Gordon Lightfoot Warned Us

Thursday 9/5

Thursday morning we drove the roughly 20 minutes to our launch point at Little Sand Bay in The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. Upon our arrival we were met by Ranger Angel (it makes sense that the Apostles have a guardian Angel, right?), who directed us as to where to launch, checked our permits, gave us useful information about the weather, and told us how to describe our location ifwe needed to call 911 (!). She also gave us a once-over and declared that we appeared to be "shipshape". It is not her responsibility to evaluate people's ability to paddle in the open waters of Lake Superior, but by her own admission if she detects that people don't have the appropriate skills or preparation, she'll gently steer them to safer courses of action.  

Loading the kayaks at Little Sand Bay

Many people are familiar with Gordon Lightfoot's song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, about how the waters of Lake Superior ("the big lake they call Gitche Gumee") proved too much for a 700 ft., 14,000 gross ton ship. Folks contemplating a trip to the Apostles can also read the part on the official web site where it says that the lake can become "extremely hazardous when weather conditions become unfavorable". Or maybe they will have read John Frank's excellent book in which he states that "the big lake can replace a peaceful, calm sunset on one evening with a life threatening experience the next day." Well, all I can say is that ample warnings were available.

At the time we arrived at our launch point conditions were calm. The wind and waves had picked up a bit by the time we packed the boats, but it was nothing we couldn't handle - maybe 1 ft. waves. There was no extreme weather in the forecast, and Ranger Angel hadn't said anything about particularly rough conditions that day. As we paddled north from Little Sand Bay and rounded Point Detour (the northernmost mainland point in Wisconsin, BTW), things got yet choppier, and soon we were the proverbial frogs being boiled. Things just kept getting a little worse, and we dealt with it, and then a little worse, and we dealt with it, until it got to the point where we found ourselves getting hit by five foot waves coming off the lake from our left.

Thursday's track

How tall is a five foot wave? This is not a trick question - it's five feet peak to trough. When you're sitting in a kayak your head is maybe three feet above the water, and so an alternative answer to "How tall is a five foot wave?" is "two feet above your head". Tall enough that as I was paddling next to Tall Tom, suddenly I'd have to crane my neck and look up to see him, then as the wave moved between us he'd disappear, then when the wave would pick me up I'd have to look down to see him.

Fortunately, for the most part the waves were long period swells - that is to say, like big long sine waves which kept picking us up and putting us down, picking us up and putting us down, which is much better than if five foot waves had been breaking over us, in which case we could have been in real trouble. Nonetheless, it became hard to make progress or even stay on course, particularly with since our kayaks were heavily loaded with a week's worth of gear and food. Plus, every once in a while a wave would crest as it went by, and that release of energy would take a stab at tipping the kayak over, or leave you hanging in the air for an instant like Wile E. Coyote when he steps off a cliff, before you'd plop back down onto the water. Paddling started to require constant vigilance, always being prepared for the next wave that was coming, and placing paddle strokes appropriately.

Interestingly, I didn't feel panicky - in fact, I've experienced waves on the Chesapeake which, while smaller, seemed much more determined to capsize me. Maybe it was the long period of the waves, maybe it was extra stability from the fully loaded kayaks, but I rarely felt like I was in danger of tipping over, even in waves which made me exclaim out loud when I saw them coming at me. To tell you the truth, I was more worried about heart attack from exertion than about capsizing, but I kept checking in with myself and never felt my heart pounding - I was OK. As we fought our way forward we knew we would have a chance to take a break when we got to Raspberry Island, about five miles into our twelve mile trip. By the time we got into the thick of it turning around wouldn't have been any shorter or safer than continuing, so we plugged on, working really hard to keep forward momentum going. This went on for what seemed like a really long time.

Finally, as we started to get into the lee of Raspberry Island we got some shelter from the wind and the water conditions began to settle down. We stumbled onto the beach, which happily was on the protected side of the island, and all let out a collective "What the h*ck did we just go through?", as we had all just made it through the roughest conditions of our paddling lives. But fortunately, at this point we were safe. Camping isn't officially allowed on Raspberry Island, but we knew that if we needed to we could make emergency camp there until conditions calmed down. Raspberry also has a lighthouse and is visited by tour boats, so we were within range of "rescue". The funny thing is that as we had fought our way through the waves I, usually the most cautious of the group, figured that everyone else had been having a grand old time riding the rough stuff. When we got to the beach it turned out, though, that everyone else was at least as frazzled as I was. I just wish I had hooked up my GoPro - that would have been some great video!

We took a good long break to eat lunch and collect ourselves. Rob even got out a new toy he had picked up at one of the outdoor stores - a floating thermometer in the shape of a rubber duck (BTW, water temp was about 65 degrees). We decided we'd walk the several hundred yards down the beach to a point where we could see the rest of our route to our destination on Manitou Island, and then make a decision as to what to do. Fortunately, the waters between Raspberry and Manitou Islands appeared much calmer. Once you get east of Raspberry you get some protection from other islands farther out, and so you're not fully exposed to the fetch of the full lake. We decided to continue on.

Rob walks his duck at Raspberry Island - quack, quack, quack!

Once we relaunched we realized anew how tired we were from fighting the waves. As I paddled, my arms hurt, my abs hurt, and my whole core hurt, and everyone else was feeling the same way. As we had been preparing to launch someone had struck up a conversation with me, saying the scale of the islands was tricky. You could be paddling towards an island that seemed fairly close by, and you'd paddle and paddle, and yet the island never seemed to get any closer - more foreshadowing! This certainly seemed to be the case as we huffed and puffed to keep our kayaks moving forward. It also didn't help that we falsely had in our heads that we had only five more miles to go, when the distance was actually closer to seven. It took us 2.5 hours to go the first 5 miles, and then another 3.5-4 to go the next 7. That's pretty slow, and is attributable to a combination of lake conditions, exhaustion, and paddling loaded boats.

Finally, we made it to Manitou Island and with a little poking around, found our campsite. One area for improvement is that the Park Service really needs to mark the campsites so they can be more easily seen from the water. This campsite had a tiny sign, and the one to which we moved a few days later had no sign at all. We came ashore to find a lovely campsite (just as promised by the book), with plenty of room for all of us, a metal "bear locker" where we could store our food - so we didn't have to go through the hassle of hanging our food, which was great. I was cold and wet and shivering, so I pulled on my new no-brand neoprene jacket ($39 well spent dollars on Amazon, half the price of the name-brand NRS jacket) and set to work getting my tent up and getting unpacked so I could change into dry clothes. Tom somehow had it together enough to prepare us a delicious dinner of sloppy joes, but when it started to rain we all retired to our tents and turned in early for the night. I slept almost nine hours, which is unusually long for me, particularly since I usually toss and turn on the first night of a camping trip. Ironically, by the time we went to bed the lake was dead calm - another thing we had read which turned out to be true was that the lake typically starts out calm in the morning, gets more windy and wavy mid-day, then calms down late afternoon into the evening.

Manitou Island, off in the distance

Friday 9/6

One thing we do for safety when we do these trips is to bring cell phones from as many major carriers as we can. At our campsite on Manitou Island we had no connectivity on Verizon or AT&T, but Tom's T-Mobile hotspot sniffed out a tiny bit of signal (I suspect that, being a special purpose device, it has a larger antenna and possibly better signal processing than a cell phone), which had allowed us to get messages home saying that we were safe and sound. Rob and Tom take care of a lot of campcraft - setting up the kitchen, filtering water, and so on, and so I was happy to take on the job of group weatherman. Unfortunately, while we could send and receive texts we had little to no data connectivity, so I got a weather forecast the old-fashioned analog way via our marine VHF radios. It turned out that there was a Small Craft Advisory in effect for the day, indicating that winds could reach dangerous levels for small boats. Having experienced what the lake could do without a Small Craft Advisory in effect, and being a little bit sore from the previous day's adventure, we were perfectly happy to spend the day ashore. We got our camp better organized, put up our rain tarp, and chatted about our experience. I must say, we had done well individually and as a group. You always want to have skills for conditions worse than what you expect to encounter in case, as we had experienced, the situation gets unexpectedly challenging. All of us had maintained good control of our kayaks, had for the most part stayed together as a group, and had kept an eye on each other.  We talked through what we would have done if one of us had wound up in the water (note, we agreed that two of us would have executed a rafted rescue while the third patrolled, ready for contingencies such as chasing down a lost paddle).  I honestly believe we could have pulled off such a rescue, but it would have been exhausting for rescuers and victim alike. Now, if more than one of us had wound up in the water, that would have been tough.

In the afternoon we hiked down to the Historic Manitou Fish Camp, a ramshackle 1930's-era fishing camp preserved by the Park Service. Unfortunately, many of the buildings were locked up (the site is currently officially closed for renovation), but we got to visit the outdoor structures and peek inside the buildings. Also, being on the side of the island which faced the mainland, we got a little bit better cell signal, and so I set to work downloading weather forecasts. The walk to the fishing camp from our campsite was about 1.8 miles. Rob and Tom headed straight back, while the ever-energetic Béla and I explored a side trail to a scenic overlook, which turned out to be just another beach on the island - not really worth the detour. All told, Béla and I walked about four and a half miles. 

Hiking on Manitou Island

Manitou Fish Camp

Rob prepares lovely multi-course dinners, and on Friday we had an appetizer of hummus and crackers, followed by turkey sausage jambalaya, with toffee and spiced dried fruit for dessert. We were treated to a beautiful sunset with golden light at our west-facing campsite, followed by an amazingly clear night full of stars. However, the weather still had some monkey wrenches to throw into our plans. Our intent had been to camp at Manitou for three nights, but while the forecast called for calm conditions for Saturday, Sunday's forecast included another Small Craft Advisory. We really didn't want to do another long paddle in high winds with loaded boats, so we decided to break camp and move to our second campsite on Saturday, a day early. Fortunately, I had foreseen this possibility and had overlapped our campsite reservations. So, we enjoyed our lovely evening on Manitou Island, then snuggled into our sleeping bags early again (another monkey wrench - frost advisory in effect!), knowing we'd be getting up early to break camp and reposition.

Golden sunset light at our campsite

Checking the forecast over breakfast

One of the weather forecast pages I was able to use when we had connectivity