in it. I got in the dinghy and rowed out as far as the anchor line would let me. I dropped the anchor over the side to keep the boat from drifting away if the winds changed direction. I then turned the dinghy in the direction of the shore, which was about a quarter of a mile away, and paddled. The waves almost swamped the dinghy a few times, but I finally made it to shore. I threw the dinghy anchor out and waded the rest of the way to shore. I laid on grass by the water. Exhausted, soaked and relieved that I was alive. I looked out at my sailboat in the distance as it was being tossed and battered by the wind and the waves.