Sailing to the Apostle Islands’ Dramatic Caves

In the nearly 20 years I’ve been sailing on Lake Superior, I’d never made it to the dramatic, outermost sea caves on the northern edge of the 21-island archipelago known as the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.

But earlier this summer, I made up for that oversight.

The outing was part of a two-day sailboat delivery from Superior, Wisconsin, the port from which the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald — a 729-foot-long Great Lakes freighter — departed on Nov. 9, 1975.

It sank the next day with a loss of 29 lives during a storm that produced 100-mph winds and huge waves.

My significantly more mellow journey ended around 70 miles later in Bayfield, Wisconsin, a picturesque village in the southwest corner of Lake Superior that looks as if it were plucked right out of a New England postcard.

The journey was a delight, including an overnight stay in the burg of Cornucopia, population 103, and one day of challenging winds.

But exploring the ochre-hued caverns on Devils Island was an unexpected treat that made the trip even more memorable.

These outlying sea caves are widely considered the most spectacular and impressive in the archipelago.

They were sculpted over millennia by powerful storms that come charging across what the Anishinabee (Ojibwe) people call Gitchigami, the globe’s largest freshwater lake.

Ferocious waves have carved out deep, echoing chambers, towering arches and tunnels here that extend far back into the red and gold sandstone.

If you don’t have your own vessel, visiting these erosional formations requires a sailboat charter, sightseeing boat trip or, the National Park Service advises, an advanced, open-water kayak journey with an outfitter.

Smaller caves can be found closer to Bayfield and even on the mainland. They include Sand Island, which boasts lovely, intricate multicolored rock faces and vibrant green moss. And the popular Meyers Beach — which can be reached by an accessible, 2-mile cliff hike via the Sea Cave Trail or a short paddle — also features sea stacks and arches.

But it’s the outlying islands that are affected most by the towering breakers produced by winter storms. They can travel more than 150 miles from the northern (Canadian) side of the lake and reach heights of more than 30 feet.

Slicing into the islands’ relatively soft sandstone, they have carved out grottoes more than 100 feet deep.

Better yet, some of the caves are surrounded by striped, unevenly shaped pillars of orange, red, gold and brown rock that were laid down millions of years ago in the Pleistocene era and look as if they would be at home in a national park in the Southwest.

My journey began in Superior, where I met up with Bill Moore, who owns La Bateau, a 45-foot Jeanneau Sun Odyssey sloop that he’d wintered at the Barkers Island Marina.

But Moore moves it to Bayfield in the summers for his own use. He also offers multiday captained trips — no experience required — on La Bateau as part of the Apostle Islands Charters fleet.

Our flotilla was organized for late May by Thom Burns, a retired Naval officer and Iowa native who has run the Northern Breezes Sailing School in Minnesota’s Twin Cities and the Apostles for several decades.

He also leads trips to the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands and even the Irish Sea. He’s crossed the Atlantic and taught thousands of students to sail over his long career. Now in his 70s, he’s mostly focused on training instructors.

Moore, several veteran sailors on La Bateau and I met a half dozen other boat owners and their crews that Friday afternoon when winds were strong and blowing more than 25 miles per hour. Because of those conditions, Burns decided conditions would be too rough on Saturday for the rest of the group and put off the flotilla’s departure until Sunday.

But he gave Moore the go-ahead to take La Bateau out on Saturday morning for a brisk test. We added Chris Cisler and his 16-year-old son Owen — a first-time sailor — and sailed out into stiff winds.

Both Owen and his father were grinning from ear to ear as we launched over waves and heeled (tipped sideways). And they were still smiling when we dropped them off back at the marina.

Later that afternoon — minus the Cislers — we sailed La Bateau out the South Channel into whitecaps along northern Wisconsin’s rocky and heavily forested shore.

We were immediately in the great expanse of Lake Superior, the globe’s largest freshwater lake at almost 32,000 square miles, or 350 miles long and 160 miles wide.

Moreover, it holds 2,900 cubic miles of water, representing 10 percent of the world’s surface fresh water. And in some spots, it’s 1,300 feet deep.

With the 20-knot breeze coming from the northeast, we headed upwind on a close reach for the first several hours, rounding over three-foot waves, which made for exciting sailing.

Near Port Wing, some 15 miles into our voyage, the winds slowed and we finished the day using our diesel engine to help us get to Cornucopia’s Siskiwit Bay Marina after dusk, where we had a tasty dinner of vegetarian lasagna.

We awakened to thick fog and the plaintive cries of loons. Moore stayed on board prepping the boat for departure and talking to the marina staff about the weather.

But the rest of the crew strolled into the village, where I had a caffe mocha at the Cornucopia Coffee and Sweet Shoppe.

While there, we met a couple of young women from the Twin Cities who were out for a 100-mile bike ride. And because we are all somehow interconnected, it turned out one of them had gone to high school with my two younger children in Middleton, Wisconsin.

The winds were light for the second day of our trip. But because we were far ahead of the rest of the flotilla — which left that morning from Superior at sunrise — we had time to head for Devils Island before sailing on to Bayfield.

We anchored upon arrival about 100 feet from shore. Then we fired up the outboard motor on our dinghy and made several trips to explore the caves, where the afternoon sunlight was flickering off the crystal-clear waters.

Even though the waves were less than a foot in height, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would be like to be caught in the caves when six- or 10-foot rollers came crashing in. And 30-footers, yikes.

If you’re hearty enough, you can swim in Lake Superior once the surface waters warm to around 70 degrees by late July or August.

But there was still ice hanging on the undersides of the caves during our late May adventure, so I stayed in the boat.

And while we explored the caves, we saw a couple having lunch on land. They were most likely hiking the island’s trails and visiting its historic lighthouse, which was built in 1901 and still has its original Fresnel lens. Camping spots are also available on the island