Monday August 2, 2021
I’m sitting on deck of the 77 foot schooner “The Inland Seas” in Marquette Harbor on beautiful Lake Superior, enjoying a cup of coffee on a hot Monday evening after a travel day from Suttons Bay, Michigan. Early this morning I met Bob Hagerman and his wife at the Thomas M. Kelley Biological Station in Suttons Bay to catch a ride north to Marquette in Michigans upper peninsula. Bob and his wife will be taking a vacation in the U. P. and said they will meet us in Sault Ste. Marie to take pictures of the schooner as we go through the locks.
Bob has volunteered with the Inland Seas Education Association for a long time. He told me he has served in every position on the boat. I first met Bob when he was First Mate and I was an instructor and crew in training while sailing on Suttons bay with Captain Tom Kelley. I also sailed with him on trips up to Escanaba with Captain Ben Hale. Bob is always a lot of fun to sail with.
When we finally arrived at the boat I quickly went below, choose an open bunk and stowed my gear for the trip down Lake Superior. We will be sailing from Marquette through the Soo Locks to a mooring on the St. Marys River, about a 3 day trip, where the staff will provide a few days of programming on the river. I met with James and Rob, other members of the crew, and we walked into town to find a place for dinner. After dinner I stopped for an ice cream and returned to the boat.
As I’m sitting on deck I notice a young family, father, mother with a small baby in her arms, and a small boy, slowly walking along the break wall towards us. They look at the Schooner Inland Seas as they walk by but the boy stops and doesn’t move. He’s looking at the boat and his mother is trying to move on but the young man won’t budge. I walk over to the railing to talk to them and try to start up a conversation with the young man but he is very shy.
The father then starts to talk to me about the boat and I start telling them what we do and about our mission and I notice the mother and father getting very interested when they discover we are different than other tall ship schooners. We are also, and more importantly, a science ship and a school-ship. They start asking a lot of questions and we end up talking together for about a half hour. I find this is a common occurrence while talking to families in away ports.
It can sometimes be difficult to attract kids to science these days without something to grab their attention first and then keep it with all the electronic distractions that so easily kidnap their young minds. A lot of children today live in cities and don’t have access to nature at a young age. Some have never even seen the Great Lakes before. A schooner is a good way to attract attention and bring them on board. But that in itself is not enough. They also need to immerse themselves in nature.
Richard Loud, in his book “Last Child in the Woods” talks about this. He points out that many children today don’t even have the opportunity to play in nature and are suffering from what he calls a “nature deficit disorder.” It’s important that we realize that these same children will be making the decisions about the Great Lakes in the not-too-distant future.
I have seen the change in children and the excitement when they are directly involved in the sampling and the touching, hearing, seeing and smelling of the samples as they dig into the benthos with their hands; Or trying to catch a flopping fish when they try to put them on the measuring board; or watch plankton under a microscope as those tiny transparent critters dash across the screen in front of them.
Science is ingrained in the culture aboard the Inland Seas. The captain and crew, the staff and the volunteer instructors all take it very seriously. Though we always try to adjust the message to the age group involved, and we all may have a different way of doing this, we are very careful to follow the guidelines so that all of our data is collected and reported in the same way every time. For this we use detailed data sheets that have been designed to provide useful data that can be uploaded to share with other organizations and that we can use to show changes and trends that we have discovered in the Great Lakes over the years, and there are many.
The following morning, we awake to a deep red sun in a hazy sky caused by the smoke in the atmosphere from the fires burning up in Canada. I’m up early and sitting on deck with a cup of coffee thanks to Jeanie our cook who gets up and makes coffee for us early risers. Jeanie is a really great cook and also takes care of our first aid needs by quickly patching us up and sending us back to work. I’m taking a few pictures of the sunrise when Jeanie says she is off to see the “fish monger”. Not knowing exactly what she means, I just have to tag along. Juliana and I walk with her over to Thill & Sons Fish market in the harbor where Jeanie selects some fresh Whitefish for tonight’s supper and then we return to the boat to prepare for departure.
We have a short meeting with the captain and are divided into two work groups. Finally, Captain Ben starts up our Diesel engine as we prepare to cast off. First Mate Rebecca jumps ashore and we bring on board the boarding platform and secure it at the bow. Before climbing back aboard, Rebecca removes our lines from the cleats on the break wall and we coil and store them on board.
We motor out of the harbor, past the break wall around 10:30 AM and set our course to ENE at 070 degrees into a very calm Lake Superior. The water has a slight undulating gray appearance reflecting the Smokey sky with a very light wind. As we set an easterly course, I look out across Lake Superior and feel that something is wrong. This is not the Lake Superior I remember, and I wonder what is going on with the environment this year.
We put up all of our sails to try and catch as much wind as possible: Main, Fore, Staysail, Jib, Jib Top and Main Top sail but the wind is so light we have to keep the diesel engaged and continue motor sailing. After the sails are up, I take the first shift at the helm. We are traveling a couple of miles or more offshore and the lake is calm out here and the air is very warm which is uncharacteristic for Lake Superior.
As I monitor the surface water temperature readings I am surprised to see it averaging between 69 and 70 degrees. I have always known Lake Superior as being very cold water. I remember camping, canoeing and fishing our way around Lake Superior with my family back in the early Sixties. It was a hot summer and I remember running to the beach to go swimming and finding the sand so hot it was burning my feet. I’d run into the water and it was so cold it would make my legs ache. Today, the air and water are both warm and we are plagued by black flies way out here on the lake.
Geanie prepares lunch for us of Soup and Grilled Cheese sandwiches. After lunch I help Jeanie in the galley with dishes, one of the many duties we share on board. We will now begin our 6 hours on and 6 hours off work shifts. My shift will begin at 8:00 Pm. and run till 2:00 AM if were still sailing.
We will be passing some of the prettiest shoreline on the Great Lakes including the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore which extends for 42 miles along the shore of Lake Superior between Munising and Grand Marias. It includes picturesque views of sandstone cliffs and rock formations, waterfalls and sand dunes. It gets its name from the 13 miles of colorful sandstone cliffs reaching up to 200 feet above Lake Superior and was designated the first national lakeshore in the United States in 1966.
I am sitting on one of the life jacket boxes on the port side watching the scenery, hoping to get some good photo’s but from this distance, and with the Smokey air, it will be difficult to see much detail and I will have to look at the chart plotter to see exactly where we are. I tease Rachel that according to the chart plotter she is heading towards a reef to make her smile. Of course, its many miles away and she just laughs so I take her picture.
We pass Grand Island, and I can see the Grand Island north shore light as I scan the horizon with binoculars. The island forms the west part of the bay in Munising and provides the natural harbor with protection from the gales out of the northwest. The shoreline running east of Munising is the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore but unfortunately from this distance I really can’t see much. Jeanie brings around water with cups for everyone to keep us all hydrated.
The Next area I can identify is the Grand Sable Dunes, rising some 300 feet above the lake, they are one of the best examples of perched dunes in the world. Perched dunes are dunes that lie on top of an existing high bluff. At the eastern end of the dunes sits Grand Marias, our next stop for the night.
As we get closer to our anchorage we drop and stow the sails and just before sunset we round a point and enter the small harbor at Grand Marias. We drop the starboard anchor with 150 feet of chain and make the boat ready for the night. I look around the small natural deep harbor and barely recognize Grand Marias. It looks so different from this perspective. I notice a small sailboat also anchored in the harbor and wonder if they are also traveling down bound to the Soo. We have another meeting and lucky for me I don’t have anchor watch tonight. It is still hot, so our First Mate Rebecca and a couple of the crew jump off the boat for a quick cool down. I settle in my bunk for the night to write in my journal and get some sleep.
I’m up at 5:30 am and go up on deck where another smokey red sun greets us for the day. We have Ham and Egg Muffins for breakfast and a meeting with Captain Ben to discuss the days sail. He said since we have a fair wind this morning, and it is from a favorable direction, we will sail off the anchor. This means we won’t be using the motor but will be putting up the sails and sailing out of the harbor like they had to do a hundred years ago. Jillian, who’s curiosity is always looking for a new place to sample, told Captain Ben she would like to take a microplastic sample while under way in Lake Superior since we haven’t taken one here yet.
After our meeting our first mate Rebecca has everyone form two lines, one port side and one starboard side, to take turns at the windless. We take turns two at a time ratcheting in the anchor chain (actually what we are doing is ratcheting the boat up to the anchor). The depth is about 35 feet here in the harbor and we have about 150 feet of anchor chain in the water. This is a good ratio, about 5:1, to allows the anchor to lay flat on the bottom allowing the blades of the anchor to dig in and hold us fast. The extra chain also acts like a large spring, allowing the boat to ride up and down with the waves without pulling the anchor off the bottom.
We continue bringing in the chain until we are now directly above the anchor. We then go to our stations and raise the sails. Immediately after raising the sails, we return to our lines and rachet in the rest of the anchor chain and secure the anchor as captain Ben sails us out of the small harbor. What a site this must have been from the shore. Everyone knew exactly what to do and it was a thrill how everything just came together like clockwork.
We set our course again to ENE at 070 degrees and are making about 4.5 knots under sail. Early afternoon and the wind starts to die again and we are only making about 3 knots so the captain suggested we get our microplastic sample now since this is just the right speed for a good sample. We all gather on the starboard side and launch the Manta trawl somewhere between Grand Marias and White Fish Point. We trawl for 30 minutes and then bring it back on board. Rachael, Amanda, and Jillian then spend the next hour processing the sample.
I have always considered Lake Superior to be my refuge of unspoiled wilderness and never thought that it could be polluted with plastics. The sample we took by the Manta-trawl consisted of a swath of Lake Superior’s surface about a foot wide and about a mile and a half long. Which means we literally just scratched the surface. Amanda takes the sample below deck to take some pictures using a small handheld digital microscope I have been experimenting with. And yes, unfortunately, even Lake Superior is not immune to micro plastics pollution.
After the sampling, we sail on East toward Whitefish Bay and soon we are traveling along the southeast shore of Lake Superior that has been called “The Shipwreck Coast” and “The Graveyard of the Great Lakes”. The United States Life Saving Service (USLSS) built 4 Identical life saving stations along this shoreline in 1876 including one at Deer Park, Two Heart, Crisp Point, and Vermillion. I think the one at Vermilion is the only one left standing.
These stations were manned by 7 or 8 people with their primary function to monitor the beaches watching for disasters and to warn off vessels that were too close to shore. They were also responsible for rescues using surf boats and life boats or the Lyle gun and breaches buoys. The Lyle gun could shoot a projectile, or messenger, with a line attached about 600 yards over the masts of a ship in distress near the shoreline. When You first think about this you may wonder how they could be much help to a boat in distress. But these 4 stations are credited with saving 1,479 people from 1885 to 1915. (Michigan Maritime Museum). The US Life Saving Service led to the US Coast Guard we know today.
Soon, whitefish point comes into view as it juts out into Lake Superior. We can see the lighthouse and it’s beaches that are littered with the bleached white skeletons of trees. They were uprooted by the lake and cast into the surf during seasons of high water and storms, only later to be thrown high on the beach to bake in the sun as the lake, never satisfied, continues to sculpt and reshape its shoreline.
About 17 miles north of this point is where the “Edmond Fitzgerald” went down with all hands in a severe storm on November 10, 1975. During that storm, there was no light from the whitefish point lighthouse because of a power failure. Wind gusts at that time were recorded at 90 miles per hour and the “Anderson”, a boat that was following behind the Fitzgerald, reported being struck by three waves as high as 25 feet. There is a shipwreck museum and a memorial located near the light on Whitefish Point.
When we make the turn around Whitefish point late in the afternoon we don’t have enough wind to even fill our sails and the lake is almost flat. We drop the sails and begin entering the Whitefish Point State Dock which is located about three quarters of a mile south of White Fish Point lighthouse. As we enter the small harbor wide of the break wall, we discover where we entered is to shallow from sand that has washed in and the captain quickly backs out. This time he enters the harbor keeping very close to the break wall where we have more depth. Once in the small harbor, the Captain turns the boat around and we tie up to the wall and secure for the night at about 6:00 pm.
It is still very warm so we all decide to go swimming. There is a small beach just outside the harbor so we climb onto the break wall which is made up of two steel walls with large boulders inside. On the top there are supposed to be steel grates but we find several missing, probably from the severe storms that relentlessly pound the break wall each year, so we have to walk on a narrow wall about a foot wide in places.
The beach is sand which ends at the waters edge where the small rounded stones are polished by the lake to look like precious gems in the sun dappled water. This is hard on my bare feet and hurts until I get past the stones to the sandy bottom again, but the water was refreshing. Still, I’m worried that Lake Superior is so warm. We hear about the changes that will take place from our warming planet but it really sinks in when you experience these changes first hand.
“According to Jay Austin, doctorate in Oceanography, working with a century’s worth of water temperature records from mid-lake weather buoys, Lake Superior’s average summer surface water temperature has been increasing about two degrees per decade since 1980.” The amount of ice has also been decreasing each decade which has also contributed to the warming of the lake much faster than was previously expected and I wonder what this all means for our lakes future.
We stay in the water for about a half hour and not get cold. Getting out of the water I stumble over the stones again and make a mental note to wear my flip flops next time I go swimming. Walking back to the boat we notice a couple of large open fishing boats up on the beach on the other side of the break wall and walk over to take a look. I take some pictures as the sun is going down. We get back to the boat refreshed from the day just before dark and I watch three small sailboats enter the harbor and tie up for the night. They may have been following us down the lake today.
The next morning we leave at 7:30 am, before breakfast, so we can get through the locks at the Soo and to our mooring on the Saint Marys River. We don’t know exactly what our mooring will be so we want to arrive long before dark. We raise our sails, the Main, Main Top, Fore, Staysail, Jib, and Jib Top, to catch as much wind as we can as we sail now South by Southeast. We enjoy a breakfast of pancakes with fresh blueberries picked on shore this morning by Amanda.
As we sail down Whitefish Bay we begin to see both the north and south shores of Lake Superior closing in. They start to come together at the Sault, like the top half of an hourglass where Superior empties into the St. Marie’s River through the Soo locks and the power canal. The river then continues on for another forty-five miles to empty into Lake Huron.
The Locks at Sault St. Marie, bypass the rapids on the St Marie’s River. Before the locks were built this was a major portage for the French fur traders and their long Voyager canoes and explorers traveling up to Lake Superior. Eventually, the French built a small lock on the north side of the river along with a warehouse for the fur trade.
An Ojibway legend talks about the rapids actually being much farther north. Geologists today agree and believe two or three thousand years ago, as Lake Superior was still draining from the last glaciers, the erosion caused the rapids to move farther down river to where they are today.
From a distance I can see the lock doors are closed and a traffic light for the lock is red as an up bound freighter is being raised to the height of Lake Superior. I can see the freighter behind the doors growing bigger and bigger and I am becoming a little concerned in these close quarters. There is also now a lock tour boat that pulls in front of us and will also be locking through with us.
Captain Ben instructs me to keep close to the concrete break wall on our starboard side. As the doors of the locks begin to open I am somewhat concerned to see the giant freighter as big as a building coming out of the locks directly towards us. The light on the lock turns green and we move forward towards the lock while the freighter continues growing closer and larger. I creep even closer to the break wall.
The freighter, the size of a huge building, moves past us down our port side as we slowly motor towards the lock. The lock-master contacts us over the radio and says to move faster since they have to lower the railroad bridge to do some quick maintenance. We speed up and watch it being lowered behind us. At this point I turn the wheel over to Captain Ben to do the maneuvering necessary to keep us in one spot in the lock before we have the lines from the lock workers.
I look astern to see the railroad bridge raised and see five sailboats pull in two abreast at our stern. Three of these are the sailboats that have been following us down the lake the last couple of days. The sailboats raft together so we all fit in the lock before the huge doors start to close.
We set our fenders along the starboard side and wait for the lock lines to be tossed to us. The lines aren’t tied off to the boat but passed one turn around our cleat with a crew member holding each line to give slack as we descend in the lock. One of the sailboats looses one of its fenders and drifts down towards us so we catch it in the hand net and pass it back.
Finally we are lowered the twenty feet to the surface height of the St. Marie’s River. We give back the lock lines as the huge doors open and we are now underway in the new environment of the river. We travel downstream for a short while passing the hydropower plant and find our mooring at the south riverbank that is less than convenient.
The river bank mooring is not much higher than the surface of the river and the deck of the Inland Seas is about 4 to 5 feet above the water so our boarding platform won’t reach the ground. We look around and find a discarded empty cable reel, some old pallets and a couple of discarded planks that we use to cobble together a ramp for our boarding platform.
As we are finishing this work the ISEA van arrives with some fresh instructors and crew members to take our place. The Captain calls us all together to debrief and discuss our trip down the lake. After this we say our goodbyes and head home. The end of another great trip.
Frank Simkins
…Last Child InThe Woods, by Richard Loud
…The Death And Life Of The Great Lakes, by Dan Egan
…United States Life-Saving Service In Michigan, by William D. Peterson
…The End Of Ice, by Dahr Jamail
…Upbound Downbound The Story Of The Soo Locks, by Bernie Arabic & Nancy Steinhause
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