LLNR 15545 is gone, missing from Island waters this boating season. That may not mean much to you (it didn’t to me either until recently), but what those numbers represented sure did and its disappearance has offered me yet another lesson in “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”
LLNR 15545 is (or was), according to the United States Coast Guard Navigation Center, the Red Cliff Point Lighted Buoy #4, deployed each boating season, May through October, to mark a shallow rock shelf in the waters of the West Channel just off of Red Cliff Point, guiding ships making the turn. Its appearance each spring with its red-blinking light, was like a silent “hello” marking the beginning of the boating season.
This year, it never went in.
I could find no official announcement or explanation. But with budget cuts, declines in shipping traffic, advances in navigational technology, maybe it was just not deemed “vital” any more. I don’t know. I do know, I miss it.
It is not that a boat like the Little Dipper with its shallow draft has any need to worry about running aground there. It was more like an aesthetic waypoint for me, company in the dark.
As I ease the Little Dipper beyond the breakwall of the Apostle Islands Marina in the predawn darkness, and feel my way up the velvety black waters of the West Channel, I often dim the dashboard lights to dampen the glare, leaving me encased in darkness, only those few handholds of light I can cling to along the way — the constellation of Red Cliff lights, the flicker of Schooner Bay, maybe a mast light of a sailboat overnighting at the Basswood Island dock. Then darkness until the Red Cliff Point Buoy appears with its comforting beacon.
After that, there would be the white flash of the Raspberry Island Light to the west, a little further on the Michigan Island Light to the east, but by then dawn would be gathering strength, the sky lightening. It was the Red Cliff Point Buoy (LLNR 15545) that I clung to most when I needed it in the dark.
Now, it is gone.
It’s silly, I know. Just a bobbing tin can buoy in the dark, but the dark seems deeper now without it, a bit more frightening perhaps, lonely. We all have little landmarks in our lives, guiding lights, that sometimes we take too much for granted, not realizing (or not admitting) how important they are to us until they are gone.
At least, I did with LLRN 15545. And now it too is gone. I must admit, I miss it.
— Jeff Rennicke (all photography by the author unless otherwise noted).
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