Archive for October, 2008

Granite Island

Sunday, October 26th, 2008

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

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Advanced Open Water

Friday, October 24th, 2008 
LAKE SUPERIOR WEST OF LINE FROM MANITOU ISLAND TO MARQUETTE MI
BEYOND 5NM FROM SHORE-
930 AM EDT FRI OCT 24 2008

...GALE WATCH IN EFFECT FROM LATE SATURDAY NIGHT THROUGH MONDAY
AFTERNOON...

.SATURDAY...SOUTHWEST WINDS 10 TO 20 KNOTS INCREASING TO 15 TO
25 KNOTS BY MID AFTERNOON. A CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS. WAVES
SUBSIDING TO CALM TO 2 FEET...THEN BUILDING TO 1 TO 3 FEET.
.SATURDAY NIGHT...SOUTHWEST WINDS 15 TO 25 KNOTS BECOMING WEST
GALES TO 35 KNOTS AFTER MIDNIGHT. A SLIGHT CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS
THROUGH MIDNIGHT...THEN RAIN SHOWERS LIKELY AFTER MIDNIGHT. WAVES
BUILDING TO 4 TO 7 FEET.
.SUNDAY...WEST GALES TO 40 KNOTS VEERING NORTHWEST BY MID
AFTERNOON. A CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS THROUGH EARLY AFTERNOON...
THEN RAIN SHOWERS LIKELY BY MID AFTERNOON. WAVES BUILDING TO 9 TO
12 FEET.
.SUNDAY NIGHT...NORTHWEST GALES TO 35 KNOTS. RAIN SHOWERS LIKELY.
A SLIGHT CHANCE OF SNOW SHOWERS AFTER MIDNIGHT. WAVES SUBSIDING
TO 8 TO 11 FEET.
.MONDAY...NORTHWEST GALES TO 35 KNOTS DIMINISHING TO 30 KNOTS. A
CHANCE OF RAIN SHOWERS. WAVES SUBSIDING TO 5 TO 8 FEET.

A great forecast for the top level instructor workshop offering by the American Canoe Association, the Level 5 Advanced Open Water. This workshop focuses on being able to teach in conditions up to a small craft advisory. So not only do these instructors need to handle the conditions, they need to be able to instruct, do rescues, towing, manage students and everything else involved in running a class. Yes, the forecast exceeds the recommended conditions but in Marquette you can find places that either reduce or intensify the wind/waves making it a great location for this workshop.

Three high level Great lakes paddlers are coming in for the workshop. This is the first time for me running this workshop and believe it is one of the few ever run on the Great Lakes.

sam

Posted in Classes/Workshops, Informational | No Comments »

Fall Surf

Monday, October 20th, 2008

Today, finally, my schedule was open when surf came in. I’ve been in surf this fall while running classes but it is tough to break off and catch many waves for fun. Initially the sets today were in the 4-6′ range with a frequency of every few minutes. These produced some nice long runs on the bigger waves. Within the hour the winds increased to over 20 knots and from a direction that seemed to knocked the waves down as the sets dropped to the 3′ range.

Beautiful fall day with the clouds and intermittent sunlight constantly changing the sky. Thanks to the low angle of the sun in the morning, rainbows appeared in the spray when breaking out thru the waves.

sam

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Building a Campsite

Saturday, October 18th, 2008

A week ago some friends and I headed north. On a piece of property we build tent pads for a Hiawatha Water Trail (click here) campsite. Here are some photos from the day:

We drove the lumber into the site.

One of the two sites. Given the soil, it was thought best to build tent pads to minimize the impact.

The framing for the first pad going in.

Decking being screwed on.

A complete tent pad.

Looking from the other tent pad down the trail to the lake.

Working on a post for the sign and steps from the cobble beach to the woods.

This work was done by volunteers with money donated by people regionally for this purpose on a campsite that is privately owned by a paddler from the Houston area who bought it for this purpose.

Paddlers are a wide ranging group and thanks to the internet, connected together.

Check out the water trail website for further information.

sam

Posted in Story, Muse & Rambles | No Comments »

Fall Paddling

Sunday, October 12th, 2008

Fall colors are at or near peak here in the Marquette area. Combine the beautiful scenery with a mild fall – warm, dry and mild wave conditions – makes for some very nice paddling.

Presque Isle’s Pavilion.

Presque Isle’s black rock’s.

Near Wetmore’s Landing.

It continues to be a great season, one that is full and fun. This weekend was the first one at home where there is no teaching or preparing for a workshop/impending travel since the season started back in May.

I can remember being at the Drombeg Stone Circle in County Cork Ireland. The stones line up with the sun in the fall and was thought to be a gathering place for the locals thousands of years ago. Gathering, heck this is Ireland, it was a party, one that I figure celebrated the bounty of the summer.

Here in the Midwest, we don’t need stone circles to tell us when to celebrate in the fall. We have trees celebrating a great summer all around us.

sam

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Hello World

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008

It has been a while for many things including a blog post. Needless to say a busy late part of the season combined with some website debugging took away the time available for writing posts. With a recent day off and this upcoming weekend free, time is becoming available again to write. More coming!

sam

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