Like A Lake
Oct. 18th, 2010 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beige_alertMore nice weather last weekend, and Joyce and I got out in the kayaks again. We went down the Milwaukee River into the harbor and since the winds were very light and the weather all-around nice we set out across the harbor to the Milwaukee Breakwater Lighthouse, about 1km from the river. I got some photos of that, and we nosed out around it and into the actual lake, though only a hundred meters or so from the breakwater and near the gap. There is a big difference as soon as you get out of the harbor and into Lake Michigan, even with the very light winds and gentle waves. This video shows the gentle rolling waves. Mostly under a meter crest-to-trough, but some probably over a meter. Sitting in a kayak you get up on the crest and suddenly you're way up high, then down in the trough all you can see is water. The motion wasn't too disturbing at the time, it's sort of fun, really, but Sunday night lying in bed I kept thinking of bobbing up and down and up and down and up and down.
People sometimes describe flat calm water as "like a lake," which always seems very odd to me, since the first lake that comes to my mind is Michigan, and those rolling meter-high waves are the sort of thing you get on a fairly calm day. It can be calmer, sure, but then again some days thousand-foot ships get pounded into submission and the kayakers stay the heck home. The harbor is an irregular shape roughly one kilometer from shore to breakwater and four or five kilometers north-to-south, and it gets fairly churned up on a windy day. We don't have the gear or skill to be out in the lake in any serious way. Hanging out right by the harbor breakwater on a very nice day is as far as we push it. Winds tend to come out of the west, and nearest land to the east is around Muskegon, Michigan, 125km or so to the east-northeast, which is a rather longer way to be blown than we want to risk.
More photos on flickr.
People sometimes describe flat calm water as "like a lake," which always seems very odd to me, since the first lake that comes to my mind is Michigan, and those rolling meter-high waves are the sort of thing you get on a fairly calm day. It can be calmer, sure, but then again some days thousand-foot ships get pounded into submission and the kayakers stay the heck home. The harbor is an irregular shape roughly one kilometer from shore to breakwater and four or five kilometers north-to-south, and it gets fairly churned up on a windy day. We don't have the gear or skill to be out in the lake in any serious way. Hanging out right by the harbor breakwater on a very nice day is as far as we push it. Winds tend to come out of the west, and nearest land to the east is around Muskegon, Michigan, 125km or so to the east-northeast, which is a rather longer way to be blown than we want to risk.
More photos on flickr.
