The Welcome Island

A Place in the Mind and Heart

By Marlin Bree

(Excerpted from Bold Sea Stories 2)

As evening descended, the wind died, and the cove’s water was smooth as glass, mirroring the pines and the rocky ledges. The trees turned golden, casting blue shadows in the sun’s rays.

I was on Thompson Island. I had found it, more or less, by accident.

Hours before, I had been searching for this tiny island on Lake Superior’s open waters. Instead, I was surprised by a sudden storm. The winds howled, the waves grew, and my 20-foot centerboard sloop was in the grip of a rare, progressive derecho.

Now, around me lay calm blue water surrounded by steep slopes. The wind was gone—and I knew why.

High hills and densely wooded terrain surrounded me. The storm was still raging on the open waters, but the island shouldered off the storm’s blast. 

Here it was summer again. Bright. And warm.

---

When I arrived in the island’s small harbor, my mainsail was halfway up the mast, the boom was bounding from side to side, and I was soaked, miserable, and shivery. I saw boats tied up along the bulwarks that served as a dock. As I got closer, I saw that there was no space left.

“Raft up here,” a friendly Canadian boater hollered, waving his hands. I could tie up alongside another boat.

“I lost all my fenders in the storm,” I explained. They had flown into the sky in a particularly hard downburst. Now I needed fenders to raft up alongside a boat.

“No problems,” someone said. “I’ve got an extra one. “Here’s another,” a fellow sailor added. They came up with four fenders and helped me tie them to the boat.

I looked up at my newly found friends. This was a most welcoming island—and I had been fortunate to land among fine people.

“A sauna’s good after that sail,” a Canadian boater called down to me. “It’ll warm you right up.”

A sauna? Where was I going to find a sauna? 

They pointed. Soaked to the bone and downright shaky, I went below to find a towel and some dry clothing. 

My stuff had been scattered about in the storm, even though I had it bungee’d down, but I found my clothing duffel bag. I loaded my arms with clean clothing, a towel, and a dry pair of deck shoes.

When I exited Persistence’s hatchway, I had difficulty standing up. The hours I spent fighting the storm had taken its toll on my stressed back and leg muscles. A pain throbbed in my right side, where I had been tossed against the hatchway during the knockdown. My ankle ached but was not broken as I had feared. My head throbbed dully from when it smacked the bulkhead.

But all that faded when I stood on dry land—fantastic, solid, dry land under my soaked boat shoes. I pulled myself upright and looked about.

Thompson Island was not large, but it had a jewel of a natural harbor set between heavily wooded hills. I glanced up to the north: a hill jutted skyward, brushing aside the storm winds and protecting us in this natural refuge.

Alongside the clear harbor, someone erected a wooden walkway cantilevered over the water from the rocky cliffs. The walkway circled a tree, dodged a big rock, and snaked around a cliff. Here and there were built-in rustic wooden benches. It was like somebody’s sculpture garden.

My clothing squished as I walked along a heavily wooded trail looking for the sauna. I expected something rustic, but a modern-looking A-frame wooden structure was nestled among trees. Smoke lazed out of the chimney. Beside the unpainted building was a pile of cut wood.

Letting my sodden clothing fall off me layer by layer, I entered the sauna. I was still shaking and unsure about all this, but I felt warmth: someone had stoked the fire. I threw a dipperful of water on the sauna’s hot stones and sat back on a wooden bench. Clouds of steam rose to cleanse and soothe my naked body.

I began to unwind. A remarkable sense of well-being came over me.

Whoever built a sauna on this remote barrier island certainly had uncommon good sense. They knew Superior’s chill ways. I took my time warming up, and instilled anew with the wonders of this remarkable welcoming island.

Greatly refreshed, I walked back along the harbor, crossed the boat I had rafted next to, and eased my way aboard my little boat. Persistence did a slight dip to welcome me aboard. I hung my wet clothing and gear off the boom and the lifelines, where they flapped in a gentle breeze that had sprung up. The setting sun’s heat beamed down on me.

I spent a few minutes just bobbing aboard my boat in my island paradise, so peaceful and calm.

My mind raced through what had happened only hours before. I realized I had encountered an unexpected storm and fought it on my sailboat. I had no good explanations on how a 20-foot wooden sailboat, powered by a five-horsepower outboard, survived Superior’s wild winds and high waves.         Who would believe that?

---

I had seen someone else out in the storm. I found Mike Fabius, of Thunder Bay, aboard his 33-foot C.S. sloop, Easy Blue, in the harbor. The white sailboat with blue trim was now bobbing peacefully. When the storm erupted, he had not been on the open waters, like me, but at anchor in a bay south of Pie Island. His son, Alistair, and four of Alistair’s high school friends were on board.

“We could hear the rumbling in the background,” Mike told me. The group had been ashore on the island and hurriedly returned to the boat in time to see storm clouds blocking the island’s hills. “The sky turned bright green, with some fluorescent in it. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Mike said.

“I thought we were secure,” Mike said, “but we started dragging, and the boat was twisting sideways.”

“The winds were extreme. They rotated 90 degrees.”

“That was my impression, too,” I said. “The wind came from two different directions.”

Mike told me what happened next. The rain pounded down like stone pellets, and lightning flashed everywhere.

The skipper sent Alistair and a teenage friend forward to the bow, but the boys couldn’t get the anchor up in the high winds. Mike turned his engine to full power to ease the strain. The hook continued to drag.

“The boat was leaning at 45 degrees, and I was afraid the anchor line was going to snap,” Mike said. “There was white spray moving horizontally several feet above the waves in 100-foot lengths, then pulling up like tails.”

In between gusts, the boys wrestled up the hook. The skipper turned the boat downwind.

“There weren’t a lot of choices,” Mike said. “The waves were six to eight feet coming from two directions.”

“That must have been about when I saw you,” I said.

“We saw you, too. You were moving, despite the waves.”

“Any idea of the wind speed?”

“I only thought to check my anemometer after the worst gusts had passed. It read 72 knots.” That was about 85 miles per hour.

“I heard a Mayday on the VHF earlier. A sailboat capsized. People were in the water.”

“I know them. They were headed back to Thunder Bay when their sailboat got caught.”

I nodded in agreement. The winds were the worst I had ever been in.

“Some afternoon,” he said with emphasis.

---

Shadows were falling along the harbor as I snapped on my VHF radio, called the Thunder Bay Coast Guard, and requested: “I’d like to make a long-distance telephone call.”

In my little sailboat on a remote island, I was trying to talk to my wife at home by radiotelephone. I suspected I was in trouble.

“So,” I said carefully into the mike. “How is your Fourth of July?”

“Good,” Loris answered, telling me how she and our son, Will, were getting ready to barbecue in the backyard. It was a hot, sultry day back in Shoreview, Minnesota.

“And how was your trip?” 

“We’re in an island harbor. We’re OK.”

I hoped I had found the right balance between telling the truth and not getting her worried. I did not want to cause her and my son pain.

There’d be time for the details to come out. Later.

“There was a report of high winds up north,” she said. “Parts of Highway 61 were washed out.

“I came across a storm on the way in. But we’re fine.”

I tried to sound nonchalant. I ended the call: “I think we’ll stick here until Superior settles down.”

---

I originally planned to sail from Grand Portage, USA, to Silver Islet, Canada. A friend told me, “Thompson is not to be missed.” And so, here I was in a tiny wild enclave in the mouth of Thunder Cape. I learned that Thunder Bay boater Al Wray developed the harbor.

“Al was a real character who liked to party,” Doug Irwin, onboard Chris ’N Me, said. Al was a World War II sailor and a battle survivor who discovered the beauties of Thompson Island after cruising the wild island archipelago guarding the mouth of Thunder Bay. “He liked it because it had a deep bay but was all-natural,” Doug said.

With his wife, Georgiana, and his friends, Al brought out old lumber lashed to their boats, plank by plank, and began to build the docks. They also used driftwood. When Wray died in 1985, the boaters formed a little group called Friends of Thompson Island and continued building on the island.

“They’d just go as they got the material,” Doug said, “They’d stand on the dock and say, ‘We can go a little more this way or that.’ They brought out drills and rods to anchor it to the rocks so that it’s environmentally friendly.”

“Does the area belong to the boaters?”

“It’s Crown land. It belongs to the Ontario government and is subject to its rules and regulations,” Doug explained. “One is that there can be no permanent structure, but the docks are not considered permanent. Neither is the sauna. And all buildings need to be unlocked and accessible to everyone.”

Albert Wray is not forgotten. There’s a memorial to the sailor high on the north hill overlooking the harbor.

“It’s a bit of a climb, but there are ropes to assist, and there’s a bench, so you can sit down and look over the harbor. Al would have loved it.”

---

A warm, gentle night fell early, and darkness came to the island. The only lights were those shining through the boats’ portlights and onshore, where a few hardy souls with flashlights were returning from a visit to the ever-popular sauna.

I rummaged my still-damp bilge and selected my fare for the evening’s dining. Perhaps a bit of celebration was in order. Yes, it would be a can of Dinty Moore beef stew. I carefully wiped drops of lake water off the can, opened the lid, and heated the contents on my single-burner butane stove.

Dinner done, I crawled into my sleeping bag. It had been a long, eventful day, and I welcomed some warm, recuperative sack time.

I felt the boat move rhythmically in the water and began to feel myself synchronizing with the slight movements. I could hear the water lapping gently against the wooden hull. 

Sometime during the night, I awoke chilled to the bone. I could not believe I could be so cold. I already wore long johns, a fleece jacket, and heavy wool socks, but I pulled on a woolen hat to get warm and piled a fleece blanket over my sleeping bag.

I had just fallen asleep again when bright flashes awakened me. I heard a powerful, jarring noise. I jumped up and put on my eyeglasses to look out the portlight. Lightning danced about the skies to the north, illuminating the island’s rocky spires.

The electrical display was followed by a great gush of wind that slammed into my boat, causing it to rock from side to side. The fenders groaned against the bigger boat to which I was rafted.

I remembered that my wet clothing hung from my cockpit lifelines, and boom.

A torrent of rain fell as I threw open the dodger cover. Hard pellets slammed down on my head and shoulders. I grabbed the sodden clothing and tossed it to the cabin’s floorboards. They oozed water. Then, after closing the canvas cover, I sat back, toweled off, and listened to the rain thumping on my cabin.

I’d been lucky. I’d have lost it in the winds if the stuff hadn’t been soaked and soggy. And I could not replace it. 

I began to warm up once more. My mood changed: what a fortunate person I was to be out here, in the watery world of the free—and getting smarter all the time.

And in the embraces of the welcome island. It encompassed me in my mind and my heart. •SCA•

This chapter is excerpted from long-time Small Craft Advisor contributor Marlin Bree’s latest book, Bold Sea Stories 2: True boating tales of adventure and survival. The small boat micro-cruises interested person can follow Marlin’s nautical explorations to small islands, an underwater silver mine, gold fields, sunken ships, and many unusual waterfront harbors in the U.S. and Canada.