WhimSea's Log

Posted by Karen A. Brown

We left the marina a little after 10:00 on Saturday morning. The wind was out of the Northwest around 10 knots with gusts up to 22. The sea conditions, less then two feet. Our intended destination for this weekend is Sand Island in the Apostle Islands. It will be our first trip to the islands for the 2008 boating season and we're both looking forward to it.

We were able to sail about halfway to the Sand Island light before the wind deserted us. In the meantime, a number of lakers passed us heading both downbound and upbound. You can see pictures of some of them on the plog site.

We did see something new on our way out. A gaggle of geese were swimming along in the water about halfway across the lake. I don't recall having seen them that far out into the lake before. Usually they stick pretty close to shore where the water is much warmer.

By 5:00 pm we were anchored in Swallow Bay. The sun was shining and the anchorage was empty. Just us and a power boat up on the dock. It was gorgeous.

We enjoyed a martini in the cockpit before starting dinner. Around 3:00 am, the moon was just setting behind Bear Island. A yellow-orange sliver it looked so big and so close that it felt like we could reach out and grab a hold of it.

On Sunday we raised anchor around 10:00am and raised her sails after we rounded past the lighthouse. We had a good run back to Minnesota, naturally we would have to tack a couple of times before coming close to Knife River. Around 6 miles out, the wind deserted us and the sky started to darken behind us. Silver Bay became obscured by rain. About 2 miles out and the wind gusts and rain hit us. Though we had all canvas rolled up, we still heeled over about 10 degrees during some of those gusts.

We returned to the dock in a lightly falling mist. A pretty good end to the weekend, I'd have to say.