Wild and Three

There’s nothing like the gut-dropping sound of the prop grounding out, or the teeth-rattling vibrations that follow. If you’re at the helm, it’s a sound you never forget. Especially if you are 13 years old, and your dad has given you the privilege of driving the boat. For my husband Mark, it was especially memorable: It was 1975 and he was fishing off a 16-footer with a 70-hp Evinrude outboard, with his dad and younger siblings at Isle Royale, way up in Lake Superior, where services—and even radio contact—can be hard to come by. “My dad never let me forget it,” Mark told me 40 years later. Which

was maybe why he had to go back to that big island—with me and our three young kids aboard our 38-foot 1980 Marine Trader Trawler, Mazurka.

Isle Royale is a haven for wilderness boaters, an archipelago of shoals, tiny islands and inlets to navigate and explore full of remote anchorages,