Dave, Scott, Mark, and I took this sea-kayaking trip at the Apostle Islands
on the Lake Superior coast of northern Wisconsin at the end of June 1995.
We packed up the kayaks with camping supplies and headed out to Rocky Island,
one of the furthest islands from the coast, on a beautiful warm, sunny,
calm Saturday. The next day however, the weather changed drastically. As
Gordon Lightfoot says in his song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,
"twas the witch of November come early!" REALLY early, considering it was
only late June! We woke to a heavy fog which reduced visibility to about
1/4 of a mile. The temperature was around 50 F with a gale force wind howling
out of the north (although we were well sheltered from it on the south
side of the island). We couldn't even see the next island, which was just
across the channel. Instead we saw choppy waters with 3-6 foot swells that
faded into a sheet of gray mist. Pretty scary, especially for me as it
was my first time kayaking. But we joined up with two other kayakers who
were camping on the island and together managed to work our way across
the channel to the next island, on the back side of which things calmed
down considerably from the relatively open area we had been. Everyone made
it back safely and we all hope to go again this summer!
