Manitou Passage 2008
Submitted by George Granlund
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See photos from the trip on George's Picasa web album
The radio crackled to life---“I dunno, there’s four to six footers out there now and a lot of white. I think we’ll cancel for this morning and plan for the afternoon”. The park administrator looked at the three of us and said “Did you hear that? You may want to do the same.” He was referring to the radio contact made by the captain of Manitou Island Transit’s Mishe-Mokwa, a 62 foot, 49 ton craft that the ferry company operates out of Leland to shuttle passengers from Leland to the Manitou Islands.
Some History:
Sleeping Bear Point sits below the shoulder of the Sleeping Bear Dunes. It is a windswept piece of land jutting into the Manitou Passage with views west toward Wisconsin, north towards Cathead Point, and south towards Pt. Betsie. Schooners piled high with lumber, potatoes, fruit, and other goods as well as steamships made their way past this point southbound for Chicago or northbound with passengers and finished goods. The Manitou Passage represented for seamen an opportunity to save time and replenish supplies, but it also had a darker side in which numerous schooners and steamers were caught in storms and fog and were run aground or sunk. The tremendous traffic through the Passage required a life-saving service to aid ships and their crews. In 1901, Congress appropriated the money to build a Life-Saving Station at Sleeping Bear Point. By 1931, moving sand dunes and shoreline erosion forced the station to move to its current location near Glen Haven. Today, the Sleeping Bear Point Coast Guard Station is owned and operated by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The buildings have been restored to their pre-1931 appearance and are open to visitors.
Bob Shockley, Bill McCormick and I looked at each other with Three Stooges kind of looks and decided that we had some time to kill. Tom, the park administrator, wasn’t totally dismissive of our trip plans and printed out detailed NOAA forecasts for us for the next 4 days. NOAA said that our best chance of making it to the islands was later in the day when the winds would diminish and the seas would lie down to 2-3 feet. The local area was just finishing up experiencing the rainy aftermath of Hurricane Gustav and we already knew that ideal crossing conditions were too much to hope for.
The three of us were at the headquarters securing our National Park permits to cross the eight mile-wide Manitou Passage and then camp on North Manitou Island. The paddle to North Manitou includes another crossing of four miles from South Manitou. Weather notwithstanding Bob, Bill and I had been planning on this trip for quite a few months. This was going to be the longest open-water crossing for each of us and the Manitou Passage is occasion to some pretty hairy conditions.
By mid-afternoon, the cloud cover began to break up and the winds were dieing down. With all of our gear finally stowed, we shoved off into three foot waves at 4:15. Once clear of Sleeping Bear Point, the winds stopped swirling and we had a steady 10 MPH headwind. South Manitou Lighthouse is painted bright white and stands 104’ tall on the southeast shore of the island. The lighthouse is strategically located on the heavily trafficked Manitou Passage on the 300 mile eastern route from Chicago to Mackinaw. It identifies both the passage and the most frequently used refuge on the Great Lakes. This historic beacon to shelter, commerce and growth has been unlit for nearly 50 years. On long crossings such as we were making, progress seems agonizingly slow. Although we never had to brace to keep upright, we had to keep a constant vigil for the next wave and keep one eye on the horizon for the freighters sailing between Chicago and the Straights. At one point while I was white-knuckling it, I looked over at Bob. He was grinning, paddling with one hand, and eating chocolate chip cookies with the other. Seeing him enjoying himself really made my day. Two hours and fifteen minutes later, we set foot on South Manitou and spent a little time exploring the grounds of the lighthouse. Since this was now the off-season and it was getting later in the day, we were the sole visitors to the magnificent structure. This, the eastern shore of the island was in the lee of the wind so we had a mile or so of easy paddling before we hit the wind and waves between the south and north island.
We were treated to a beautiful sunset as we approached the north island but it was getting dark quickly and we had to move away from the shore and set up camp by the glow of our headlamps.
Our original plan on day two called for a 22-mile circumnavigation of the big island but, because of another day of high winds and big waves, we crept around Dimmick Point and then headed north to the ranger outpost and ferry dock. Bob had jammed his skeg getting off of the beach and had a difficult time in the wind as he was forced to correct every other paddle stroke. This correction was causing him considerable forearm pain resulting in swelling. One thing led to another and we made the decision to hike and explore the island’s small village instead of putting in overtime on the circumnavigation.
Some History:
According to the legend, an enormous forest fire on the western shore of Lake Michigan (now Wisconsin) drove a mother bear and her two cubs into the lake for shelter, determined to reach the opposite shore. After many miles of swimming, the two cubs lagged behind. When the mother bear reached the shore, she waited on the top of a high bluff. The exhausted cubs drowned in the lake, but the mother bear stayed and waited in hopes that her cubs would finally appear. Impressed by the mother bear's determination and faith, the Great Spirit created two islands (North and South Manitou Island) to commemorate the cubs, and the winds buried the sleeping bear under the sands of the dunes where she waits to this day. The "bear" was a small tree-covered knoll at the top edge of the bluff that, from the water, had the appearance of a sleeping bear. Wind and erosion have caused the "bear" to be greatly reduced in size over the years. Today only a small remnant remains.
By mid-afternoon, we headed back to the campsite. Along the way, Bill and I spotted 4 otters enjoying themselves well offshore. We were just as surprised to see them and they were to see us, but they didn’t seem overly alarmed and poked their heads out of the water periscope-fashion and bobbed in the waves. The wind and waves had picked up and we had to thread our way through the rock garden that extends out into the lake from the point.
None of us had a very good sleep that night as we couldn’t block out the pounding of the waves. That pounding, coupled with our imaginations, had us picturing ten foot waves and hurricane force winds blasting the tent sides. I was beginning to dread tomorrow’s retracing of yesterday’s crossing. But at first light, the waves were no bigger and the wind no stronger than when we’d gone to bed. We launched at 10:30 and headed for the big lighthouse 6 miles away. That crossing was uneventful. We stayed close together and frequently checked each other’s progress, making nervous conversation every once in awhile. We snacked as we sat on South Manitou and then headed back towards our vehicles parked at the reconstructed Glen Haven Cannery. While we had to contend with the waves, we also got to enjoy the spectacular profile of the Sleeping Bear Dunes. None of the feared freighters crossed our path and the sun shown brighter as the crossing progressed. In the club trip calendar, I billed this trip as a “bucket-list” type of trip, one that you’ll only do once in your life. When the noses of our boats hit the sand beach, we congratulated each other on a safe and memorable crossing. Mama bear slept through the whole thing.
For a very interesting weather website go to www.noaa.gov. Type in the town nearest your launch site and click on “Hourly Weather Graph”. Take some time to interpret the symbols and you’ll have all the information you’ll need to make weather-related paddling decisions. For information on the Sleeping Bear Dunes area and on the Manitou Islands try the following websites; http://www.schoolship.org/maritime/ and http://www.sleepingbeardunes.com/.