We woke up to a mostly clear sky this morning with temps in the upper 40’s. Second morning in which I turned on the heat! We pushed off at 0915 and eased our way out into Lake Superior. The lake was much calmer than yesterday. We cut hard to port and began running parallel along the shoreline westerly. Our first sights were of the Grand Sable sand dunes rising 700 ft in a vertical climb from the water’s edge. Shortly thereafter we began to see the first Pictured Rocks cliffs, some are 1000 ft high. Next was Spray Falls, a waterfall pouring out over a diagonally sloping edge. At the base were a couple of shallow draft pontoon boats getting a close up view. I kept our distance at about 200 ft away in 25 ft +/- of water. Then we approached Chapel Rock, a rock arch that at one time you could boat through, and a photographic subject of all the tour guides. Unfortunately time and erosion has caused some the rock around the arch to collapse and block the thoroughfare but it is still majestic. This is where we began to encounter the tour boats and seemingly thousand of kayakers in the water. Tour boats dart in and out of other boaters throwing 3 ft wakes without discretion. A kayak launching company took dead aim at our boat and for a moment we stared down a game of chicken even though we had position. Candidly, we saw greater courtesy in NY harbor than from the commercial vessels here today.

Rounding Chapel Rock we took a southwest approach along the cliffs and toward Munising. We passed Rainbow Cave, 12 mile beach, Indian Head and Miner’s Castle before taking aim on the narrow passage between Grand Island, to the west, and the mainland, to the east. Once through the narrows, west bay water depths drop to over 200 ft from 35 ft. The marina is located at the base of west bay, protected from northerly oriented winds by a breakwater.

The distracting thing though is we seem to be in a slight fog or overcast that has high water content and cools the air temp. Visibility was about 15 miles as we began but as the today progressed it decreased to about half that distance. And when the sun is covered, it gets cold!

We’re going into town for a bit of dinner and to check out the scenery. Our near term weather window closes Wednesday and Thursday and re-opens Friday. Depending what we see in town will determine whether we move on to Marquette tomorrow or Tuesday.

We have 5 G Internet connection here so I’ll try to download a lot of the pictures we took of the Pictured Rocks.

I’ve been reading about the Edmund Fitzgerald tonight after traveling today. As you probably know, the cause of the sinking is unknown. There are, however, quite a few theories about what caused the ship to go down. One theory is based upon a former Michigan Technology University professor classroom hypothesis that the ship had come upon an uncharted shoal, damaging its hull which caused the ship to list. I referred to my navigation charts and found the two shoal areas used for the hypothesis. The first is the Superior Shoal where rock mountains rise from near 1000 ft depths to only 22 ft below the surface! The second is the further identification of the Michipicoten and Caribou Island reef. My charts show depths to 780:ft with shallows around 20 ft, all with a cautionary warning that the area has not been fully charted and travel with extreme care! Both of these discoveries, as a result of the investigation into the sinking, caused the shipping lanes to be re-drawn to avoid these areas! BTW - the Edmund Fitzgerald went down about 15 nm north, northwest of Whitefish Point, not near Grand Marais as was told to me by a local.