For the first time all summer I’ve been able to both camp on
an island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore and also get off my ass and
write a blog post about it. I pretty
much had to write this post as a confession of poor judgment, bad luck, good
luck, of maybe just a bit of stupidity.
You can read the story and decide.
It turned out well but easily could have been a very problematic day on
Outer Island, due in part to a phenomenon that I’ve never seen in decades 0on
the big lake.
We had a nice little trip, 50 miles or so, scheduled over
five days. Ironwood the first night, two
nights on Outer to let us run up to the lighthouse on the north end at our
leisure, and then Manitou on the way back.
It was a different trio than the normal Fall trip that I’ve been on
since 2000 with most of the original principals scattered from Scotland to a
raft on the Grand Canyon. There was no
drop in either quality or conviviality however, with long time paddle buddies
the ManFromSnowyLegs and the BessemerConvivialist rounding out this fall
trio. Weather was perfect as we launched
from Red Cliff but that quickly changed as it easily can on Superior in the
fall. About halfway up Manitou Island we
saw small marauding bands of rain squalls moving from west to east. We crossed from Manitou to Ironwood just
before the storm indicated in that radar image hit. We were the little blue dot and were very
happy that we successfully scrambled to get up tents and tarps before the
deluge. Wednesday morning was beautiful and
we did a quick crossing to Cat and then Outer with a nice quartering tail
breeze that made the 8 miles or so a pleasant two hour dawdle on a lovely
day. Once again as it had on Tuesday,
the sky clouded up and thunder began to rumble.
This one missed us to the south but we saw the most spectacular chain lightning
that any of us had witnessed in years simply hammering the Upper Michigan shore
25 miles away. Before the storm hit we could actually make out the ski flying
hill at Copper Peak just north of Bessemer thirty miles distant. There are far, far worse ways to spend an
evening than sitting in camp, drinking beer, and watching an outstanding
lightning show. We all agreed on that
before we went to bed. We also agreed
that given the forecast for Friday that predicted 15-25 knot northwesterly
winds gusting to 35 knots, that we would abandon Outer and find an island camp
situated closer in to avoid any dozen plus mile slogs into wind and waves. 
I was awakened shortly after midnight by the MFSL informing
me that my boat was gone. He had heard
waves breaking on shore and got up to check on things. Unlike Meatloaf’s famous song, in this case
two out of three (boats) was
bad. Two foot waves with an incredibly
long wave length were breaking and rolling well up the beach. There was not a breath of wind and there hadn’t
even been a breeze when we went to bed.
While we had all dragged our boats up we had not tied them up and mine
was at roughly a 45 degree angle to the shore.
‘Was’ being the operant phrase at this point. Luckily the MFSL spotted a
white line gently bobbing about a hundred yards offshore and I verified it with
the headlamp. I had closed all hatches
and put the cockpit cover on and the boat had slipped off the beach, cleanly
making its escape to its comfortable spot just outside the break. My buddy was halfway geared up to paddle out
and retrieve the boat so my only contribution to the recovery effort was to
assist in the launch and landing. The
BessemerConvivialist provided strong moral support as she listened to this
fairly muffled and incomprehensible back and forth from her sleeping bag. The boat was rescued, all three were lashed
up to a fallen White Pine, and we crawled back to our sleeping bags.
The morning brought constant thunder and lightning beginning
around 8am with a NE wind blowing and the waves jumping up to three to five feet
in the channel between Outer and Stockton.
The nearshore forecast said waves two feet or less but we remembered
that 20 miles from Red Cliff and 25 or so to Saxon Harbor did not really
quality as ‘within five miles of shore’.
We got on the water around one pm, thanks to prudent counsel from the BessemerConvivialist who reminded me that I promised not to drag her out in 'uncomfortable' conditions, and paddled back to Oak Island and spent two nights on the
spit. We had great fun in the large following seas with minimal wind thanks to the BC's insistence we wait for the wind to ratchet down a bit. Saturday morning was perfect
bluebird weather and we headed back to Red Cliff in time for a 11:30 date with
a Whitefish basket and pint of South Shore Nut Brown at Morty’s Pub in
Bayfield.
Lessons learned? As
the masthead on this thing reads, good judgment comes from experience;
experience comes from bad judgment. I am
fairly certain that I will never crawl into the tent again without my boat tied
to the shore. The Outer campsite had moved
about 150yds north after a storm knocked down a bunch of trees at the original
site. The beach is narrower and the NPS even built a lovely set of steps from a
big cedar log to get up the bank. The
vegetation was nonexistent right up to the base of the steps, a dead giveaway
about how high the waves reached but
with the nearshore forecast and personal observation indicating a calm night I
guess I ignored the potential. Once
again Gitchee Gumee proved that she was the boss. We pondered over coffee the next morning just
where the hell the swells had come from with no wind to drive them and
speculated it was that storm we were watching the evening before.
It was only when we got back on the weekend that I read about a seiche,
our normally tiny mini tide, that had reached
up to five feet in the Sault due to the storms and quickly changing wind
directions. That was just about the time
that it hit.
The other good question would be what would we have done if
the boat had decided to head north or go visit Ontonagon instead of bobbing
docilely 100 yards offshore? This could
have been a very real possibility had not the MFSL awoken when he did. I would not have woken up and the BC wasn’t
going anywhere, seiche excitement be damned.
‘When at sea the number is three’
is a good adage. I’m sure a
search for the kayak would have ensued the next morning. Had the kayak not been located, an
embarrassing radio call to the Coast
Guard would have been needed since there is zero cell coverage on Outer. We saw exactly one sailboat off Ironwood the
whole time we were in the outer ring of islands. A couple hundred bucks to the shuttle boat
service would have been the only option since neither the BC nor MFSL wanted me on
their back deck for twenty miles.
I hereby swear to tie the boat up. When I think back, I’ve actually witnessed a
couple close calls with boats over the years.
One was at the GLSKS when a large wind sucked a bunch of boats that we
thought were securely up on the beach into Grand Marais Bay. The other was a day on Sand Island at the
north camp when we actually pulled the boats up on the berm and Gitchee Gumee
proceeded to erode the berm from a yard behind our sterns pretty much up to
amidships. This is also illustrates the
‘one little thing’ aspect of sea kayaking.
Life jacket, spare skirt and paddle, pump & float, dressed for immersion,
radio, etc., etc., would have all been moot with no boat. Fortunately most situations that end really
badly are when errors tend to compile and make it impossible to back off or
recover. Thanks mainly to my good buddy
the ManFromSnowyLegs, the possibility of
compounding errors was nipped in the bud. I would encourage paddlers to think
like good pool players, two or three shots ahead, as wey practice our sport.
