That Time I...
Moored a Boat on Gull Rock




The Gull Rock Lighthouse sits on Gull Rock, a tiny outcrop on Lake Superior between the mainland of the Keweenaw Peninsula and Manitou Island. The lighthouse helps prevent ships from slamming right into the shoal and is quite the lonely place. Aside from an outhouse that drains directly into the lake, there's nothing else here. A few scrappy plants, a gull or two, and most importantly, no dock.
That means it's tough to land a boat here. Currents in the area are often treacherous, and the exposed location offers no safety from wind and waves. On one lucky day in 2017 though, I managed to land a boat here without damaging anything! I was on a worktrip to the Manitou Island Lighthouse for the Keweenaw Land Trust (where I worked at the time) with my old friend Andrew Ranville. We decided to go for a landing because conditions were just so perfect. A slight puff of a breeze kept the boat from knocking up against the rocks, but not so much that it'd blow our line off a rock we'd tied it to.
Naturally, there's not much to do here once you're actually ont he island unless you have access to the lighthouse. We didn't, so stopping by was mostly for bragging rights more than anything. Weirdly, Andrew had to take a call while he was here, a few miles offshore on a deserted island with no dock. Had our boat blown away, we'd have been in a bit of a pickle. At least we knew we had cell service though.