Gene's Trip
Hello Everyone
Thanks to all 28 of you for the support youÕve pledged to environmental causes in conjunction with the sea-kayak tour that I completed Tuesday around the perimeter of the newly designated Gaylord Nelson Wilderness Area in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. With the drastic recent declines in public funding of natural resources stewardship at both the state and national level, it is more important than ever that private donations of time, effort, and resources be directed to the issues of greatest concern to each of us. As of today, you have collectively pledged a total of over $2700 to the 15 non-profit groups listed below. (The totals do not include those of you who havenÕt yet identified an amount and/or specific cause for your donation. Please let me know soon, so I can include your name and a list of causes in the follow-up article and/or letter of thanks to be published next week. Neither pledge amounts nor your chosen environmental group will be linked to your name.)
The trip began at about 1:00 pm Monday from Meyers Beach, at the western end of the National Lakeshore. The kayak, a very fast fiberglass and plywood Òstitch and glueÓ model built from a kit, was packed with about 3 gallons of water, 3 pounds of food, clothing for a variety of situations, and all necessary safety, navigational, and communication gear. The total weight of boat, equipment, and myself was approximately 280 pounds, and I arranged the load to keep the bow slightly more elevated than usual in anticipation of waves that, fortunately, never materialized.
There were 1-2Õ glassy swells from the north-northeast at launch, and they became northeast at 1-3Õ from around Sand Island to Outer Island, but the very light northeasterly winds that began the trip died completely after sunset, and only resumed with enough force to generate a short obliquely opposing chop from the east during the portion of the tour between Outer and Michigan Islands (about 1 am to 3 am Tuesday morning). Light winds and following seas then assisted me for about 6 miles to Madeline Island, after which both wind and waves were essentially calm for the last 10 miles. Air temperatures mimicked the water temperature of around 60 degrees Fahrenheit when offshore overnight, but were at least 10-15 degrees cooler during the brief stops made on Outer and Michigan Islands in the wee hours. All in all, the weather was ideal for a physically demanding trip of 711Ú2 miles over 201Ú2 hours, and although I was either damp or wet during the entire time, a combination of neoprene and lightweight wicking fabrics kept me comfortable throughout.
I wish I could say the same for the boat itself, which, graceful and fast as it is, managed to irritate several places on my lower back and posterior for most of the trip. (The problem was cushions that were too stiff and abrasive for skin contact over so long a period of perpetual motion.) Even so, the injuries being minor (if unforgettable to a weary brain), I managed to maintain an average speed of about 4 mph while paddling (31Ú2 to 41Ú2 mph during most of the 20 non-resting segments of the trip) and a trip average (including about 3 hours of rest on 5 different islands and during gps fixes) of almost 31Ú2 mph. At an average paddle stroke rate of 30-40 per minute during the first half of the trip and maybe 20-30 thereafter, the total number of strokes was probably between 30,000 and 40,000, at 9-12 feet per stroke, each of which shoved aside displacement waves weighing roughly 280 pounds. Before I aggravate any engineers or physicists among you, letÕs just say that the human body is an amazing thing, even at the ripe age of 50, and so amenable to repetitious actions that my mind could wander from the mauve and blue pallet of late-dusk waves to the look of moon-lit rocks deep underwater, from calling loons (always happy to recognize one of their own) to the resemblance of beach boulder to bear, from the almost indistinguishable evidence of movement in relation to dark and distant islands to the brief thrill of surfing a caught wave, from the utter silence of offshore swells to the exaggerated crash of shore waves on an imagination prepared for rocks, and, yes, from pain in the back to behind. I was at no time alarmed or worried and never in doubt that I would finish the trip sans sleep. In fact, IÕm fairly confident that I could do it all again, with better back and bottom cushions and half the provisions, as much as two hours faster. That, however, will have to wait for another year.
Thanks again to each of you. The contact information for the environmental groups one or more of you have chosen for your donations are listed below. (Please ignore this if you have already sent in your donations. For the most part IÕll have no way of knowing.) If you would like an expanded list of local environmental groups, please let me know. I would also be happy to try emailing an electronic map of my positions at various times throughout the trip; however, IÕm not sure if the proprietary map creation software will allow this. Since including the map would greatly increase the size (and download time for those of you with a dial-up connection) of the email, I will only attempt forwarding a map upon your request.
Gene Lemmenes
715-774-3100
774-3111 evenings
Donation Addresses and Contact Information for Pledged Environmental Causes * Alliance for Sustainability, P.O. Box 622, Washburn, WI. 54891, info@allianceforsustainability.org * Bad River Watershed Association, checks with Bad River Watershed Association notation to Inland Sea Society, 310 Stuntz Ave., Ashland, WI. 54806, 715-682-8188, info@badriverwatershed.org * Bayfield Regional Conservancy, P.O. Box 410, Bayfield, WI. 54814, 715-779-5263, brc@brcland.org * Cornucopia Green Shed Museum (currently unknown) * Door County Land Trust, P.O. Box 345, Ephraim, WI. 54211, 920-839-9990, tcooper@dcwis.com * Friends of South Shore Estuaries, checks with FoSSE notation c/o Inland Sea Society, 310 Stuntz Ave., Ashland, WI. 54806, 715-774-3100, glemmenes@cheqnet.net * Friends of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, P.O. Box 1574, Bayfield, WI. 54814, 715-779-3397 ext. 444, info@friendsoftheapostleislands.org * Heifer Project International, P.O. Box 8058, Little Rock, AR, 72203, 800-422-0474, * Lake Superior Pathfinders, checks with Lake Superior Pathfinders notation to Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, 1411 Ellis Ave., Ashland, WI., 54806, 715-682-1232, ssandstrom@northland.edu * Loonwatch, checks with Loonwatch notation to Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, 1411 Ellis Ave., Ashland, WI. 54806, 715-682-1220, loonwatch@northland.edu * Sierra Club, 85 Second St., Second Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94105, 415-977-5500 * Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, 1411 Ellis Ave., Ashland, WI. 54806, 715-682-1223, tbeirl@northland.edu * The Nature Conservancy, 707 Main West, Ashland, WI. 54806, 715-682-5789, rsapper@tnc.org * Wilderness Society, 1615 M St., NW, Washington, D.C., 20036, 800-843-9453, member@tws.org * Women and Kids Outdoors, Cindy Schwenzfeier, 76805 Hove Lane, Washburn, WI., 54891, 715-373-5542