Want to see Michigan's underwater crucifix?

PETOSKEY – The clear, cold depths of Lake Michigan are the final resting place for hundreds of shipwrecks — but probably only one giant Italian marble cross.

The 11-foot cross with a 5-foot, 5-inch figure of Jesus, sunk decades ago as a memorial to divers who perished, lies in 22 feet of water about 800 feet from shore in Little Traverse Bay.

On Saturday, landlubbers will have a seven-hour window to walk across the bay and view the cross through a portal cut in the 4-foot-thick layer of ice. As many as 1,150 people have turned out for the event in previous years.

"It's constant bodies walking back and forth across the ice, it's an army of people," said Denny Jessick, who organizes the event with Rick Hoig. Both are longtime divers and Emmet County Sheriff's officers. "We have always had a goal of hitting 2,000."

Like many objects that lie at the bottom of vast bodies of water, the cross in Little Traverse Bay has a back story. Jessick has spent years tracking down pieces of it.

The cross was originally commissioned by a family in the Thumb community of Rapson to memorialize a 15-year-old son, Gerald Schipinski, who died in an accident in 1956. The cross was damaged during shipping across the Atlantic, and the family refused delivery of it.

Members of a diving club from Wyandotte, downriver from Detroit, bought the cross at an insurance sale and placed it 1,200 feet off shore near the U.S. Icebreaker Sundew in August 1962. Its intent: honor Charles Raymond, a Southgate diver who drowned in Torch Lake. Later, the club expanded the focus of the monument to memorialize all who have died in the water.

When the cross was set on the lake bottom in 1962, the right arm of the figure was fractured and disappeared. It turned up decades later on the desk of a Detroit-area photographer and has been reattached.

But the water took an additional toll on the crucifix, and in the early 1980s, the Michigan Skindiving Council tried to salvage it. It was repaired and placed in its current spot. It doesn't stand upright, but lies parallel to the floor of the bay.

The first winter viewing was held in 1986.

Jessick said viewers' experiences with the crucifix are individual.

"It's a very personal event for every single person that looks down through the viewing ports," he said. "We're not putting any kind of religious aspect to it. It's open to everybody. It's a unique winter event for everyone to share."

Viewing information

•A tent with a viewing port to the underwater cross will be set up from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, weather permitting, on the ice off of Bayfront Park in Petoskey.

•Cloudy water or unsafe weather conditions above the ice can cause the event to be cancelled with little notice; look for a tent on the ice.

•Learn more about the cruficix in this Youtube video: http://bit.ly/UnderCru