Long run east to Whitefish Point

Friday, June 9 -- Grand Island anchorage to Whitefish Point State Dock (90 miles)

We planned a long run today to take advantage of fair weather -- a light wind from the NW so that the waves would be behind us -- and to get a chance to see the shipwreck museum at Whitefish Point. We were underway by nine and pulled into the state dock at Whitefish Point at 2:30. We ran along this same shoreline earlier in the week, and it was just as quiet today as it was then. We saw two other cruising boats the entire day, plus two downbound freighters that were converging on Whitefish Point about the time we were. And a few people on the beach now and then. It is very quiet up on Lake Superior!

The state dock at Whitefish Point is just a harbor of refuge, not a marina, so there was no electricity, water or restroom facilities. But there were some interesting commercial boats, and we were a mile's walk from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. We found out when we visited that the boat closest to ours is the dive ship for the Shipwreck Museum. The one to the right is an old-style commercial fishing boat -- built to be able to work in bad weather. 

The shipwreck museum is located here because Whitefish Bay and the east end of Lake Superior (roughly the stretch that we traveled today and will travel tomorrow) is where roughly half of the 600-odd shipwrecks on Lake Superior have occurred. This is a result of (1) a lot of traffic going to and from the Soo where the lake narrows and (2) ferocious seas when storms come out of the northwest, which is common late in the year. The Edmund Fitzgerald sank 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point in such a storm in November 1975 in 25 to 30-foot seas. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum organized an effort with the Canadian navy (she sank in Canadian waters) to recover the ship's bell and replace it with one inscribed with the names of the 29 men who perished. The recovered bell is prominently displayed in the museum. 

We grilled pork chops on the dock and then spent the evening inside again due to cold and mosquitos. We did see two freighters passing off Whitefish Point while grilling, and had a nice sunset behind the old fish houses.

 

The rest of the photos are from our run along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, for those who didn't get enough the first time. This stretch of sandstone cliffs extends for about ten miles along the shore. You can see that it was very calm when we started out, but by the time we rounded Whitefish Point we had about one-foot waves coming from the northwest.