Day two in the San Juan Islands. What a joy it was to walk down to the marina this morning and hop in my boat, without any of the trailering hassle. It was extreme low tide, and some of the closer boats (mostly dinghies) looked like they might have been touching bottom. My girlfriend always has a keen eye for sea life, and she quickly pointed out all the things on the sea floor that are not normally visible right underneath our boats: crabs, shrimp, small fish, and huge sea stars. The whole marina had just become a big saltwater aquarium.
We took a fun little excursion over to Deer Harbor on Orcas Island, weaving our way through the archipelago of small forested islands along the way. It’s amazing how out here you can experience such abrupt transitions between smooth and choppy water, and how the air can so suddenly change from hot to cold as you round a point. I hope we got some great GoPro footage. Our destination looked far away on the map, but in the Whaler we got there in just 20 minutes. The route took us near a reef area called the Wasp Islands that is the most common place in the San Juans for boats to run aground. I still don’t have a depth sounder, but the SonarChart feature in my Navionics mobile app came to the rescue. It gives a very detailed map of the sea floor. It’s not as good as real-time depth information if you’re close to the bottom, but it enabled me to just avoid areas where running around was even a possibility.
Deer Harbor is a cute little village with a restaurant, an ice cream vendor, and lots of boats. After our short exploration there we got back in the boat and took the scenic route back. We went through a narrow channel called Pole Pass, looped around Crane Island and headed for Jones Island, which is a marine state park. Finding no room at the dock at Jones, we just came back to Friday Harbor, passing and outbound ferry on our way in. It was again nice to just tie up the boat and leave it in its slip, while we drove up to Roche Harbor for lunch.
If you’ve never been to Roche Harbor, it should be on your bucket list. It’s a beautiful historic town with a 150-year history and amazing views of the posh yachts in the marina and the islands beyond. We scored a primo outdoor table with a view to enjoy our fish and chips. On the way back we explored English Camp and the lighthouse at Lime Kiln point. If you don’t know about the Pig War, look it up. Tomorrow we’ll have another early start. We’re catching a 6:00 a.m. inter-island ferry to Orcas, taking our car this time instead of the boat.
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