Apostle Island boat tour 8-31-25 Full Review in description

The below review is my personal opinion and feeling. Your mileage may very, so to speak.

Apostle Islands Kayaking AKA Apostle Islands Sea Cave Kayak found at bayfieldkayak.com

Their website is nice and somewhat misleading.
Booking online is easy as well as texting with “Bob”, the person in charge. They really don’t have a brick-and-mortar location that I could see on our travels.

We booked a 11AM Sunday self-guided motorboat tour. Meaning I would operate the boat with a “spotter” boat nearby for help and to provide knowledge of the area (history). It’s made very clear in the paperwork needed to be filled out that the boats and guides are independent contractors and all responsibilities are waived.

We chose this tour due to us wanting to take our large dog and possibly extend it from a 2 hour to 4 hour rental, depending on how far out into the islands chain we travel. WRONG! This is more of guided go where we say tour….within the bay. Don’t think that you will be able to stray from the group.

Saturday Bob texted and asked us to push our time from 11AM to 2PM. We agreed, this gave us the opportunity to sight see more and still have the ability to do a double tour if needed.

Sunday Bob texted us again and asked us to push our time from 2PM to 5PM…knowing sunset is 7:30 we agreed hoping to get awesome sunset photos from the water. (The days were clear and sunsets were great the prior days.)

In preparation for the tour, we scouted the launch on Saturday. It is a public launch with no stored company kayaks or boats. Odd?

Sunday, we arrived at the dock early. Gathered our items and put the dog’s life vest on. No boats, no guide. Another group of three arrived and they were worried they had gotten scammed. We all waited. We texted Bob, no usual immediate answer. Finally Bob texted and said the guide was running late and we would still get our full time out on the water.

Jason our guide showed up around 5:30 with a larger kayaking group. He had to drag all of their kayaks in (8) and go get our motorboats. I’m pretty sure Jason may have been drinking…but, none of us were getting in any vehicle with him….no proof, just a suspicion.

After a ton of boat jockeying we were on the way at 6:30PM. Jason said “don’t worry, we’ll stay out and get sunset photos and I will set out light to make the caves glow. It will be a great time!”

Disclaimer: we own a small motorboat, 2 canoes and 4 kayaks. Not our first rodeo in boats!

With little to no instructions, especially with 3 boat motors running we were told to run full speed. Well, getting into an unknown vessel and told to run full speed is a tad sketchy!! Not to mention, I’ve NEVER ran a boat top speed at plane in a group. Trying to get up to speed in someone else’s wash with a nervous dog was dangerous! Felt like we were near ejection at times, earlier Jason disabled the shutoff tether. Once the kinks were worked out, we made it to the first stop. All was good from there. The shoreline is amazing and does not disappoint. The boats were small enough to drive right next to the rock walls and sea stack. One of the highlights was being able to drive all the way into multiple caves. Truly unique!!

I felt a little creepy as it was all privately owned with big houses in view. Kind of like a “garden walk”, but on water. We were under the gun of day light and followed the guide with little “self” time.

Once the tour was over. No sunset photos. No glowing caves….” Needed to get back before dark”. We were again told to go balls out. I was determined to be first and not in the wash. We took off. The other group now had an issue…I assume the same we had. Jason turned back to help. We did not. On a new lake and in a different vessel, I chose to use my GPS and try to make it before the blue hour disappeared.

Take away summary:
Text communication only.
Your time will most likely get bumped.
Guides are not historians or safety qualified.
You don’t get into the islands or park area.
The boats are someone’s personal fishing/pleasure boats being rented out.
“self guided” is a really loose term.