sailboat tours sister bay wi

Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours Online Reservations

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Reservation / Cancellation Policy

Our Cancellation policy is simple, strict, but fair. If cancelling at least 2 hours before the departure time, you will receive 100% credit for a tour another day or be charged a 10% cancellation fee. The choice is yours! If you want to cancel and we are not contacted by you within 2 hours of the departure you will be considered a “no-show”. No-shows will not receive a refund. If the weather is bad due to high winds, lightning, rain, storms in the area, unsafe conditions we will text or call you to cancel or move your reservation. Cancellations made by our staff due to weather or occupancy issues will receive a FULL REFUND if you are not able to join a different cruise.

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Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours

Get out on the water TODAY! Choose a narrated cruise to see Peninsula State Park and the islands around or a cruise north to Death’s Door. The narration is informative and entertaining! There is also a live music sunset cruise that you can enjoy. Specialty Cruises also go out to see the fireworks and other destinations. Tours available Monday-Saturday. You haven’t seen Door County until you have seen it from the water!

Private Charters available

The Norra Dorr is a custom catamaran built in 2017 for Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours.

• Door County’s newest and largest tour boat Double decker – upper sun deck
• Fully enclosed lower deck
• His & Hers full bathrooms
• Snacks and non-alcoholic bar
• Full surround sound system
• 30mph capability
• 125 passengers comfortably
• wheelchair accessible
• ample parking

10707 N. Bay Shore Drive

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Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours

Come cruise aboard our 149 passenger, double decker tour boat docked in downtown Sister Bay. We offer daily narrated tours to Eagle Bluff Lighthouse, Death’s Door and the many islands, bluffs and beaches surrounding Door County. Enjoy the sun on our upper level sun deck or find shade and refreshment on our lower bar deck. Don’t miss our Sunset Live Music cruises (Monday thru Saturday) and special fireworks trips scheduled throughout the season. On board we offer refreshments and snacks. ADA accessible.

10707 N. Bay Shore Drive

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Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours

10707 N Bay Shore Dr Sister Bay Marina Sister Bay, WI 54234

• (920) 421-4444
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Boat Tours, Water Adventures, Family Friendly, Boat Tour, Family Friendly, Water Adventures, Tour, Outdoor Activities,

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• Service Animals Welcome
• Wheelchair Accessible

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Because life's too short to stay home …, at sea in door county, from sister bay, a tall ship and a double decker take tourists for a ride..

© Beth Gauper

There's a lot of water in Wisconsin, but only one place that's surrounded by it: the northern Door Peninsula.

It's really an island, since the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal connects Lake Michigan to the slightly more tranquil waters of Green Bay. From there, the peninsula is lined by beaches, limestone cliffs, lighthouses and picturesque villages.

All of the views are good, but the best are from a boat.

You can rent a kayak or take a double-decker launch tour. Or you can catch a ride on the Edith M. Becker, a 65-foot two-masted schooner that has sailed around the world but now is at home in Sister Bay.

Formerly known as the Appledore III, the wooden boat has a romantic past, and captain Peder Nelson loves to tell about it.

Named for Appledore Island in the Isle of Shoals, on the New Hampshire-Maine border, it was built by Herb and Doris Smith in 1984.

"When Herb was a kid, he sailed out one day with a man named Skipper Day — isn't that a great name? — and he saw a girl standing in the door of a lobsterman's shack on the island," Nelson says. "When he dated Doris years later, he realized that was her."

Shortly after Herb and Doris finished the Appledore III — "Doris caulked every seam," he said — they put their two small children on the boat and took off for a 1½-year trip around the globe, their second.

They wrote books about their voyages, and built more boats: the steel-hulled Appledore IV, which now gives Lake Huron cruises out of Bay City, Mich., and the Appledore V, which operates out of Key West.

Nelson was captain of the 86-foot Appledore II in Key West when he bought her mothballed sister, renovated the boat and sailed it down the St. Lawrence Seaway to Sister Bay in August 2011, with Hurricane Irene nipping at his heels.

He renamed it for his great-grandmother, another survivor who grew up in Sister Bay.

"When she was 6 years old, she came from Germany in a wooden schooner with cholera aboard," he said. "They were throwing bodies overboard, but she survived. That was the 1880s, and she lived into her 90s, so I was able to know her."

On a fine breezy day in late June, Nelson set off from Sister Bay with a crew of two other certified captains he'd picked up in Key West, Noah Waldman and Kelsey Haas.

Once out of the harbor, they hoisted the sails and caught the wind, but Nelson kept the motor running so we could cover more ground.

"I run a fine line between boring people to death and terrifying them," he joked.

Heading south, he pointed out the Sister Islands and the shoals where the schooner Meridian went down in 1873, a site beloved by divers and bass fishermen.

It was a busy day on the bay. Smaller sailboats glided by, and a speed boat flung a parasailer high into the sky.

As we passed Ephraim's Eagle Harbor on the way to Peninsula State Park, he showed us the notches on the headlands that mark the water line after the last ice age.

Limestone juts from the sides of these wooded bluffs, which were clear-cut in his great-grandmother's day, Nelson said. Then barges would back up to the bluffs, blast off the stone and carry it to Chicago.

© Jon Jarosh/DCVB

Now, people come from Chicago and other cities to build stone mansions on the reforested bluff.

There's more space available on the 149-passenger double-decker launch from Shoreline Cruises, which also offers trips south to Eagle Bluff and north to Death's Door.

Trip Trip: Door County cruises from Sister Bay

Buy tickets at the kiosk on the Sister Bay marina.

Edith M. Becker: Sail Door County offers cruises on the two-masted tall ship as well as the 40-foot sloop Passage North.

Wind dictates which direction the boats take, either south toward Fish Creek or north toward Ellison Bay.

Sister Bay Scenic Boat Tours : The double-decker tour boat offers narrated trips south to Peninsula State Park and Eagle Bluff Lighthouse as well as trips north to Death's Door. It also offers sunset tours with live music and swimming expeditions.

For more, see Outdoors in Door County and 10 splurges in Door County .

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This Underrated Coast in the Midwest is Full of Freshwater Adventure

Wisconsin’s coast—with its cliff-jumping, sea kayaking, and winter surfing—offers plenty of fun experiences..

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Sister Bay is one of the beautiful hamlets found on Wisconsin’s coast.

Photo by Nejdet Duzen/Shutterstock

From Milwaukee and the beaches of Lake Michigan to the wild rocky shores of Lake Superior, Wisconsin doesn’t get its coastal do. This is the nation’s “Fresh Coast,” and the adventures here are fresh, to be sure.

Picture it: Cold-water surfing. Scouting for shipwrecks. Climbing dunes and leaping off cliffs. Chasing waterfalls and napping on empty beaches. Wandering a tribal park and catching ribbons of northern lights. You could fly over the Dairy State, but then you’d never experience what can happen on—and near—the water.

This is how to spend a day (or three) on the Fresh Coast.

Milwaukee Art Museum’s iconic Burke Brise Soleil, movable sunscreen “wings,” was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Photo by JHVEPhoto/Shutterstock

Find art on the water in Milwaukee

Some 30,000 works of art sit inside the Milwaukee Art Museum , but the pièce de résistance is the museum itself. Designed like a bird alighting on the shore, the museum’s Burke Brise Soleil, aka its “wings,” stretch open and shut twice a day—a 217-foot wingspan that also flaps gently at noon. The museum is set right on the waters of Lake Michigan, and while there you can wander the surrounding paths and gardens, where every angle offers a new perspective on art, architecture, and water. And the inside of museum is also a knockout: The walls are bedecked with paintings by O’Keeffe, Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Warhol, and Rothko.

Surf on a storm in Sheboygan

Some call Sheboygan the “Malibu of the Midwest,” but Malibu doesn’t know how to scrape a windshield, much less surf winter winds on Lake Michigan. Just north of Milwaukee, Sheboygan’s surfing season technically runs year-round, but the best waves rollick from August to April. The die-hard surfers are out there in January, riding 25 mph winds in 30º F temperatures. Even in September when the air is warm, a wet suit is essential.

If you’re not looking to test your buoyancy in fresh water—another added factor in Great Lakes surfing—hit the beaches for some wild spectating. Scout out North Beach or Kohler-Andrae State Park on a windy morning, and you’ll see Sheboygan’s signature show.

The Cana Island lighthouse, on the shores of Lake Michigan, is one of Door County’s popular attractions.

Photo by Keith Homan/Shutterstock

Hunt for lighthouses and shipwrecks in Door County

With nearly 300 miles of shoreline, Door County has one of the longest coasts of any county in America. You can probably picture it—it’s the thumb part of Wisconsin’s hand shape.

The entire area is part of the Niagara Escarpment, an ancient wall of rock that stretches from here to the eponymous New York waterfall. The rocky bluffs make the waters particularly treacherous, earning the tip of Door County a wild nickname: Death’s Door. Roughly 250 shipwrecks have been documented here, with about 25 easily accessible with shipwreck diving or clear-bottom kayak tours.

Then there’s the county’s lighthouses for those who prefer solid ground. With 11 beaming structures, Door County has the most lighthouses of any county in the USA. At a minimum, check out Cana Island Lighthouse in Baileys Harbor and Eagle Point Lighthouse in Peninsula State Park.

Chase waterfalls in Marinette

Wisconsin is awash with waterfalls, but Marinette County has 15 to itself. So this is a great spot for a quick waterfall-athon. A $5 day pass to Marinette County Parks is ideal: Most of the waterfalls are within a one-hour drive—and most require just a short hike to the churning cascades. Eighteen Foot Falls and Long Slide Falls in the Marinette County Forest, plus Strong Falls at Goodman County Park are each standouts, though the tread on your hiking boots will determine your destination.

After waterfall hunting, you’re less than an hour from Green Bay—a fine spot for a waterfront toast (and perhaps some requisite cheese curds).

Kayak the Apostle Islands

There’s a movement to turn the Apostle Islands into Wisconsin’s first national park, and that should tell you where to set your expectations for this national lakeshore. The 22 islands along 12 miles of coast make this spot decidedly Caribbean-esque, especially where the sand turns to cliffs and the water turns turquoise. Book a kayak tour from Bayfield (or head out on your own) and float into dark coastal caves, among dots of forest, or even inland to the rivers and sloughs.

The other iconic activity here is a boat tour—the Grand Tour , to be precise. Your captain will cover 55 miles of scenery in roughly 2.5 hours, and you’ll see why they call these islands the “jewels of Lake Superior.”

Camp on Madeline Island

Madeline Island is technically the largest of the Apostle Islands, but it’s not a part of the national lakeshore. It offers a distinctly different kind of adventure.

A 20-minute ferry ride out of Bayfield lands you on this island sanctuary, where nature blends with art and easy-access amenities. One minute, you’re camping at Big Bay State Park and hiking along the rocky coast of Lake Superior, the next you’re throwing back a Spotted Cow at Tom’s Burned Down Cafe . (Or maybe you’ll be sipping demure cocktails at the Inn on Madeline Island. )

Explore Frog Bay Tribal National Park

The nation’s first tribal national park sits just beyond Bayfield, on the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation. Frog Bay Tribal National Park may only be 175 acres, but good things come in this small package. The park is a symbol of a growing movement: Its status as a tribal national park permanently protects a large tract of at-risk boreal forest, right on the edges of Lake Superior.

With a 1.7-mile rustic trail system and interpretive signs in English and Ojibwe, this spot is less about breaking a sweat and more about contemplating and appreciating your world. It’s a beautiful spot, indeed—especially when it’s one you don’t fly over.

Sister Bay Private Charters

Elevate your celebrations with our exclusive private boat charters, accommodating up to 125 guests! Immerse yourself in the luxury of a private cruise tailored for various occasions:

• Birthday Parties
• Family Reunions
• Social Group Gatherings

Contact us to customize your experience by setting up the perfect time, route, desired number of passengers, live music, narration, catering options, and trip duration. Let us turn your special moments into extraordinary memories on the water.

Fill out the inquiry form if you have any questions or are ready to book. We will get back to you by phone usually within 24 hours.

Request More Information

> daily tours, > specialty tours, > bus charters, > private charters, > groups (10 or more people).

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Park in the lot directly across the street or @ 2272 Sunset Rd. in the city lot.

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