July 4th Cruise to Langley at Extreme Low Tide

I was sorry to miss the Fourth of July festivities today, but it was a rare opportunity to take my new girlfriend boating. We work very different schedules, so the holiday was our first real chance to get her on a boat. Given my experience last Saturday, I was prepared for the Langley marina to be full. We packed stack lunches to eat on the boat. As luck would have it, we managed to get two hour moorage and found downtown to be unusually quiet. The sack lunches were a good idea since all the restaurants were closed.

The tide was crazy low… I missed that in my planning but fortunately it didn’t cause us any problems. However, some of the boats tied to mooring buoys were high and dry. The foot ramp from the docks up to the marina office was incredibly steep… It got even worse after these photos were taken. I suspect some of the bigger boats in the harbor were almost sitting on the bottom, and the boat launch was nowhere near useable. The unusual tide allowed us to do something I’ve never done in Langley before, which was to take a long walk on the exposed, algae-covered beach.

It was her first time in a small boat, the weather was beautiful, and she was having a great time. The short trip to Langley wasn’t enough for her, so we drove south as far as Possession Point before returning home. I burned a half tank of gas, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before. Retrieving the boat in Everett was tough. The water was down to the edge of the ramp, and I had to back my trailer onto thick mud. Beyond that there wasn’t much slope, so I had to get my car pretty far into the water. Even then I had to walk halfway across my trailer to hook up the winch, and then drag the boat across the bunks to load it on all the way (something I hate doing). Even though I flooded my rubber boots while undocking, I’d say it was a pretty good way to spend to holiday.