Open Water Swim and some ensuing chaos

The only reason you are reading a post this morning is because we were windbound, unable to launch for our scheduled trip to Oak Island in the Apostles.  A bunch of us safety boated the Point to LaPointe two mile open  water swim and had planned to rendezvous with a bunch of friends going on or coming off the water on Sunday.  When I checked the link to the nearshore forecast, Devils Island weather station, and the realtime wave chart there had been a roughly 20mph west wind blowing for quite some time. It had actually begun late Saturday morning and the paddle back from Madeline Island was a bit more exciting than escorting the swimmers over. It was apparent that there would be some chaos among the campers in the islands on Sunday.

We checked out Little Sand Bay and talked with some Living Adventures folks coming off the water from Little Sand Bay.  Their group were all in doubles and reported steady three footers with some four footers thrown in for sport during the three mile crossing.  Some Chicago friends were on Devils and apparently got to LSB at 11pm and had an evac along the way. More to follow there. MrEngineerGear and his SO (still pondering blog name) got smart and took the ferry from Presque Isle to Bayfield and then paddled up to Red Cliff.  ProfessorLichen and a group from Iowa rolled in late afternoon and set up camp on the mainland at LSB.  Although I'm sure there was some pileup on island sites where folks of different skill levels either decided to go or not go, these things tend to sort themselves out.  The silver lining was that the whole group of us, including RangerMark and the Bad Hatter, all met at Patsy's for beer and burgers to discuss the situation.  Alls well that ends well is the motto I guess.

Gotta go, off to meet the crew at Red Cliff with a paddle to Ironwood as the goal for the day.  I don't want to aggravate anyone by being late