"Also, because of wind over deck (the speed of the wind over the deck) minimums for some of our advanced planes were higher than some of the prevailing winds on Lake Michigan, training would be halted for days at a time."
Yet, Michigan is a “perfect” place for windmill farms. Right
I would assume that for such a short take off, that the aircraft required a significant relative wind speed, which includes the actual wind speed plus the ship speed, and the ship was not fast enough to reach that speed all on its own.
The winds over the deck were higher than the stall speed of the planes meaning the airspeed would be too fast for the planes to actually land on the deck.
Ok, the aircraft did not have the power, catapults, or deck length to take off without the help of a head wind. In a dead calm a carrier making 22 knots has a the wind over the deck of 22 knots. If a wind is present the carrier can turn into the wind, say a 10 knot wind, and the wind over the deck would now be 32 knots. This makes take offs and landings much easier.