Great Lakes Sailing

Batchawana Bay

6/29/2008

The conditions on Sunday morning didn't look a lot different from yesterday i.e. lots of fog, cold temperatures and generally damp conditions.. Environment Canada was talking about wind warnings on Whitefish Bay with winds up to 30 out of the northwest (our general direction of intended travel), so we decided to stay an extra day. Because of the forecast, we decided to relocate the boat to Stoney Point near the outermost western bay that would serve us better in strong northwesterlies. At 1100, the wind was still southwest around 8kts and I was starting to think that we should just keep going up the shore as we were reaching along nicely. Soon, however, the wind headed us as we hit the gap between the island and the mainland. Being the consummate sailor that I am, I decided that it would be ok to tack upwind through the narrow channel. After all, we had seen over 40 feet coming through the night before. How hard could it be?

Isak was at the helm doing a nice job sailing upwind and feathering up into the puffs while Deanna and I handled the sheets. To be on the safe side, I instructed Isak to call out the depth continuously and we would simply tack whenever the depthfinder said 25'. This worked well for the first tack, but right before the second tack as he was reading out "40", "35", "30", "25", "tacking", the boat stopped moving as he was putting the helm over. Isak's next question was "Dad, why does the depthfinder say "6.5"? "Don't we draw 7'? I looked over the side in time to see a huge cloud of sand making it's way towards the surface. Deanna exclaimed that we'd hit and "sand cliff". I turned on the motor and said, "Ok, enough fun and games, let's get out of here"! Fortunately, we had completed the tack by this time and were headed back to deep water.

Later that day, since we hadn't had enough excitement already, we decided to take the dinghy some 2 miles away from the boat to find the Batchawana River where there was reportedly a general store that had diesel. Once we got within a � mile of the mouth of the river, we got into a shallow sandbar that was completely littered with deadheads and tree stumps that had presumably exited the river during the spring runoff. Not wanting to become a fixture of this particular reef myself, we decided to abandon the mission and return to the boat.

Technical note: We now know why many boats on Lake Superior have cabin heaters. It isn't necessarily to keep warm, it is to lower the humidity inside the boat enough to dry wet clothes!