[Paddlewise] Incident in the Apostles

My wife, Linda, told me the following story last night. It
was told to her by a co-worker, M, one of the participants.
Be warned that this is a third-hand account, so some of the
details may be wrong or misleading.

Last weekend M and her boyfriend B joined a group that
intended to kayak from Little Sand Bay to Sand Island in
Lake Superior's Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
During the crossing to Little Sand Island, M and another
kayaker capsized in what M said were six-foot waves. M
was wearing a wetsuit, but the other kayaker developed
hypothermia, and was evacuated by the Park Service or
Coast Guard after one of the group went to get help.

Sand Island has two group campgrounds and several
individual campsites on it that are maintained by the Park
Service. It is several miles across, and looks quite near
from the put-in at Little Sand Bay. The distance from the
put-in is about two miles to the nearest point of the
island, but about three miles to the campsites. The
proximity of the island attracts many inexperienced
kayakers, most of whom are unaware that that crossing
is considered one of the more hazardous in the Apostles
because of a stretch of shallow water that can cause steep
waves to develop.

I don't know the size of the group, but it consisted of
several people, apparently all paddling solo kayaks. No one
had a weather radio or spare paddle. M doesn't think any of
the group has a roll or good bracing skills. When Linda
recommended to M earlier this year that she learn to roll,
M's boyfriend B pooh-poohed the idea, saying it wasn't
necessary. I think M herself has been kayaking less than a
year.

Though no one had a weather radio, M says the group checked
the weather forecast at the visitor center before putting
in. When M capsized, she tried to do a paddle float reentry,
but had trouble inflating the float. I think she was rescued
by other members of the group. For a while after the rescue
they rafted up, but M was so frightened by her capsize that
when the kayaks separated, the other kayakers had to pry her
fingers off their coamings.

Satellite data indicates that the water temperature was in
the mid to low 60s F at the time. Data from the weather
buoy in the center of the west end of Lake Superior
indicates that during daylight hours on Saturday the wind
was ENE at around 20 kt with gusts to 33 kt, and that
significant wave heights in open water were running between
5 and 7 feet. During daylight hours on Sunday the winds
were WSW at about 16 kt, with 3-foot waves.

So the weather did not sneak up on them or change suddenly.
However, with an ENE wind, their put-in point would have
been sheltered by a headland to the east and York Island
north of that, so they might not have felt the full force
of the wind and waves until they were close to Sand Island.
The fetch, where it was unobstructed by the islands, would
have been two to three hundred miles. Sunday's conditions
were more benign: with a WSW wind, the fetch is only a few
miles. It appears that the group thought the relatively
benign conditions in the bay on Saturday would apply all the
way to their destination.

Linda asked M if she had ever read _Deep Trouble_, but M
had never heard of the book. Although M intends to continue
to kayak (she has a fiberglass sea kayak on order), I
suspect she will take skill development and other safety
measures more seriously now.

Chuck Holst


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