Bev and I sailed to Sand Island on Tuesday. We “shot the moon” as Patrick would say, that is, we crept across the shallow water south of Sand Island. We draw 5’ 6” so we watched the chart plotter and the depth gage as we passed over 4 sand bars. Each sand bar had 7’ so we were fine. We anchored in East Bay in 9’ of water with 100’ of anchor rode. We tried out the new dingy motor (6 HP Suzuki) as we cruised the shoreline. Because we had prepared hobo dinners while sailing over we just made popcorn for supper.

Wednesday morning we pulled up the anchor and headed for Stockton Island. It was a great day for sailing and we made 4 to 6 nts the whole way. We got out our copy of Bonnie Dahl's guide book Superior Way and found that there should be enough water at the main dock to tie up rather than anchoring. It was our lucky day; we found room at the dock and tied up for the night. The ferry boat comes in at the main dock on Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday so we would not have to move, yippee! The National Park Service puts on a ranger program each evening so we went to their campfire and presentation on “Living with Bears”. We had a very interesting chat with Captain Tom Rossini from the powerboat 401K and found out that Tom and his wife Julia live in the same development that my sister Joan lives in. In fact, one of his best friends is Joan and Tom’s next door neighbor.

We woke up on Thursday to another beautiful day with a very nice breeze out of the northwest so we decided to sail to Bayfield. We had a great broad reach all the way to the Apostle Islands Marina in Bayfield. It was off the showers and then to Ethel’s for pizza. Then the order of the day became relaxing and reading (sweet!)

After breakfast at the Egg Toss restaurant on Friday, the wind had switched to the SW at 10 to 20 nts so once again we had a great broad reach as we sailed back toward Corny. At Raspberry Bay we pulled in a reef in the main and eventually rolled in the foresail. We were making 6+ nts with reefed main as the wind gusted to 25+ nts. As we rounded the corner to “shoot the moon” we dropped the main and went under diesel power the rest of the way to Corny. It was a great 4 days of sailing in the Apostles.