The point of going is to be gone
Issue 73 : Jul/Aug 2010
This summer — for the first time in my adult life — I will have a 12-week vacation. By the time you read this issue, Jerry and I will have just left the dock for our first big cruise: a counterclockwise circumnavigation of Lake Superior.
We plan to start in the twin ports of Duluth, Minnesota/Superior, Wisconsin, at the bottom of the lake’s sock in the southwest corner, right around the summer solstice (June 21) and return to the same dock in mid-September. By then, fall will be closing in on the lake once more and we’ll be focused on winterizing our baby, covering her, and patting her farewell for the winter. There’s a bit more sailing season left, even on our big, cold northern lake in September, but not if you’re bound to the deadlines imposed by the Annapolis boat show. So we’ll head home, unpack boat gear, do the laundry, pack the truck full of our booth furniture and supplies, and head east to the show in Maryland’s sailing capital.
Our summer circumnavigation will include such highlights as the Apostle Islands of Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Lake Superior’s eastern shore along Ontario’s Pukaskaw Provincial Park, the Slate Islands where the idea for this magazine was born, the towns of Rossport and Red Rock and Nipigon along the Ontario shore, Western Ontario’s sailing capital Thunder Bay, Isle Royale (Michigan’s wonderful national park), and the western shore of Lake Superior along Minnesota’s rugged coast. Although we will be able to dally and smell the roses as we never have before with two- and three- week vacations, the time will fly by. We hope to post an occasional blog. If that works, we’ll let you know through our email news releases, the Press Gang News. If you’re not on that email list, contact to make it so.
Mostly out of touch
We’ll still be reading articles that are submitted and picking up our mail from time to time along the way, but we’ll mostly be out of touch. I do mean really out of touch. Cell phones are pretty much useless along most of the unpopulated coasts of Minnesota, Ontario, Michigan, and Wisconsin and WiFi and Internet are even harder to find than a good cell connection. Our mail will be forwarded by pony express. We don’t mind, though. We think that’s the point of being gone: actually being gone.
This is our great, grand experiment: can we truly vanish while two issues of the magazine (September and November) are put together without us? I’m betting it can be done. A whole bunch of Good Old Boat crewmembers (our ground crew) are betting the same thing. This summer will set Jerry and me free just as it will free the folks who have been putting the magazine out for the better part of the last year (while I breathed heavily over their shoulders).
If this works, we’ll do more of it. We’ll still have our hands on the reins but with an increasingly light touch. As the semi-retired traveling founders of this magazine, we have some winter travel plans for that yellow trailerable project boat . . . the one Jerry slaves over in our backyard. We’re going to take our notebooks and cameras to distant shorelines and to the lakes in America’s heartland and Canada. As long as we’re able, we hope to meet you there, see your boats, learn about the neat gimmicks you’ve invented, and tell your stories.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
