I'm glad to hear that you were all ok. That is the kind of experience no for which no one wishes. I hope you will be able to recover most of your lost gear.
I had a group from St. Louis out on my boat (a 40 ft steel trawler) Saturday morning diving SS Wisconsin off of Kenosha. That is a few miles south of where this excitement took place. The wind and waves were from the north but there was a current running in the opposite direction. I was annoyed because I had to pull in my trail line. It kept drifting with the current and getting caught under the boat.
On the way out to the dive site in the morning we had only one foot waves, but as the wind increased through the morning hours, so did the size of the waves. By 10:30 o'clock or so there were what I estimated to be two to four foot waves. Even with the rigid, open sided, center-post ladder on Enterprise, some of the divers were having trouble getting back on the boat while wearing doubles. With no sign that the weather was going to do anything but get worse, we cut the day's diving short and returned to Waukegan.