Sea Kayak Specialists Blog

An interesting thing happens when ones starts casting about for a 3 day trip to do. Here is the chart section that caught my eye (click on it for a larger view):

Beaver Island and surrounding area from Chart 14902

Even better it is a two hour drive from Marquette. Driving to the launch site on the beach, it is another one of those off the beaten track UP places. Little did I know…

The crossing was long enough and the land low enough to require paddling by compass for 90 minutes.

Launching and heading out the conditions were perfect, little wind any day in the forecast except for sunday night when a front was to move through. A long crossing like this needs conditions like these to avoid becoming an ‘adventure’.

Navigation is always challenging in a new place. I couldn’t see significant land features for the first ninety minutes so it was paddling by compass till visually I could lock onto a landmark.

Landing at Squaw Island I was tempted to leave right away due to the loud hum of many insects wings. Amazingly the gnats (sometimes called muffleheads) were in many large groups flying about. Fortunately they are non biting and there were few mosquitoes or blackflies about. The positive is they indicate good water quality and are a bounty to fish and birds. The negative is they were out on the water where they flew into my ears, eyes and generally made a pest of themselves when the wind died.

The other feature of this trip was the heat, it was hot and humid. Most Memorial Day trips are cool due to the water temperature, not this year, most of the water felt at summer temperature. This I assume also accounts for the algae seen along the shorelines and in the shallows. This algae also made swimming in some areas unappealing.

Algae was seen in the shallows everywhere.

But there were highlights. The biggest being this abandoned lighthouse (below) that someone is maintaining. It is unlocked so one is able to go up the tower! Wandering around inside of it exploring was an unexpected bonus as many of these structures are either boarded up or in such poor condition that you don’t want to go inside.

Found this abandoned lighthouse, that someone is maintaining and leaving unlocked.

And then finally, except for Beaver, these islands are wilderness. A few boats were about and few people. It is a good place to get away, when the conditions allow it…

A Merganser swims past the setting sun

sam

Granite Island lies 6-7 miles out from the coast north of Marquette. Literally a rock, it is privately owned and has a lighthouse on it (click here). It is a nice distance for a crossing. A past saturday, things looked stable enough wind wise to give the crossing a try.

The view from a couple of miles out looking west back towards the mainland and my launch site. Winds were 15-20 mph making the early part of the paddle easy. Eventually some waves from the southwest built and combining with the seas built by the western winds, made for some work using correction strokes to keep the boat on course.

The view about 30 minutes out from Granite Island and with the island in the sun. The lighthouse is on the left.

A closer view of the island when going around it. It turns out the same plans were used for the lighthouse in the Huron Islands. Hard not to think of the keeper and his family who was often stuck out here once the fall storms started because of distance from the mainland made it too far to row.

Coming back to Little Presque Isle and the launch site. Here are the three headlands between here and Marquette. Closest is Little Presque Isle, next is Partridge Island and in the distance is Presque Isle, the northern tip of Marquette. The smudge on the horizon is McCarty’s Cove which is just north of the lower harbor.

The landing at the mouth of Harlow Creek with Little Presque Isle lit up by the sun.

sam

I haven’t heard much from Nancy with everything going on. She posted the following on the local paddling groups email list but otherwise my assumption is she is paddling around with a rocket tube on the Maine coast.

sam

I am visiting my parents in Tonawanda NY, between Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Though I was in a canoe on the Niagara with my Dad as a kid, I have never kayaked there. So, I took the opportunity the other day to do a 13 mile stretch from Downtown Buffalo (beginning on Lake Erie), ending in Tonawanda. I, of course, stayed well above the falls! Below is a link to the map of the river. It is not recommended to go North of Grand Island / Navy Island (the small island to the northwest of Grand Island) in any kind of boat. http://www.niagaraparks.com/images2/niag-map.JPG”

I haven’t found an official report on river currents in the area where I started the paddle. Somewhere said 15 Knots, another place 7 to 12 mph. The latter seems correct. The river widens around Grand Island, and the currents are less, though still very significant. Here is a quote which tells a bit of why… “Although only about 34 miles long, unlike most other rivers which begin as tiny streams, the mighty Niagara is created when a tremendous volume of water draining from the upper great lakes is squeezed into the narrow one-half mile wide river bed and begins its rush toward the Falls and Lake Ontario.” Not to mention a drop of well over 300 feet along the course of the river (mostly at the falls). The currents and eddies around the peace bridge and international railroad bridge are pretty wicked. Below is a link to a video of this area (not mine).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqL9n2d9REg

It took me 2 1/2 hours to go 13 miles – with not very hard paddling! I also had a nice tail wind. I wished I had timed myself between the 2 bridges, where the current it fastest – but I did the 2 1/4 miles in less than 20 minutes. Not a bad pace! I turned to pace upstream at one point, but it is very disorienting for me in those currents, and I was afraid of getting motion sick, and since by myself didn’t play very long.

Anyway… happy paddling back in the UP!

Nancy

Funny names these. Not very well know either. Thats good as there is some great kayaking between these two southern Ontario towns. Everybody has asked after circumnavigating Ireland, whats next? After contemplating some different locations, it ended up in being the place I thought of when in Ireland. Why? For one thing, no tides, for another trees. Campsites in Ireland are chosen more for practical reasons, campsites in this region are chosen for aesthetics. Another reason is close to home and a trip for two weeks. Both important given it is Nancy’s turn to go off this summer.

The chart section shows the shoreline. If weather allows, I will be making the crossing out to the Slate Islands as well as Michpicoten Island. In between is Puksakwa. No thats not a typo but a Canadian national park on Lake Superior (click here) and one of the prime paddling wilderness areas on the Lake.

Altogether it will be two weeks long and 200 miles. It will be a point to point trip instead of a loop thanks to the good people at Naturally Superior Adventures in Wawa (click here) who will shuttle my car. They are one of the top outfitters on the Lake and sit on one of the best pieces of real estate I have seen. This will be my third trip that ends at their hospitable environs.

sam

Paddled over the weekend around Marquette. Definitely nice to be in town for a weekend after being gone on the weekends since the start of May. First was a social paddle with the local group. Click here to see photos of the paddle in Middle Bay by Marquette’s Presque Isle that are in our gallery. Paddled on sunday with the Stew, the gonzo paddler. Click here for photos from that paddle.

It has been a while since I paddled at Pictured Rocks. Interesting to see the changes – rock fall or to be more explicit, the cliffs falling down as highlighted by the thumbnails below, click on the thumbnail to see a bigger photo.

The above use to be a pebble beach that was a great stopping point on the way to Mosquito River. It was in ’96 mostly beach instead of the boulders there now.

Another spot on the way to Mosquito River. In this case it use to be a small pocket beach.

The above was a huge chunk of the cliff came down.

Rockfall does occur when one is paddling and sometimes it comes uncomfortably close. Here is a photo from Don Goss of rockfall (the nearby discolored water) at Pictured Rocks that came within 20-30′ of Nancy & I. I’ve seen it closer…

I believe it was Nancy’s talking that caused the rock fall!

sam

The paddle to the Garden Peninsula went well. Made it to Door County and rounded Rock Island before heading back to the UP. On the right is the boat house on Rock, click here to see the photo gallery and more photos. Pulled out on sunday with the threat of a thunder storm bringing in 60 mph winds and golf ball size hail. Actually it was the prospect of dealing with south winds that caused me to leave. This time of year south winds are very cold coming off of the lake. Since campsites are on the shoreline, it is tough to find a comfortable place with a hard blowing south wind.

The theme for this trip was birds. Yes Cormorants were abundant (unless it was just a few doing laps around me!), Saw Eagles in several places, ducks everywhere and was drowned out by bird song in the evenings. But on St Martin Islands got to see Blue Jays, a couple hundred of them, doing funny things. No they weren’t doing comedy. They were flocked together in the woods and altogether would fly out over the water 1-300′ up. Flying may be a generous word, for all the flapping they were doing they were almost hovering. After 5-10 minutes of this they would all dive back towards the trees making a loud swooshing sound. This occurred about 6 times over a couple of hours. Didn’t see Blue Jays on any other island.

Also got to see the extremes of lighthouse maintenance. The Pottawatomie Lighthouse (click here) on Rock Island is maintained by the Wisconsin DNR. Open for tours, one could see it was maintained very well. At the other extreme is the Poverty Island Lighthouse (click here). Vandalized, holes in the roof and the light room removed, even though I’ve seen it years ago in roughly the same shape, it is sadly amazing to see a structure abandoned and falling apart like this. Only in a remote location could a lighthouse fall into such a state given their popularity nowadays.

Another odd thing about the trip was the bugs. Usually this time of year, they are aggressive and one comes back slightly anemic from the loss of blood. I can truthfully report that no bug bit me. It doesn’t mean there weren’t any bugs, its just the bugs there were the friendly kind. All they wanted to do was hang out. Since there were swarms of them, that did cause a bit of a problem, but a much better one than the usual shock troops of the bug world, Black Flies.

But I found once again the Garden Peninsula, with all the land around it so low and islands stretched apart, gives you an ‘out there’ kinda feeling. On the last day south winds built to 15-20 knots under an overcast sky. I just wanted to get to shore and off the water, but that takes a while and one settles in for a grind. But there were times when paddling miles from land in sunny, calm conditions, one could revel in the solitude with the only sound being Gulls, other birds and one’s paddling. Its the same peacefulness that one finds when watching a colorful sunset.

sam

In the Midwest, everybody has heard of the Door County and the Door Peninsula in northeastern Wisconsin. Few have heard of the Garden Peninsula in the UP. This weekend the goal is to finally make the crossing between them. With a calm weather forecast for the early part of the weekend, it looks good to make the crossing.

The peninsula’s names are as different as the peninsulas. Door means ‘death’s door’, named that way after a storm centuries ago wrecked a Native American war party paddling in canoes and scattering the warrior’s bodies all over the area’s shoreline. The resident population is around 27,000 and the summer population, swollen by tourists and summer residents, rises as high as 250,000. It is a popular summer destination for Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison and Illinois.

Garden is quite the opposite. Garden is named for a climate that results in a longer growing season than most of the UP (Door has the same climate). A rural place, some residents wave as you drive past. It is also an economic backwater with artists sprinkled among the locals taking advantage of the low cost of living. Tourists rarely visit south of Fayette State Park, there is nothing for them to see or do.

The western end of the Niagara Escarpment (click here) forms these peninsulas. But with so little in common and so many differences, it makes me wonder if going from peninsula to peninsula one crosses something more than a state line.

sam