Saturday, July 6, 2013 ~
On our way out of the bay, we swung past the Raspberry Island Lighthouse for some photos. We can't wait to get back to the Apostles and stay awhile. It's such a great place to explore. We headed north west toward York Island. The Minnesota shoreline is straight ahead, looming in and out of sight through the haze. It appears that York Island has an anchorage, safe from a southern wind. There are several boats anchored there this morning.
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| Raspberry Island Light ~ Apostle Islands |
After passing York Island we begin looking for Sand Island Shoal. Once we clear it, we will head 263 degrees west (just off of southwest), toward Knife Island. The cruise around Sand Island is a bit dicey. We could see two red markers and identified them as the Shoal marker #1 and the Sand spit marker #2. I have excellent distance vision but I had to use the binoculars to see them. We aimed between the two markers. Luckily, I kept taking peeks through the lens and realized that the marker closer to shore was NOT Marker #1. It was a shipwreck marker. We should have been aiming outside of Marker #2 which we had mistaken for marker #1. A quick adjustment and we were back on track. Later, Dave checked the charts and confirmed that we were in plenty of water had we stayed on our original course. I was relieved to hear this but glad that we went around Marker #2. Better safe than sorry.
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| Sand Island Light ~ Apostle Islands |
We are using Dave's paper Nautical charts now. Open CPN http://opencpn.org/ocpn/ has been a wonderful, cheap and accurate way to chart our course. It's shareware; we appreciate those who created it for sailors to use for free. My Acer laptop did not prove to be reliable but we learned to take readings on Open CPN before heading out each day and it worked really well for us..
We had to come up with all sorts of methods of avoiding the elements. Dave has been wearing a hat on much of the trip. Yesterday I had to cover my ears, which are very sensitive from sunburn. I put on my Bondi Band buff which says, Eat, Sleep, Run, Rinse, Repeat. I wore it in our Ragnar Relay races. It applies to cruising as well only the runs are over water and waves instead of land.
Today is anticlimactic final day. We can't really see much, can't sail, and the flies are back. And, we are tired! Our journey has taken us 13 days, 650 miles, and 3 Great Lakes. It has been an amazing adventure.
When we finally got to the Minnesota shoreline, the fog hit us in the face and we lost all definition. Fog lifted and settled on us over an over as we approached our mark on the chart. This was disconcerting because we have never seen this coast from the water. We were able to find a few landmarks, checked the Garmin way points and moved very slowly. Suddenly we could see Knife Island, just off of Knife River Marina.
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| First view of Knife River |
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| Pelicans off of Knife Island |
The fog created some dramatic photos on our way into the channel. We had been assigned a slip but when we got to the harbor we found that the slip was filled with a huge power boat. We tied up to the fuel dock and Dave walked to the office to figure things out. It turned out that we were one slip over, next to the big power boat. As we maneuvered into our slip a friendly face appeared from two boats north of us and offered to catch our dock line. Once we were settled, we collapsed onto the cockpit bench, looked into each others eyes and simply grinned. We savored the moment, each running the days we spent out on the lakes through our heads, each enjoying the wonder of our accomplishments! We made it!!! WE ARE HOME!
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| Knife Island ~ We are home! |
It didn't take long for us to remember that we had champagne on ice. Dave popped the cork and we toasted (the whole bottle) to our wonderful journey. We sat there, savoring our joy and talking about new adventures aboard Mystic.
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| Celebration at Knife River ~ July 6, 2013 |
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