Great Lakes Sailing

7/10/08

Allouez Island

This morning, I awakened at 0530. The overcast and the dampness still persisted, but the sky took on a morning glow that told me that this was the day to get moving again. Although a few lingering showers persisted, the morning sun was shining to the north east and soon the most incredible rainbow that I'd ever seen appeared. Morning rainbows must take on richer hues; this one was spectacular and arched the entire span from horizon to horizon.

I awakened the crew with urgency for a viewing and each one patronized the event in their own special way. Deanna looked for a moment still wrapped in a blanket before returning to nap and Isak, who didn't have his contacts in, kind of looked in the opposite direction and after a brief exclamation went right back to bed. Stefan was the most observant of the occurance looking out both the main hatch and a porthole before returning to his cabin as the rainbow diminished.

We were underway by 0730 and had a brief scare leaving the harbor when we crossed between two barrier islands and the water suddenly developed a light color as though we were going into shallow water. As it turned out, it was just silt coming out of the Pic River and there was plenty of depth. Soon after, we were dodging a mine field of large dead heads; various logs, tree stumps and other debris requiring a bow lookout in order to navigate through them all. We had heard that, like the White River, the Pic River was higher than it was even during the spring runoff so we felt especially fortunate to be out of there before the rains continued. A few miles from Allouez Island the water became crystal clear again so we filled our water tanks not knowing if we'd have another chance. After another brief rain shower, we were soon navigating the tricky Allouez entry channel with Isak and Stefan taking soundings from the dinghy. We found that by holding close to the port shore until after passing the small rock awash on the starboard side and then holding close to the starboard side, we could avoid the 6' spot in the center of the inside of the entry channel and therefore see least depths of 11' (LWD) until well into the harbor. Rather than anchoring, we decided to use our 150' line to secure the bow to a tree on the northwest side of the north island with our stern tied to some steel eyes that someone had drilled into the rocks towards the west side of the harbor on the southern island. With our transom less than 10 feet from the shore, our rudder was in 11' of water!

We found the "bouldering" on both islands to be rugged and challenging. At one point, I was concerned that I'd have to ask my boys to rescue me from a particularly difficult spot that I had managed to get myself into!

Later that day, Isak scouted a small ledge to jump off of into the 58 deg. water while the rest of us took 100 deg. showers in the cockpit. After a nice dinner of pork tenderloin mixed with black beans and rice, we watched the skies clear and a beautiful sunset emerge.