Sea Kayaking South Manitou in a day

It’s 8am on Cannery Beach, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It’s me, a chain smoking heavy equipment operator, and nobody else. He says that no overweight tourists will be at the beach until about 11, and he wants to lift the cannery up off the ground before they get there. By the end of the day, my body and physics degree will both agree that the crane and I have each expended about the same amount of total energy. To which my liberal arts education replies, “but I have been across the sea.”

The types of surf breaks

This image of different types of breaks does a fairly good job of explaining how different breaks are formed. The type we see the most often on the Great Lakes is the beach break. Though on the east coast of Lake Michigan we often get sandbars that form in deeper water simulating a bit of …

Lighthouse for Sale

At the end of August I wrote my first post, about paddling to Ile Aux Galet (Skillagalee) island, which started out intimidating but turned into a ton of fun, surfing back to the mainland.  Besides about 10,000 birds, the only thing on the island is a beautiful 1888 lighthouse, which is still active.    http://www.michiganlights.com/skillagaleelh.htm   So I …