On maps of Wisconsin, Door County is the outthrust thumb extending northeastward into Lake Michigan. Eighty-five miles long and lined with blocky cliffs of dolomitic limestone, the Door Peninsula divides the sheltered waters of Green Bay from the wide expanse of Lake Michigan to the east, ending in a chain of rocky outcroppings—the Grand Traverse Islands—that lead north toward Michigan’s Upper Peninsula like a series of stepping stones laid haphazardly across a pond. A glance at a chart of the region reveals a wealth of opportunities for small boat sailors. But while the region’s tall cliffs, undeveloped islands, clear water, and cedar groves were appealing, it was the narrow passage running past the peninsula’s northern tip that really drew me: a strait known as Porte des Morts—Death’s Door. What sailor could resist?
True, the name has nothing to do with sailing. It’s a 17th-century French reference to an incident preserved in the oral history of the region’s indigenous peoples, in which hundreds of warriors were killed in a storm, or battle, or both—accounts vary—at the foot of the peninsula’s cliffs. But it’s also true that hundreds of ships were wrecked in and around Death’s Door throughout the 19th century. The official 1906 Sailing Directions for Lake Michigan, Green Bay, and the Strait of Mackinac have this to say about the passage:
There is a strong current setting in and out according to the direction of the wind, and many vessels have been lost in consequence. It is frequently so strong that sailing vessels can not make headway against it. The coast is rock-bound and certain destruction awaits the craft going ashore. Sometimes the current is against the wind.
Even after the installation of a lighthouse on Pilot Island at the eastern end of the strait in 1858, passing through Death’s Door remained something of a gamble.
Strong currents. Rock-bound coasts. Shipwrecks. Certain destruction. If a rounding of Cape Horn entitles a sailor to a golden earring, a passage through Death’s Door had to be enough to justify an ice cream cone and some smoked whitefish from Charlie’s Smokehouse in the tiny village of Gills Rock at the northern end of the peninsula. I started plotting the series of evasions, obfuscations, and outright lies that would be necessary to clear my calendar for a week of sailing. As long as I made it back for my mom’s birthday, I figured I could pull it off.
Strong currents. Rock-bound coasts. Shipwrecks. Certain destruction. If a rounding of Cape Horn entitles a sailor to a golden earring, a passage through Death’s Door had to be enough to justify an ice cream cone and some smoked whitefish from Charlie’s Smokehouse in the tiny village of Gills Rock at the northern end of the peninsula.
I wanted to launch at Sturgeon Bay, the deep inlet that nearly bisects the base of the Door Peninsula. A canal finished the job in the 1880s, creating a shorter and safer route between southern Lake Michigan and the ports of Green Bay, and making a sail-and-oar circumnavigation possible. That would have given me a week of sailing—100 miles, more or less—and greatly simplified the logistics of retrieving my car and trailer. FOGG, my Whitehall-inspired cruising dinghy, was more than ready, having just completed a successful cruise on Georgian Bay. All I needed was time to stow a few groceries.
But the weather forecast for the first few days was all whimper and no bang, full of flat calms and pitifully weak breezes that might require more rowing than the crew would tolerate—always an important consideration, particularly on solo trips. Later in the week, stiff southerly winds would necessitate a 50-mile windward leg along a cliffy lee shore exposed to a 200-mile fetch, in gusts of 25 to 30 knots. Certain destruction awaits the craft going ashore. So, Plan B:
I’d launch from Gills Rock, sail eastward through Death’s Door, and continue north for fifteen miles, passing east of the first few stepping stones—Plum Island, Detroit Island, Washington Island—to spend a night or two on Rock Island, the Land’s End of Wisconsin. Instead of a week-long circumnavigation, I’d make a weekend trip of it, and avoid the forecast high winds entirely.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Rock Island, once the private vacationland of Chicago businessman Chester Thordarson, a self-educated electrical engineer who built the world’s first 1,000,000-volt transformer in 1904, was now Wisconsin’s most inaccessible state park: no roads, no bridges, no cars, and little development beyond a few trails and pit toilets. Even bicycles are prohibited. The island’s narrative arc—private estate to public land—was as appealing as its dense hardwood forests, wandering trails, rocky beaches, tall cliffs, and historic lighthouse. I loaded the boat on the trailer and headed for Gills Rock.
While the threat of bad weather can never be entirely discounted on the Great Lakes—winds of 95 knots have been recorded at Death’s Door in early summer, with waves topping 20 feet—I figured that the biggest obstacle would be finding a place to park my car and trailer. But almost unbelievably, there were no signs prohibiting overnight parking at the ramp in Gills Rock. Apparently the northern tip of the peninsula was too far outside the main tourist habitat to necessitate draconian restrictions. Before long, I was afloat, with my gear and groceries loaded into drybags and strapped down for the trip.
The forecast, sadly, seemed all too accurate. FOGG drifted around in the lightest of light winds, trying to tack northward without much success. I arranged a few boat cushions to create a nest on the leeward side, pulled on a hat to block the sun, and settled in. The sail flopped around dismissively above my head, occasionally settling into shape for long enough to pull us a few yards farther away from our destination, which remained stubbornly upwind, getting no closer. Bright sun, blue skies, and no wind. I amused myself by counting rocks on the bottom thirty feet below, and contemplating an appropriate motto to inscribe on a brass plate on FOGG’s mast partner, a touch of elegance that might help counteract the somewhat raggedy appearance of the crew. Forced to rely on the barest remnants of my high school Latin, which I knew had been questionable at best even when I was still attending high school, I settled tentatively on Pigritia Iugis—Sustained Indolence. Or, maybe, Perpetual Sloth. Either translation seemed appropriate.
An hour later, Gills Rock was less than half a mile behind us. And yet, we were still moving, gliding along ten yards off the thickly wooded shoreline, which was as close as I could get without scraping FOGG’s keel on the blocky limestone shelf lining the rocky shore. Ten years ago the rocks beneath the boat would have been dry land, evidence of wildly fluctuating water levels. Thinking of that, though, would lead me to uselessly pessimistic grumblings about climate change. I set the thought aside.
The sun rose higher into the sky. The surface of the water was molten glass. From time to time, tiny minnows darted back and forth under the shadow of the boat, brief flashes of life in an otherwise empty sea. I couldn’t feel the slightest hint of wind.
Exciting stuff, sailing. The leaves hung lifeless from the tall oaks and maples along the shore. Occasionally a steep-roofed chalet or vacation home revealed a hint of its presence—a cedar-shake gable visible for a moment through the trees, or a set of steep stairs climbing up into the shadowy bluff from the water’s edge. A dragonfly buzzed past in a glimmer of blue and green, loud as an outboard in the still air. A hot summery silence hung over the day, and I felt no urge to row. Pigritia Iugis, after all. The wind would fill in, or it wouldn’t. It didn’t seem to matter all that much. The sky was the bluest blue and the water was a deep clear green and FOGG would get wherever we were going without any help from me.
Slowly, vaguely, imperceptibly, the coastline bent eastward, a gently curving distortion of space-time that seemed to have nothing to do with any motion through the water. Leaning comfortably against the leeward rail, I watched the land pass by: a wide shelf of limestone under knee-deep blue-green water; a broad stretch of bouldery beach; a band of square-edged cliffs that might have been built from Lego blocks the size of refrigerators; a thick forest of cedars and hardwoods covering the blufftops. Moment by moment, rock by rock, tree by tree, leaf by leaf, we rounded Table Bluff and sailed into Death’s Door. The wind, what there was of it, veered from north to east as we rounded the corner; it would be headwinds all the way, then. But here, at least, the narrow channel funneled the faint breeze into something more.
I had been about to break out the oars, abandoning the thought of a day-long bout of slothful lounging. Now, leaving the oars on the side benches, I sheeted in on a starboard tack, tied off the sheet to an oarlock with a slipped half-hitch, and steered northeast across the channel, toward the southwestern tip of Washington Island almost four miles away. Our heading was more than 90 degrees off our intended course, but the wind was pulling, the sail was taking on a gentle curve, and FOGG was trailing the first faint ripples of a wake.
As FOGG drew closer to Washington Island, the wind picked up and veered even more southerly. I felt rewarded for my refusal to resort to auxiliary power. I was able to steer a bit south of east now, sailing past the north side of Plum Island, which stood like a watchtower in the center of the Death’s Door passage. Two long tacks would take us through Detroit Channel, out Death’s Door, and into the open lake beyond.
I didn’t have a chart—I had printed and laminated a couple of placemat-sized topographical maps of Door County instead, saving forty dollars in the process—but I vaguely remembered that the eastern end of Detroit Channel was too shallow and too rocky for keelboats. For all I knew, it might be too shallow and rocky for FOGG as well. One way or another, I’d soon find out.
We brushed past Plum Island’s northwestern tip a couple of boat lengths offshore, giving me a good look at what I was missing. Once the site of a Coast Guard small boat station, the docks and grounds were now open to day-use visitors. A long stretch of wooden jetties, a few white clapboard buildings in mild disrepair, a couple of powerboats docked alongside, thick hardwood forest fringed with broad rocky beaches. Had there been more of a breeze earlier in the day, there might have been time to stop ashore for a while. Now, though, I had to keep moving.
After bumping and dragging FOGG’s centerboard and rudder over a weedy stretch of shoals that extended more than half a mile north off Plum Island—a chart might have been handy after all—I continued into Detroit Channel, the passage separating Plum Island from Detroit Island to the north. It was my kind of place, all thick forest and narrow sandy beaches—no houses, no roads, no people. I knew there were a few vacation homes on the island’s northern end, but the land alongside the channel was completely undeveloped.
It might have been a nice place to camp, but FOGG was too heavy to drag up onto the beach, and there wasn’t much of a sheltered anchorage. And besides, I was committed to Rock Island, having arranged to meet my wife there later in the evening. She was bringing her summer camp staff to the island by ferry for a mid-summer retreat, and they would be watching for me, and probably delaying their supper until my arrival. Ending the day early wasn’t an option.
But I wanted to continue to Rock Island anyway, supper or no. I’d been there before, but not under my own power. This time I’d arrive in style, as the master of a vessel—a self-reliant seafaring wanderer among the crowds of tourists who rode over on the passenger ferry from Washington Island each day. And if the resident park ranger was as inattentive as I remembered, I thought I might even get away with mooring FOGG in Thordarson’s massive stone boathouse, the most prominent remnant of his tenure on the island. “At either end of the social spectrum there is a leisure class,” 1960s-era Yosemite climbing bum Eric Beck once remarked. I knew all too well which end of the spectrum was mine. Sneaking in was the only way I’d ever get to spend a night in a billionaire’s boathouse.
The passage through Detroit Channel was perfect sailing. We had a good wind now, from the right direction. As I had guessed, only one tack was required, which I delayed until FOGG was in the knee-deep rocky shallows, barely a boat length off the beach. At the last moment, I turned offshore onto a port tack. The low-lying silhouette of Pilot Island and its automated range light lay dead ahead on our new heading, marking the end of the Death’s Door channel. I didn’t plan to go that far, though. As soon as I thought we could clear the southern tip of Detroit Island, I tacked once more, turning east again.
We made it. Barely. A wide pavement of yellow-green limestone slabs, big as kitchen tables, lay just beneath the water, extending far off Detroit Island’s southern tip. With water this clear, and calm, there was no danger, but it was a route only open to the shallowest of shallow drafts. I could have walked beside the boat and kept my knees dry. The rudder didn’t bump—not quite—but I made sure to uncleat the downhaul so the pintles and gudgeons wouldn’t take a hit if we did touch bottom. Soon enough we were out Death’s Door, past the shoals, and sailing up the east side of Detroit Island.
On the open lake the wind was southerly, a perfect breeze for Rock Island. At least, it would have been perfect if there had been more of it. As it was, we were back to ghosting along with me slouching to leeward and wishing for shade. Eventually we left Detroit Island behind. Nothing much changed. The wind was still light; the sun was still hot; Washington Island, the next stepping stone, displayed the same hardwood forests and stony beaches; the water remained as clear and green as bottle glass, revealing blocks of limestone scattered across the lake bottom twenty or thirty feet below. Or ten feet below, or five. Or three—shoals ran all along the eastern side of Washington Island, apparently. I pointed FOGG toward Hog Island, half a mile offshore. Best to keep some distance.
This was leisure class, sure enough. I set my $.59 autopilot—a bungee-and-line tiller tender—and slumped against the leeward gunwale. The wind held steady, pushing us along at better than rowing speed despite the apparent lack of motion. Idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean—except that all at once a tiny pale blur came into view, a white smudge on a dark shore somewhere far ahead. Could it be Thordarson’s stone boathouse on Rock Island?
I checked my placemat: yes, it was just possible to connect our current position west of Hog Island to Rock Island’s harbor with a straight line. That pale smudge really was the boathouse, then, visible from here despite the low-lying spit of land on Rock Island’s southern tip that, on paper, seemed to block the line of sight. We were three or four miles away. I’d be in time for supper after all.
Thordarson’s boathouse, designed by Chicago architect Frederick Dinkelberg and finished in 1929, dominates Rock Island’s small harbor. The two massive stone arches of the boat bay rise from the water like castle gates, flanked by smaller doors on each side, all set in white-gray walls of gently sloping stone. Two full stories above the cavernous water-level interior, a stone platform supports a vast stone hall, 40’ wide and 70’ long. The peak of the roof is six or seven stories above the water’s surface. The hall’s elegant proportions, wide eaves, broad overhangs, huge arched windows, and red slate roof combine to create an aesthetic that evokes—in me, at least—visions of Heorot, Hrothgar’s famous mead-hall from Beowulf, towering “high and horn-gabled” above the harbor.
I dropped my sail ten yards outside the harbor, unstepped the mast, set the oars in their sockets, and rowed in past the jetty where a Cape Dory sloop and a 20’ power cruiser were already tied up for the night. Above me, on shore, I heard a distant chorus of shouting: “Hi! Tom!”—my wife and her summer staff were there waiting, waving a welcome. After a quick wave in response, I rowed FOGG into the harbor, gave a last well-aimed pull before shipping the oars, and glided to a stop inside the left-side bay of the boathouse.
The shadowy cool light of the interior was a welcome relief from a long day of sun and light winds. Swallows swooped around the massive steel beams supporting the ceiling, their nests pasted to the corners of the walls. A set of iron chains dangled from davits above each mooring space, unused, probably, since Thordarson’s time. Though there was room for at least half a dozen boats the size of FOGG, the space was empty except for us.
I tied up to a couple of horn cleats, hung a fender over the side to protect the hull, and unloaded my gear onto the stone floor. By the time I was finished, my wife had arrived. Leaving FOGG tied alongside the stone platform, we headed for the campsite for supper.
The next day brought no wind, but I didn’t care. After my long bout of mandatory indolence under sail, I was happy to spend the day ashore, exploring Rock Island’s shady trails, wading along the low cliffs near the beach to find the figures chiseled into the stone by Thordarson’s master carver, visiting the historic lighthouse, and skipping rocks with my wife and her camp staffers. Later, while my wife and her staff worked on camp planning, I wandered around the hall atop the boathouse, admiring the huge stone hearth, the balcony, and the hand-carved furniture, wondering what it must have been like to have enough money to bring such a grand dream to life.
That evening after supper I invited Leo, one of my wife’s staffers, to have a go at rowing. An experienced paddler, he hadn’t spent much time with oars, but he picked up the basics quickly. We puttered around near the harbor, neither of us ambitious enough to go too far. While Leo rowed, I lounged in the bow seat watching the sun sink slowly toward the water, casting the pastel glows of a midsummer sunset over the water. We returned to the boathouse at twilight, where I tied FOGG up for the night before retreating to our campsite again.
I’d have to leave early the next morning. The return trip to Gills Rock would be another long windward passage in light airs, twenty miles down the west side of Washington Island. Worse, heavy winds—gusts to 30 knots—were forecast that afternoon. Given the timing, there’d be a good chance they’d catch us right in Death’s Door. Rock-bound coasts, I thought. Certain destruction awaits the craft going ashore. But only after another punishing day of sitting for hours in the hot sun without enough wind to keep FOGG moving.
By breakfast, I had a new plan: I’d sail to Jackson Harbor on the north side of Washington Island and tie up at the marina there—two miles of pleasant sailing in well-protected waters. After meeting up with my wife and her staff when they arrived later on the passenger ferry from Rock Island, I’d hitch a ride with them back to the mainland via the car ferry from Washington Island, where my wife would drop me off at my car in Gills Rock. With the trailer in tow, I’d ride back to Washington Island on the car ferry to retrieve the boat.
My grand plans for a week-long Door County circumnavigation had come to this, then: 20 miles of sluggish drifting in the baking-hot sun, a day wandering around Rock Island, two nights sleeping in a tent, a bit of rowing, and three trips on the commercial ferry to Washington Island, packed in with the other tourists like an untidy pile of luggage. But somehow, as I hoisted the sail and set out for Jackson Harbor, with FOGG surging forward smoothly on a cool morning breeze and the autopilot handling the steering duties, I couldn’t manage to feel the appropriate level of disappointment. Grand plans or not, I’d managed to pass through Death’s Door unscathed. It would be ice cream and smoked whitefish for lunch, after all. •SCA•
Tom Pamperin is a teacher, writer, and small boat sailor from northwestern Wisconsin, but currently living in Poland. He has been cruising the Great Lakes since the 1990s, with occasional trips farther afield. His first book, Jagular Goes Everywhere: (mis)Adventures in a $300 Sailboat, is available from Small Craft Advisor, or at www.tompamperin.com.
Hey, thanks for the comments, everyone. I still have hopes for the full circumnavigation, stopping off at lots of little Door County towns. Breakfast at Al Johnson's? A show at Peninsula Players? Lots of cool, less-civilized little harbors on the east side, too.
Another excellent read by Tom Pamperin. Thanks for sharing.