Since 1994, Lake Superior Magazine has given out its annual Achievement Award to individuals and groups who have contributed significantly to Lake Superior and its peoples. This year, with long overdue recognition, we honor … Bonnie Dahl, author of Superior Way, The Cruising Guide to Lake Superior.
BRIAN PETERSON / ©2017 STAR TRIBUNE
No one knows Lake Superior quite like Bonnie Dahl.
A meticulous note-taking science teacher by training and a sailor by passion, Bonnie created what many call “the bible” of Big Lake cruising – Superior Way.
“She really was a mentor and heroine,” says longtime sailor Angele Passe. “She has made the water part of the Lake alive for the common people, for the recreational boater, because otherwise it would just be known by the wonderful people who run the commercial boats.”
Angele’s husband, Jim Passe, rear commodore on Lake Superior for the Great Lakes Cruising Club and port captain at Port Superior Marina near Bayfield, Wisconsin, agrees. “They literally opened the Lake to the sailing, cruising community,” he praises Bonnie and her husband, Ron. “Many of us became very adventurous sailors because of them.”
Just how did Bonnie’s work open the waves for recreational boaters and sailors?
It starts with finding the right co-captain – Ron Dahl.
“We met in St. Olaf College, and he was a year ahead of me,” says Bonnie, then adds, joking. “After he dated my roommates, he got around to me.”
They found each other to be “keepers” and married in 1961.
By the time they met, Bonnie was already enamored of sailing. She’d worked as a nanny for a family with four sons and took them to their sailing lessons. One son had an X-Boat, a sailing dinghy. “That’s how I got the yen for sailing. I also grew up with a family that did a lot of camping. … I’ve just always had to be on the water.”
After they got jobs in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, Bonnie, a high school science teacher, and Ron, an elementary school teacher, bought a 12-foot sailboat. The inland lakes they tackled were a far cry from their future on Lake Superior, but one storm in that 12-footer did baptism them to the fickle nature of all waters. They were sailing with their children, Peter, then 8, and Kristin, 4. “We got caught in a really bad storm,” recalls Bonnie. They had the children retreat to the cubbie below deck, and all ended well.
“We got home in the storm … it was such a thrilling experience, and we were so impressed this little 12-foot sailboat could take the storm and huge seas over the bow.”
They were hooked on sailing and wanted to try Lake Superior, but needed a bigger boat.
Serendipitously, they heard of a 30-foot sailboat available and soon met a man on Madeline Island. “He brought us down inside and showed us the head and the galley. It was just like camping only it was on water. We signed the contract, and we went from a 12-foot boat on the lakes of northern Wisconsin to a 30-foot boat on Lake Superior.”
After each school year, they committed their summer to sailing the Lake. “We did not know a thing about sailing big boats,” says Bonnie. “We used the Apostle Islands for the first month to learn how to sail and then we were going to go to Duluth and back.”
If you had any doubt about Bonnie’s meticulous memory, you need only inquire about those first voyages. She can still recall in amazing detail the course of the first 1974 voyage, and others that followed – nearly 50 years later. She remembers, too, Big Lake storms.
How did she and Ron keep returning to the Lake despite the storms? “My faith has been a big part. If it wasn’t for my faith, I don’t think I could have done it. I feel closer to my Maker on the water than any other experience. There have been times when we’ve just placed ourselves in God’s hands.”
With that confidence, they soon ventured to Isle Royale and on to remote Ontario shore anchorages. They joined the Great Lakes Cruising Club, and Bonnie added her anchorage annotations to the club’s Harbor Reports. In 1980, she and Ron received the club’s Award of Merit, a once-in-a-lifetime honor for those who contributed extraordinary service to the club over three years.
They graduated from their 30-foot Dahlfin to the 35-foot Dahlfin II. “That’s the boat we had for 40 years,” says Bonnie.
Over a few years, Bonnie had accumulated more than sufficient knowledge, notes and hand-drawn maps to create a cruising guide to the Big Lake. Her work was ground-breaking. Even GPS could not warn about something like a giant underwater hull-crunching rock at a remote wilderness anchorage. But Bonnie could.
JOHN DANICIC / COURTESY ST. OLAF COLLEGE
“We’ve seen some of her original notes,” says Jim Passe. “If there is one thing that gives you confidence in her descriptions, it’s her penmanship and her notes.”
And Bonnie did, putting out the first edition of Superior Way in 1983. She worked on three revised editions with the help of then-Lake Superior Magazine owners Jim Marshall, himself an avid boater, and Cindy and Paul Hayden. Those editions came out in 1992, 2001 and 2008. For 25 years, Bonnie also wrote for Cruising World and other national boating magazines, which helped her write users guides to Loran-C and GPS navigation aids.
But her master work, Superior Way, has never been duplicated on the Great Lakes. Many recreational sailors say her guidance gave confidence to casual boaters, under sail or under motor, to sample the joys of wilderness stops.
“Bonnie contributed a great deal of information,” says Niels Jensen, past commodore and current treasurer of the Great Lakes Cruising Club. “She has really opened up cruising on Lake Superior that would not have happened without her.”
After taking early retirement, Bonnie and Ron went far beyond the sweetwater seas with Dahlfin II. They traveled through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean and on to the Caribbean and Central America, where they cruised for three years. During hurricane season, they‘d dock the boat and travel by land across South America.
Amid all their adventures, though, it seems the Big Lake might still have been calling.
Bonnie says, with rare shyness, that she’s noticed something about the crashing of saltwater vs. freshwater waves. “It sounds different … and you can just laugh at me.”
She does, of course, have proof. She tested her theory at the shores of the freshwater Lake Titicaca in Bolivia after months on and beside the saltwater oceans.
“Close your eyes,” she suddenly told Ron, always by her side, as they watched the rolling water. He closed them … and once again proved Bonnie to be accurate.
“I didn’t have to say a thing, and he said, ‘Lake Superior.’” n
Find past Lake Superior Magazine Achievement Award winners at LakeSuperior.com
Since 1994, Lake Superior Magazine has given out its annual Achievement Award to individuals and groups who have contributed significantly to Lake Superior and its peoples. This year, with long overdue recognition, we honor … Bonnie Dahl, author of Superior Way, The Cruising Guide to Lake Superior.