Cruising_World_2016-06-07

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62

june/july 2016

My 

wife, Jennifer, and I sail our Caliber 38, Catamount, out

of northern Michigan and spend our summers on Lake

Superior. We had been to the Apostles once before, and frankly,

we were not impressed. The islands are touted as one of the pre-

mier cruising grounds in the country, with reliable winds and

accessible wilderness in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

But we had found lots of crowds and mostly round islands with

virtually no protection. Swells rocked us mercilessly all night,

every night. Midnight wind shifts resulted in a mess of boats

hauling anchor and moving to the other side of the island or the

lee of an island nearby, neither of which was really any better. We

vowed we would never come back.

We preferred the remote and dramatic Canadian shore of Lake

Superior, but the previous year we’d ended our summer in Duluth,

Minnesota, at the westernmost end of the lake, and were now

working our way back east. Since the Canadian shore was just

barely thawed out after a very cold winter,

we reluctantly decided to spend a few days

back in the Apostle Islands, on the south

shore. It would be warmer there, we could

get last-minute chores done, and we needed

to buy Leinenkugel’s beer, which is brewed

in Wisconsin and one of our summer staples

when we can fi nd it.

Long home to Native Americans, the

Apostles were fi rst visited by French Jesuit

priests in the 1670s; they thought there were

12 islands — hence the name — but actu-

ally there are 22. Subsequent centuries saw

the islands logged, farmed, quarried, fi shed

and fi nally opened to tourism. The Apostle

Islands National Lakeshore was created

in 1970, when the National Park Service

acquired 21 of the islands and started the process of letting them

revert to wilderness.

On our fi rst day out of Duluth, we reached on lovely south-

west winds for more than 50 miles and anchored in the lee of

Sand Island, the westernmost in the group. A nice sunset was the

perfect backdrop for cold chardonnay, guacamole, and steaks on

the grill. As we crawled into bed for the night, we wondered if

we had been wrong about this place. Then came the noise. The

wind had suddenly swung to the northeast. The school children

scraping the blackboard was our anchor chain rolling across

small rubble that lay under a thin layer of sand; the thunk was

Catamount fetching up hard at the end of

our swing. What a crummy start in an area

we hadn’t wanted to visit in the fi rst place.

But then, slowly, the Apostles started to

work their spell on us. After a few hours, the wind backed to the

northwest and the seas went fl at. In the morning, we launched

our dinghy and explored the north end of Sand Island, where Su-

perior’s incessant pounding had carved out sea caves in the sand-

stone cliff s, just big enough to row our dinghy into. We marveled

at the intricately sculpted pillars and arches, the variegated col-

ors of the stone, the ferns growing downward from the ceilings.

Jen n ifer

and I sailed into the heart of the islands

later that day, settling in at popular Stock-

ton Island, where sailboats outnumbered powerboats in the

anchorage by almost 10 to one. Blessedly, the Park Service has

banned personal watercraft everywhere in the national lakeshore.

Stockton Island has miles of white sand beaches in Quarry,

Julian and Presque Isle bays. Hiking trails meander through

cranberry bogs and pine forests, then break out to commanding

views from open headlands. We hoped (sort of) that we would

encounter one of the many black bears that inhabit every one of

the islands, but we only saw tracks. In all our hikes on trails and

on beaches, we never saw a single piece of trash or even any fl ot-

sam. It did indeed feel like wilderness.

Stockton Island also reminded us of what it’s like to anchor

over hard, rippled sand. In our more familiar waters on the

Canadian side, we never see our anchor hit bottom (the water is

just too dark), and we are never sure what the anchor grips onto.

In the Apostles, we could watch our anchor drop 20 feet through

the gin-clear water, sploosh onto the sand, and sink its fl ukes to

engage Mother Earth. Then we could watch the chain pay out,

snub it off at 60 feet, and know that Catamount wasn’t going

anywhere with that grip. We reminded ourselves that we hadn’t

dragged even on the fi rst night, when we were caught by the sud-

den wind shift at Sand Island.

One morning we hiked to an old quarry on Stockton. After the

La Pointe

Bayfield

Madeline Island

Michigan

Island

WISCONSIN

0 5 10

Nautical Miles

46.8º N

90.8º W

47.0º N

90.6º W

Outer Island

Devil’s

Island

Sand

Island

Oak Island

Lake

Superior

Apostle +

Islands

Apostle Islands National Lakeshore

Raspberry

Island

Stockton Island

Anchoring at Sand Island (above) might

not off er all-around protection, but

the vista makes up for it. Racers in the

annual Bayfi eld Race Week inch past

the north end of Devil’s Island in barely

a breeze (left). Port Superior Marina

(opposite) is a popular launching point

for sailing the islands.

june/july 2016

cruisingworld.com

62

MARIANNE G. LEE (TOP); FRED BAGLEY; MAP BY SHANNON CAIN TUMINO