Sucia Island

We made it back to Sucia Island.  This time we even stayed the night!  On Saturday, once I was done with produce in the morning and had the highly perishable items put away, we headed off on our grand adventure.  Anastaya complained that she was packing a brown bag lunch for the third day in a row.  I told her she should be happy to be packing another sack lunch because that means we're doing a lot of playing.  I don't know if she was convinced! 

Last time we launched from Anacortes but this time we tried the Bellingham launch.  Dode liked it much better because there were four lanes and the launch was a clean cement launch instead of cement covered in gravel (easier to pull the boat out with our two wheel drive van).  There was plenty of dock space next to the launch for me to stand and hold the boat while he parked and the kids used the bathroom.  In Anacortes, once you launch you need to head right out to the water.  I'm stuck circling in the boat around while waiting for Dode to get back from parking the van and then have to work my way in through the crowd of launching boats to pick him up.  Bellingham also had fresh water for spraying the boat off immediately after taking it out of the salt water, nice!  There was a free marine discovery center where the children got to explore the touch pool and even hold a fish. 

It felt a bit unreal to be leaving on the trip.  That morning, the phone had rung at 5:30 and I'd spent most of the next three hours involved with the produce co-op.  Here is was 10:30 and I was standing in the sunny harbor in Bellingham ready to head off to one of the San Juan Islands.  How lucky is that?!

The ride to the island was sunny skies and calm water.  Miriam loved the ride and spent most of it just like this.

her bird's eye view of the route

My view of the route!

Dode and I are quite unusual among adult boaters.  We always have our life jackets on.  If something goes wrong, we don't want to be worrying about keeping ourselves afloat while helping the kids. 

Elizabeth liked flying while riding

William chose to sit this way, looks comfortable doesn't it?

Our campsite. 

With it being a sunny weekend and not getting to Sucia until lunch time, we knew the docks would be full and we wouldn't be tying up to them.  We came prepared for mooring close to shore with our anchor and a few ski ropes.  Dode hooks them up so the boat can be pulled into shore and back out again.  That made it so the boat would be anchored in deep water and would not be grounded when the tide went.   We knew we did not have to have dock space, but what we didn't know is if we'd find a campsite.  The island does not have any reserved camping.  There were several left when we got there.  There is virtually no privacy for the campsites as they are all either on the edges of a small field or are right next to access trails.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the beach.  It was a really hot day and there wasn't a breath of wind.  I hadn't packed my swimsuit because it never gets very hot out on the Puget Sound and we were trying to pack lightly (and my granny suit just weighs a ton!).  I was regretting that decision big time.  They say you can get hypothermia in just 15 minutes in the Puget Sound but our kids spent hours happily playing in it.  I would have loved to join them!

The Swinomish Yacht Club was having a get together at the group camp site and they were so loud.  Bongo Drums, Singing, Whooping and Hollering.  It didn't make for a very restful night.  Even though I was short on sleep, I woke up early the next morning and saw this through the tent window.

When I first saw the sunrise, the pink went all the way to shore but by the time I fetched the camera from the boat, the colors were fading.  I was the only person in the campground wandering around and it was nice and quiet.  I was tempted to find a noisy instrument and walk around on the dock playing and hollering to give those noisy boaters a taste of their own medicine!  I walked along the shore line of the bay and got to see some of the sea shell fossils that give it its name (Fossil Bay).  I also got to watch three otters playing in the water near me.

When I got back to the tent, I saw that Miriam was working her way right out of the tent in her sleep.

Bug bites (30+) and sunburn, must be having a lot of fun!

The island is covered with beautiful red barked Madrona trees

Once I ate a quick breakfast, I hopped on my bike and set off to explore the island. I made it to the end of the road used by the ranger to get around between campgrounds and walked the 2.1 miles to Ewing Cove. (You can see the roads and trail in the map on the top of the post.)  I was gone from camp for two hours and it felt like such a vacation to be exploring on my own without having to answer questions every 30 seconds or keep a smile on my face and enthusiasm in my step constantly.  I was grateful Dode encouraged me to get out and explore.  Bringing my bike along was a bit of a headache for him to pack and I really enjoyed it on the island.  I thought the beach at Ewing Cove was beautiful and set off back to camp to convince Dode to spend the day there. He didn't need much convincing and we were soon packed up and headed over.

While I was gone, Dode made a pancake breakfast for the kids.  After they ate, they headed back into the water.  The girls found this long bull kelp and had a fun time playing with it.    They even towed it behind them when we motored over to Ewing Cove.

Where we spent our day.  It was a gorgeous beach ringed with small islands.  We just had to visit some of the smaller ones!

Remember when I said I didn't have my swimsuit?

Each of those channels were about 5 feet deep. 

Ready to cross

We've all got our life jackets in case it's a bit more than we bargained for.

My shirt dried quickly but those jeans were wet when I took them off hours later.

Almost there.  I had to carry Miriam because she refused to wear her sandals and the barnacles were hurting her feet.

There are lots of weathered rock on Sucia.

This one guarded the harbor where we spent the day

Perfect attire for walking in the woods

The return trip was a lot more bumpy because the winds had picked up.  As we were approaching Bellingham, I was so thankful to live where we do.  Earlier this week I had taken the kids for a day hike into a mountain lake.  Here we were a couple of days later going on a boat to spend a  few days enjoying the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound.  There aren't many places in the U.S. where the mountains and the sea are so close together. 

Once we had the boat safely out of the water, Dode could finally breathe a sigh of relief that the boat had gotten the family safely there and back.  He'd done everything he could to make sure we'd have a safe trip.  He'd borrowed an outboard motor from his dad.  It's a two cycle engine so it runs gas from a self contained can in case our gas supply was contaminated with water.  He'd packed our trolling motor in case the inboard and outboard motors failed.  He'd looked up the phone number of a towing company for boats.  He had our boat GPS, his cell phone GPS, nautical maps, and a compass for navigating.  He'd packed an air mattress in case we started sinking and needed a life raft.  He'd packed a hand pump and some buckets in case the bilge failed and we were taking on water.  The one thing he didn't have a back up for was the battery and that really bothered him.  Even with all that preparation, he still worried something would go wrong. 

 It seems that there's always a little something that needs to be done with the boat.  Dode still needs to re-wire the switch that makes the engine go up and down.  We are also taking on water again.  Dode had finally fixed that last year and we'd been watertight for a while.  Apparently the boat is allergic to salt water because we were able to bilge (pump water out) the boat a few times on this trip.  Dode thinks if the boat is going to leak, it could at least do it in fresh water, not salt water which causes corrosion.

We drove home and happily found that Jacob had dinner ready for us.  Unfortunately, the produce fairy hadn't come and put away my 8 baskets of produce!