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Sailing again:
Greetings from Washington Island, Wisconsin, on tip of the Door Peninsula.
This is the third blog about sailing the Great Lakes with Capt. Bryan Kapteyn aboard his cutter-rig Torenvalk.
I’m going to start this blog with a little bit …
About the crew and the boat
Bryan Kapteyn, who lives in Holland, Michigan, is the owner of Torenvalk. He recently retired from a lucrative sales position in the H-VAC industry.
He is exceptionally skilled at woodworking and fiberglass, having built 11 small watercraft, including gorgeous wooden kayaks. He’s also very adept with electronics.
He bought Torenvalk in 2019 and has completely refinished the wood trim and retrofitted the vessel with state-of-the-art instrumentation.
Nick Kapteyn, who lives and works in Grand Rapids, is a bartender, waiter, and fabulous cook. He’s also worked as an administrator in the restaurant business and for a carwash enterprise in multiple states.
Each night, he converses with his wife, Kate, and his three children. He and Kate dream of becoming entrepreneurs with flexible schedules that will permit them to travel and sail extensively.
Cyndy Keesler is retired from 30-plus years of employment with the University of Michigan Medical Center as a respiratory therapist and ICU data analyst.
She loves to contra dance. As a teenager, she taught herself how to sail on a small, responsive sailboat on an inland lake in eastern Michigan.
Robert (Bob) Weir is a freelance writer who intends to “work” and share stories as long as his mind and fingers permit.
Cyndy and Robert maintain a mailing address in Kalamazoo. When not on this sailing adventure, they live full-time in a travel trailer in which they tour the United States.
Torenvalk is a 38-foot cutter-rig sailing vessel, built in 1975 by Down East Yachts of Santa Ana, California. With a beam of 12 feet, she draws five feet and displaces 20,000 pounds.
She has been sailed around the globe once under a previous owner. Bryan hopes to take her on another circumnavigation, beginning in 2022.
Day 7: Saturday, June 12 – Kewaunee to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin
We’re eating salmon! While washing clothes at the marina in Kewaunee last night, Cyndy struck up a conversation with a local fisherman who gifted her with five pounds of fresh-caught filets … enough for meals over the next several days. Mmm. Good.
We’re motoring north again today. Very modest winds, not enough to propel us at faster than one knot. Waves of two to three feet on the nose make Torenvalk pitch like a hobbyhorse. We need a Celtic bagpiper to call in the wind.
After being on deck for the first couple of hours, the crew retreats to the salon, hiding out from flies that have hatched in the shallow shoal waters along the coast and, somehow, hone in on us even though we are five miles offshore.
In my previous blog, I wrote that the flies numbered a million; today, it seems like a billion. Population density: six to a square inch in many places. I count 40 on the front of my yellow sweatshirt. The seat of my pants has at least two dozen stains from where I’ve sat on them.
Ergo, “Otto” is at the helm. Bryan is also “down below,” monitoring an auxiliary radar monitor for nearby boat traffic, but he doesn’t stay long in the salon. It’s safer to always have someone on deck, viewing the horizon.
I go “topsides” with him. For the next several hours, we run the shop vac constantly; more flies arrive faster than we can suck the previous tenants into the whirlwind of oblivion in the cannister.
Close to Sturgeon Bay, the wind picks up to a glorious breeze, but we’re only a mile from our destination, so we leave the sails furled.
Arrival in Sturgeon Bay involves motoring slowly westward through a man-made shipping canal that connects Lake Michigan with Green Bay.
I’m at the helm when we pass under a bridge that has to be raised for us. Bryan steers Tornevalk into the not-spacious marina.
For supper, Nick cooks salmon—of course—and veggies on a marina-provided grill while we all engage in games of cornhole.
Day 8: Sunday, June 13 – Sturgeon Bay to Washington Island
Each night, Bryan invests a considerable amount of time studying marine data, especially the depth of the water at marinas, and on-the-lake weather and wind predictions.
We prefer to sail east, across Lake Michigan to the Manitou Islands, but the little wind we have dictates that we continue north along Wisconsin’s Door Peninsula, and we certainly do not want to motor the 50-plus miles across the big lake.
So, this morning, per his counsel, we’re all awake a little after 5:00, then showered and out of the marina by 6:30. We motor east, under that same bridge and through that same canal, back to Lake Michigan.
We have some wind, so we raise the sails and enjoy three or four knots of boat speed for about two hours. Then the winds diminish.
Before 10:00, the sails are down and the motor is on … all the rest of the way to Washington Island, a distance of more than 30 miles.
Oh, well. At least the flies are not bothersome today.
Day 9: Monday, June 14 – Washington Island
Today, we do not sail. Instead, after a five-star breakfast with super-friendly service at
Kap’s Marina and Ship’s Wheel Restaurant, where we are docked, we refuel
Torenvalk, rent a Honda van with 200,000 miles from the owners of Kap’s, and explore the island.
The
Trinity Lutheran Stavkirke is a replica of an ancient stave church like those built in Bergund, Norway. Made completely of dark-stained wood, it has a small footprint but towers to about 50 feet in height and is topped with three artistic dragons. There, we walk a winding prayer path through a woods to the church, which is hidden from the road.
Schoolhouse Beach is one of only five beaches in the world with perfectly smooth, cobble-size stones. Mostly pure white and a few with a tint of pale tan, these have been worn by water and nature to their unique state. Lying there, we are lulled by the warm sun and a gentle sounding of three-inch waves.
Rock Island State Park is located on a small island just north of Washington Island. We take a ferry there, the ride lasting a mere 15 minutes.
We tour a massive stone
boat house, built in 1929, that can accommodate two 50-foot yachts. This was intended to be part a private estate that was never constructed.
We picnic then walk 1.25 miles each way to the
Pottawatomie Lighthouse. Constructed in 1836, it is the oldest light station in Wisconsin and on Lake Michigan.
Back aboard Torenvalk, Bryan solves the problem with dinghy that I mentioned in a previous blog. The issue was that it was not possible to release a pair of lifting cables, attached to the dinghy, from the davit lines once the dinghy was lowered to the water.
Bryan installed a hook at the bottom of each davit line that we can now, with the aid of a boat hook while standing on the stern, latch onto and release from the lifting cables. The process is a little like fishing, but it works.
With this improvement in place, we lower the dinghy and row around the marina, just for practice.
Tomorrow morning, we will arise and leave the dock before sunrise. Our intention is to sail back across Lake Michigan, from Door Peninsula, Wisconsin, to Beaver Island, Michigan. The route will be 70-plus miles.
The winds are predicted to be favorable out of the north most of the day, but we will motor if necessary. Beaver Island is surrounded by shoals, and we want to be sure to arrive at our destination in daylight.
Torenvalk photos
You can find Cyndy's photos of this sailing adventure as well as other places that she and I have visited in the past two years
here.
To Bryan and Nick’s family and friends:
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