Sailing in North Dakota?

We were just two hours into the trip, and I was already adrift and naked. The sailboat was tracking away from me, and the lake water was endless and hazy blue to all points of the compass. A minute before, as the thirty-four-foot Sovereign ticked up to seven knots in a strong wind, I’d been surfing off the stern, hands clenched around a rope, my clothed body dragging and skipping on the water of Lake Sakakawea (pronounced sah-kah-kah-WEE-ah), one of the region’s best-kept boating secrets.

Our sailboat—a gleaming white seagull of a craft with teakwood floors and a cabin that sleeps five—left from the marina at Hazen Bay around noon. It was mid-July, windy, sunny, ninety degrees and rising, and Mike Quinn, a U.S. Coast Guard–licensed captain who guides overnight voyages on the lake, stood at the wheel. “Let out the headsail a little bit,” he said. “OK, now let off the main cleat.”

Three friends and I had driven nine hours from Minneapolis to meet Quinn for a two-day participatory sailing trip on Sakakawea. The lake, the country’s third-largest manmade reservoir, reaches 178 miles across the state. Part of the Missouri River, it appeared as a giant squiggle on our map, working west from the middle of the state. We knew almost nothing about the lake, but rumors of a nearly boat-free inland sea that, in size, rivaled Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the great reservoirs of the Colorado River in the desert southwest, had prompted us to sign up for the trip, site unseen.

I was curious to see what sailing in North Dakota could entail. Wheat fields and the arid Great Plains seem the antithesis of anything nautical or maritime. What sailing soul, I wondered, would live in such a landlocked locale?

That person, I soon discovered, was Mike Quinn, a gregarious free spirit of fifty-eight years who works a day job as a municipal judge. Quinn runs guided day trips and overnights on the lake through his company, Sail Sakakawea, captaining experienced sailors and first-timers alike on the lake he’s sailed for years. “People don’t believe that you can sail in North Dakota,” Quinn said on our first morning at his home in the tiny town of Hazen. Over coffee and eggs, Quinn told tales of his time on the lake, pulling anecdotes from his trips with family, friends, and clients, and drawing descriptive comparisons with locations as far-flung as the Caribbean and the planet Mars. “Crystal clear blue water, coal, and scoria deposits on the hills, brick-red pumice on the shore, you’re going to be amazed,” he promised.

We launched from the marina on Hazen Bay, a twenty-minute drive from Quinn’s home, near the eastern end of the lake. The giant lake—a 368,000-acre reservoir with 1,200 miles of shoreline—was created in 1954 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the colossal Garrison Dam in central North Dakota. Named after the young Shoshone guide who led Lewis and Clark through North Dakota in 1804, Sakakawea seeps far west and into the canyons of the state’s precipitous Badlands region; it reaches depths of up to 180 feet.

Stanley Barton, a friend from Minnetonka and an experienced sailor, stacked the anchor chain in a hatch as we motored out. Digital gauges mounted above the cabin door flickered to life. “This is beautiful,” said Barton, who grew up in Milwaukee, sailing on Lake Michigan. “We’re going to have some real sailing today!” Another friend, T. C. Worley, and I worked below deck organizing gear, stowing sleeping bags, and putting sodas and steaks on ice. Captain Quinn stood at the wheel, a polished stainless steel hoop, four feet in diameter and with six spokes. “We’ll get wind out beyond this bay,” he said.

Our plan was to sail for the afternoon and into the evening toward the slowly sinking summer sun. We’d anchor in a bay near the start of the state’s Badlands region, where Sakakawea casts its long arms into the dry hills and desert canyons. We’d dive off the boat and swim, then hike into the wild hills during short breaks on land. Finally, we’d sleep on deck out under the stars, grilling dinner on the boat before being lulled under a velour of unadulterated silence, of absolute North Dakota nothingness.

But first I needed to find my swim trunks.

Every water skier knows that sinking feeling of a swimsuit tugged by fast-moving water or shorts ripped clean off, bare buns feeling the rush of water as you go down with the tow rope. Before meeting Quinn, I wasn’t aware that it could happen off the stern of a sailboat. “We call it ‘body dragging,’” Quinn had said earlier. “You hold onto the rope or that ladder on back and ride.”

I calculated the feat, staring back at the wake. The sun baked the boat deck. It’d been a couple of exhilarating hours pulling sheets, tying off ropes, and working the boat at Quinn’s command. I was ready to jump in. “Seven knots, now’s the time,” Quinn said, looking at a gauge.

We were flying northwest on a tack, alone on a choppy plane that stretched miles ahead to the empty shore. “Grab the ladder and ride!” Quinn shouted over the wind. But my friend, Shawn Jeppesen, climbed down the ladder first, the bottom rung submerged in Sakakawea’s rushing blue. He looked up at me before splashing down. “Here goes,” he said.

A minute later, black hair slicked back, his body dripping, Shawn clambered up and over the stern, a huge smile on his face. “Wow, you gotta try that!” he said.

I took things a step further, lowering onto the ladder, and then slipping back on a fat trailing rope to skim along for a whole three seconds before—whoops!—my shorts were gone. And then the rope was gone. And then I was floating free, alone and adrift, the sun staring me down from on high.

The proverbial man overboard could easily be lost to Sakakawea’s vastness. Sailors on the lake bring flares and emergency supplies. Marine-band VHF radios crackle on each of the mere forty or so sailing vessels Quinn estimates sail the lake at any given time. But none of this came to mind as I treaded water, waiting for the Sovereign to make its wide circle and return. Stanley spotted my swim trunks in the water. “Dude, your shorts!” he said, jumping in to retrieve the sheen of blue nylon flittering on a wave.

After dinner in a tight sidearm channel, we sailed back to the main lake as the sun started setting. Wind blew uninterrupted from hundreds of miles across the plains, a gust pounding the mainsail. The boat heeled hard to starboard, all five of us grabbing hold. “We’re gonna have to tack!” Quinn yelled. “Pull, pull, pull!”

The Sovereign’s compass spun as the boat swayed, pans and cups crashing off counters in the cabin below. Quinn cocked a foot up against a wall, gripping the wheel and holding the keel hard as the craft submitted to the wind. “Shawn, grab that sheet!” he said. “Undo that cam, now pull!” We skimmed sideways on a darkening body of water, the mainsail near perpendicular with the horizon. Spray soaked us all. But then the sail filled again, and the Sovereign took the port tack. Soon we were heading back to the southwest, back to a wide and empty sea.

That’s how our trip with Captain Quinn went. We were five men acting like boys, for two days straight. No cares. No real schedule. Just a vague destination somewhere out beyond the blue horizon line.