Titanic

Due to an unheard of early pre trip packing on my part, the VOR, GuitarMatt, and I were able to attend the exhibit and Omnitheater film on the Titanic at the Science Museum last evening. The normal scrambling, searching, and cursing had pretty much been dealt with the night before and the VOR managed to get a reservation for a 7:15 'boarding.

The ill fated ship fascinates people, even before Leonardo and Kate slipped down into the hold for some automotive appreciation. I remember reading Walter Lord's A Night to Remember when I was about 10 years old which got me hooked on the ship and the event. The Omnitheater film was not quite as riveting as the movie Titanic (I only saw certain snippets of the movie) and the comfortable seats, placed at an identical angle to my Lazy Boy, caused me to doze off a time or two. The exhibit however, was excellent. It always gives me a thrill when I'm looking at history in the flesh, so to speak, and the artifacts that were brought up and preserved were a great representation of life aboard the ship. The thing that they did that had the most impact on connecting a visitor to the event was to issue a boarding pass in the name of one of the passengers on the vessel. It was only at the end, after the entire exhibit was toured, that you found out whether your passenger survived. The VOR's did. GM and mine did not.


The exhibit was well worth attending and is most certainly thought provoking. Issues of class, chivalry, fate, technology and plain luck were all roiling around in my head as I walked through, reading every single word on the displays. It also reminded me, to paraphrase the masthead on this little page, that Nature is indeed the Boss. Nothing is unsinkable and as we pack up to head north for our 4 day Apostle Islands kayak trip, I will keep that little gem in the back of my mind. I shall return to the keyboard on Wednesday.

Getting ready

The VOR and the participants in her annual womens trip were windbound on Sand Island last year when they met some fellows from the Des Moine and Omaha area. To make a long story short, we are meeting those folks on York Island Sunday for a three day paddle that involves a trip out to Devils Island. We will be heading up Friday however, and the 'first shift' of the trip will involve the BessemerConvivialist, RonO, BDahlieOfMahtomedi, and LoneRangerRob. Like a professional wrestling tag team match, the two groups will tag off some time on Sunday afternoon.

There have been accusations leveled at me that claim I have the easiest job packing for a trip because I never completely unpack from the previous one. There is a certain truth to that but different trips require very different packing. For instance, last night I had to retrieve my rainsuit and wool Pendleton shirt from my Duluth pack and stick it in a dry bag (closed circuit to Pod: I believe my vintage green wool shirt with the elbow patches is hanging on the back of a bar stool at CampO). Gear acquisition and refinements require changes in packing as well. A complete lack of bugs combined with the purchase of bug shirts has led me to conclude that the 'bat cave', the Cooke tarp with mosquito net, will be staying home this weekend. Also, a new camping wok will replace the frying pan and a couple smaller water bags have retired the large, heavy duty zip lock top water bag that had earned the nickname, The POS. Figure it out.

Getting ready also involves some practice and training. This summer has had more than its share of wet exits, paddle float reentries, various rolls, and long fitness paddles. Last weekend the KingOfIronwoodIsland and I thrashed around in LakeO practicing the above skills and then Sunday knocked off a 12 mile paddle that averaged a hair under 5mph. The weekend before that, the VOR demonstrated how practice makes perfect when she executed the perfect T-rescue in 3 foot seas with the help of RacinRick.My guess is that she was back in her boat in about 90 seconds. Word from Omaha is that the same thing has been happening down there, only with a bit warmer water.

The only issue now is when we all arrive on Sand Island. Some folks work late on Friday and there may be a night crossing in the works, the first one of the season. Two or more people, a bright moon, headlamps, and cooperative wind and seas can make a night crossing a magical event. Just as long as we all remember that even in the dog days of August Lake Superior is indeed the boss.

Friends

This weekend marked one of the sporadic and intermittent reunions of the folks who lived at 212 1st Avenue while attending college at UW-Eau Claire. The house, better known as Phelta Thi, the anti fraternity, was right across the street from the campus, a valuable benefit if one arose 5 minutes before class started. We lived there before the movie Animal House was made, and have considered suing the producers for intellectual theft a number of times. This years event was special, both because we haven't had one for a number of years, and also because we had a couple friends who would never be attending another Phelta Thi reunion. Meeshaw died in Anchorage, AK after undergoing a quadruple bypass operation last year. JohnnyK died in a motorcycle accident 4 years ago. This years gathering at CampO would not only be the usual eating, beer drinking, power lounging, and lie telling, but we also had planned a little memorial service.
People rolled in Friday night and the keg was tapped. It became apparent that the old nicknames would be needed when the 'three Chucks' showed up. Little Chuck, Big Chuck, and Rumberg it became once again. Friday night ended on the predictable late note and the memorial service was wisely planned for late afternoon, pre-happy hour, out on a point in the lake that has been christened Chapel Hill. LC (Little Chuck) and his indentured servant, JohnT, cleared some land and set up a nice pulpit on the lake, complete with benches. It was a sunny, breezy, perfect Wisconsin afternoon when we all headed out there, either by foot or by kayak. I must say its probably the only memorial service that I'll ever attend via kayak. While none of us could be described as religious, I think most of us could be categorized as spiritual. The old gothic cathedral architects in the middle ages built soaring spires so they would be closer to God. Somehow I think this little spot out in the woods, next to the lake, with no sights or sounds of civilization, might be just a little bit closer to Him. The informal service began with LC stepping up to the podium and telling stories of our two buddies. One after another we told stories (those that could be told in mixed company, of course) about our two departed friends and expressed what they had meant to us and how they would be missed. Betsy and Rose, the two widows, made it up (Rose all the way from Anchorage) and represented the living connection to our buddies Meeshaw and JohnnyK. We were all grateful that they took the time to make it to what many would consider to be the middle of nowhere. Our buddy Boston flew up from Atlanta and most other folks drove from the tri state area of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota. These are the kind of friends where it makes no differnece if you saw them yesterday or haven't seen them for 20 years. Things just pick up in the same spot. It doesn't matter if you're a CEO or a fast food trainee, its who you are and not what you are to these guys and always has been. In fact JohnnyK, the year before he passed, had George Dubya visit his manufacturing plant in Chippewa Falls on his western Wisconsin 2004 election swing. It was observed that he talked to President Bush in the same way that he talked to Boston, Elmer (another crony that made the trip) or me for that matter.

The informal service was completed and we drifted back to camp, some through the woods and some over the water. A few of us stopped to view the memorial stone that had been placed out on the point for another friend, BornReadyAl, who died in a car accident in 1990. I guess this point is getting more special all the time. Who knows if perhaps the Anishnabe people who lived in the area had used the same spot? The one thing it pointed out for me is that none of us are getting out of this alive and that if we worry a bit more about friends, peace of mind, and our well being rather than how many dollars we can pile up, we and the world will be a much better place. Thanks again LC, it was a great idea and a great weekend.

Grand Marais harbor - crimminal neglect

On our Friday paddle at the symposium last weekend, we launched at the mouth of the Hurricane River and paddled over two shipwrecks in the short distance it took us to reach the AuSable lighthouse. It's one thing to have the lighthouse available for mariners to avoid the "shipwreck coast" and quite another to have a harbor of refuge to duck into "when the waves turn the minutes to hours". Grand Marais harbor, the scene of much of the teaching at the symposium, has been that harbor of refuge since Congress recognized its value as such in 1880. In a couple of years however, it may only be suitable for launching kayaks because the breakwater, essential for keeping sand out of the bay during the frequent fall nor'easters, has gone completely to hell.

The last time any work was done on the harbor breakwater, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corp was charging across the north African desert and President Franklin Roosevelt was meeting with Winston Churchill in Casablanca. Most of the wooden piling breakwater is gone and the remains were paddled over many times last weekend. The impact of this neglect was brought home tragically when three out of four Grand Marais fisherman drowned during a rapidly developing October storm in 2006. They had launched an 18' boat because it was impossible to launch a larger one due to the sand that had filled in the harbor. When they got into trouble, none of the many available boats could launch to assist them and they had to wait for the Coast Guard helicopter from Traverse City on the lower peninsula. Only one of the four returned to Grand Marais.

The definition of criminal negligence is, "the failure to use reasonable care to avoid consequences that threaten or harm the safety of the public and that are the foreseeable outcome of acting in a particular manner". I would submit that the government knew of the threat to public safety that resulted when a 90 mile stretch of, arguably, the wildest lake on the planet had no harbor of refuge. That's why Congress addressed that fact when they declared Grand Marais a harbor of refuge in 1880. I would also have to think that the foreseeable outcome of letting the breakwater go to hell and having the harbor become unusable would be mariners that perished because they either had no place to go or their rescuers couldn't get to them in a timely fashion. I stand by my headline on this post.

After our pasty dinner, a Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium tradition and a fundraiser for the senior class of Grand Marais high school, Burt Township supervisor Jack Hubbard spoke on the issue and filled us all in on the ongoing effort to prod the government into doing whats right. He spoke with the passion that only a man who lost friends could bring to the table. Through relentless and dogged efforts, classic Yooper stubbornness as my buddies from Ironwood would say, the wheels appear to be slowly turning in the direction of fixing this problem. For about $6-8 million bucks, a rounding error in the federal budget, the problem can be solved. I've personally seen the superb new harbors of refuge along the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. One of 'em is only a couple miles north of the port of Duluth-Superior. If they can build harbors of refuge every 35-40 miles up there, and we are talking building from scratch on a couple of them, I don't know why the hell we can't maintain an existing harbor that's plunked down in the middle of 90 miles of some of the most treacherous water on the big lake.

The folks in Grand Marais are pushing hard and steadily on this issue. As a lover of Lake Superior, a GitcheeGumeeGuy, I think the least I can do is drop off a couple notes to my elected representatives that represent us folks on that same big lake. Michigan's two senators are on board and making their colleagues in other Great Lakes states aware of this problem can't hurt a bit. Heck, send them a link to this post and/or the Save Your Harbor website and bring a little 'kayaker heat' on these guys.

It has been 66 years since anything constructive has been done besides jawboning about the issue. Its time folks, and it needs to be done quickly. According to a Marine Engineer from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, about 6,000 semi loads of sand per year are being blown into the harbor. If people keep the issue on the front burner it will happen. Those round rocks along the lake weren't round when they first got there. It took years and years of relentless and constant wave action for them to get that way. The folks in Grand Marais have been exerting that 'wave action' on the government for years and it would be great if we users and lovers of the lake could give them a little assist. Let's git er done!

Touring, racing, and swimming

Friday is normally tour day at the Great Lakes Sea Kayak Symposium and a lot of folks did get out for some sightseeing in the Pictured Rocks area. Four of us put together our own little tour from the Hurricane River back to Grand Marais, a distance of about a dozen miles. Racin'Rick and JewelryJane had a nice compact double and the VOR and I paddled our usual craft, the Avocet and the Q boat. We got all the boats on RR's roof rack so we could do a one way trip. The route took us past the Au Sable lighthouse, a couple of shipwrecks that prompted the construction of the lighthouse, and the impressive Au Sable dunes.

Saturdays weather was building already on Friday. Wind and waves were freshening out of the northwest and the seas were already in the 1-3' range that had been forecast. I shoved off the double and the VOR, and then did the 'knuckle walk thing' to launch. The shot of the lighthouse is one that I heisted from a previous trip since the water was too rough to pull the Nikon out of the deck bag. We oogled the dunes, felt properly dwarfed by their size, and headed east down the shore for lunch at the mouth of Sable Creek. A quick hike up to the falls and we launched again. It was about 200 yards off the beach that the VoiceOfReason took her very first involuntary dip in Lake Superior while kayaking.

As happens frequently, a rock had been pounded up in the skeg box and she needed someone to give it a yank and free it. While attempting to raft up with the double, she reached over to brace herself on the bow except the bow was gone; a three footer had moved it about 18" away. I turned when I heard the splash and saw white hull and a floating Tilley hat. She was quickly up however, hanging on to the boat and her paddle leash hanging on to the paddle. RR and JJ quickly got the T rescue going and in just a minute or so the VOR was back in her boat and snapping on her spray skirt.

It was a very efficient and panic free rescue. A person never knows how they or their companions will react in that kind of situation but this reaction and recovery would have passed the ICE test with flying colors. More importantly, the VOR was confident back in her boat and didn't miss a beat. When I first started paddling, I was on a guided trip out of Bayfield and a woman went over. When she got back in her boat her confidence was shot. She had to switch to a double (maybe that's whey they bring those things along; that and to carry more beer) in order to make it back to camp. None of that tense, frozen up attitude in this situation however, and we cruised around the increasing hectic and clapotis plagued jetty and into the harbor.

The next day it would be Racin'Rick's and my turn for involutary swimming. RR was leading the harbor race when he applied just a hair too much edge on a turn. Over he went. The thing that really stunk was that he was leading the race at the time, only 20 yards from the finish. Once again a perfect T rescue and he was a across the finish line.

My unexpected inverted experience occurred when I was demonstrating a forward finishing roll to RR while he was trying out my stout basswood Greenland cudgel and I had my old Sitka spruce backup paddle. RonO had explained a couple years ago how he had busted a carbon fiber Greenland stick doing that very same roll but I guess I'm just not a quick learner. Over I went and was about halfway up when I heard and felt the snap. Once again I was upside down with half a stick in my hand. I was able to get set up and roll up successfully with half a stick but I certainly did get that rush of adrenaline.

The one common thread to all three capsizes was that we all had practiced what to do dozens of times. Like most endeavors, practice makes perfect and while perfection might have not been achieved in any of the cases, we all recovered nicely, quickly, and efficiently. Yet another reminder that if you keep your skills up they will be there when you need them.