With Waterford in the lead, we departed Ontonagon at 7:30 a.m. bound for the Black River. Rains, heavy at times, had stopped by that time. Patchy fog became moderate to heavy at times, completely obscuring our view of the Porcupine Mountains. These are the tallest in the Midwest with elevations of 1200 ft above the lake. We didn't even get a glimpse!
Fortunately, the fog cleared enough for us to find the entrance to the Black River with relative ease. We had had varying reports of this harbor --- "too shallow", "plenty of water", "no problem". So we decided to go in and take a look while Day Dreams waited outside the entrance.
Above is the way it should have looked ----- instead, the rains from the night before had the river swollen and rolling with a swift current and lots of debris. As we went in, we saw that 6 fishing boats had filled the available wall space, leaving no room for two 40 - ft trawlers. The trick would be turning around in the narrow channel with the raging current and 2 hairpin turns to get back out to the lake. Captain Garry did a great job of maneuvering Waterford back through the opening. Whewwwwww --- Day Dreams took over the lead while we got our heart rates back to normal levels!
On to Plan B --- our second option was Saxon Harbor just 17 miles farther along. However, the only info we could get indicated depths of only 6 feet ---- so on to
Plan C --- just continue on to Madeline Island Yacht Club in the Apostles. It made for a little longer day than usual, but because of our early start, we were able to get docked and settled in by 5 p.m.
This is a lovely marina on the largest of the Apostle Islands, with a great view from our back deck of Bayfield, WI across the way.
Doug and Jan hosted cocktails on the bridge and then we walked into "town" checking out restaurants. We ended up back at the Pub, just a stone's throw away from our dock. Dinner was delightful and the sunset even better! Perfect end to a rather exciting day!Tuesday, July 9
We had planned to take a dinghy tour around Madeline Island, but the weather foiled our plans. The day started out foggy with rain forecast for later in the day. We thought we had time for a bike trip 7 miles to Big Bay Park. When we got to the park, a check of the radar forced us to high tail it back to the dock --- made it back just as the raindrops began to fall!
The afternoon was spent on rainy day projects --- Garry cleaning a shower sump with his able assistant, Jan doing laundry and Doug working on the itinerary. We got a break in the rain during cocktail hour. Jan introduced us to Rick, whose wife has family on the island and who has sailed all around these parts for years. Rick went over charts with us, making many recommendations for ports and anchorages illustrated with beautiful photos he had taken. It's people like Rick who enrich our experience along the way.
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Needless to say, all we ordered was bottled beer!
By the time we picked up our pizza (NOT from Tom's), the raindrops were beginning to fall again. So we quickly pedaled back to Waterford and called it a night.
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