Stuart Island – September 14-17, 2024 After a couple of days to recover from the exhilaration and exhaustion the Wooden Boat Festival brings, we head north to the San Juan Islands on flat water. A mere five hours later, we anchor in a little nook in Reid Harbor with noisy kingfishers, a patient heron standing on one leg, and vultures soaring on the thermals. Jack figures the late summer drought has left some carrion on the golden grass among the madrone and fir trees. This is what we wanted. We’re close enough to the border to be without Internet (except for news in the hours before dawn), but we’re not rocking and rolling as we would be on Sucia, Matia, or Patos, the islands farther north.

We sit down with our books, interrupted only by food. I quickly finish boatbuilder Diana Talley’s new memoir, and history of Lancing, Tennessee that Selena sent Jack for Father’s Day, and the superb Audible edition of It’s Not You, which Barbara recommended. The first two appear to be self-published and I’m fine with that. The third is in anticipation of our November family gathering in Tennessee. An eye-opener for me is the author’s account of neighboring families along the wavy fault line between North and South during the Civil War.

Jack works out every day, but it takes me a while to launch my paddleboard. The green growth at the waterline is not so bad, but I see that the undersides of the rub rails need cleaning. I deploy the fenders to have something to hold onto and scrub away before paddling to the beach for a hike. I find a trail that leads to the top of the hill above Morning Light, where I take this photo of my paddle board on the beach below.

Then I find a trail that leads back to the south end of the park and call to Jack, who is working out with elastic bands at the ladder in the cockpit.

As the moon rises one evening, M/V Westward drops anchor next to a sister restored yacht, Catalyst. We’ve frequently encountered both ships in Alaska in the summer. Now they winter over in Port Townsend, proudly exhibiting the craft of our local shipwrights.

As we leave Reid Harbor, we pass a large yacht with pristine lines. To me, it looks like a restoration of a mid-century boat, but it turns out the 133-foot-long Alliance, which was built in 1982.

Roche Harbor – September 17-19, 2024 For an utter change of scene, we cross the Spiden Channel to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island. This feature of our very first cruise north – an historic company town from the 1860s – has been spiffed up into a real resort. But it’s still a place where traditions remain intact. As we dock in front of the chapel, the carillon rings out traditional tunes to mark the noon hour.

Guest moorage is quite empty and offers unbroken views. I clear 200 emails before we step off the boat to explore this headquarters of San Juan Island’s prosperous lime trade, which contributed to the building of towns from here to San Francisco. We walk among the U.S. and Canadian flags that line the docks and walkways, remembering the ceremony that concludes every day at Roche Harbor.

The bar off the formal dining room, which is roll in accessible from via the yellow brick road in front of the hotel, seems to be where locals and regulars gather. We find the table with the perfect view. The first night it’s drinks and then a walk. The second it’s a walk followed by drinks and a light meal at the same table.

Sunset in Roche Harbor is always impressive. We watch the dock crews remove the American and Canadian flags from the wharves, paths, and roofs of the company store. Then God Save the King and O’Canada are played as the British and Canadian flags are lowered from the yardarm. Standing at attention along with resort staff are the crews of visiting boats, including a US Coast Guard vessel that has stopped by to refuel. Anyone who has not been paying attention now does. In the silence, a bugler plays taps as the United States flag is lowered and furled against the setting sun.

Re-tethered to the Internet, I see a new dispatch from Dogbark, a 60 foot converted racing boat that’s making a historic transit of the Northwest Passage. As they pass the Arctic circle, fewer than 400 boats have ever completed this trip. In “Through the Looking Ice,”I get an intro to the complexity of route planning through ice fields and the real-time tools now available. I finish the fascinating posts on SailDogbark.com with the news of their successful arrival in Newfoundland, where the ship is being tucked in for the winter. I also search Passpatoo, the wooden yacht that stands out among the plastic behemoths that moor here. I scroll down to an appreciation of the PT shipwrights who restored her. Listed are the names of Diana Talley’s crew, who she features in her book.

Jones Island – Sept 19-20, 2024 At noon we head for Jones Island State Park, which serves kayak-campers and has a handful of spots for larger boats. The float from which a ramp leads to the island is free save for boats from State Parks, San Juan County, and one of their contractors so we tie up. Their crews beam as I reassemble the scooter next to Morning Light. I thank them for ensuring accessibility and promise to let them know if everything is not perfect.

As it turns out, everything is perfect. A smooth path winds through largely old growth forest to the south bay. Accommodations are pristine. The long-drop composting toilets have windows, skylights, and long wooden ramps.

The two Adirondack shelters now have concrete floors. We admire the freshly painted green interiors, noting that the bottom sleeping platforms have been set at slightly different heights to better serve a variety of wheelchair users.

Near both the north and south bays are fairly large pavilions with picnic tables and space around them for pitching tents. Everything must be packed in and out, though well water flows at certain times of the year.

Blind Bay – Sept 20-21, 2024 We head east through the lovely Wasp Passage into Harney Channel, wondering when we’ll encounter our first ferry. As we near our destination, M/V Yakima pulls out of the Shaw Island landing to completely confuse us by turning around and heading to Orcas Landing across the pass! Most Washington State car ferries alternate bow and stern as they shuttle between two terminals. But the San Juans are an archipelago in which four ferries crisscross to serve four islands: Shaw, Orcas, Lopez, and Friday Harbor.

It’s chaos. The landings on Orcas and Shaw lie very close together across a passage that gets jammed in the summer with kayaks, SUPs, rowboats, rec and commercial fishing vessels, construction barges, local government and mail boats, and every manner of vacationing sailboats and trawler. Just after sunset I can count cars through my binoculars: a single vehicle disembarks on Shaw.

We get to know all four ferries. M/V Tillikum was built in 1959 as the private car took over. It’s 310 feet long and carries a max of 87 vehicles, including huge trucks that require the designated lane with 30-foot deck clearance. The 328-foot Chelan can manage 124 vehicles and 1200 people. M/V Samish carries a max of 144 cars and 1500 passengers in its 362 feet and is the only one built in this millennium. The 382-foot Yakima – 144 vehicles and 2000 passengers – serves Anacortes near the I-5 corridor but no longer calls at Sidney, BC. Though not large ferries by global standards – BC Ferries runs many much bigger ships – these four vessels serve the population of one rural county in Washington State plus one nearby mainland city.

So I wonder. Aren’t there more appropriate, economical, traffic-calming, and climate-aware alternatives? Where are the passenger ferries that link up with land transit? Couldn’t people who walk on with bikes, kayaks, and camping equipment be easily accommodated? Kitsap County has launched passenger ferry services on commuter routes that link up with busses, including Jefferson Transit. I can spend a day in Seattle for a round-trip fare from PT of just $6!

Watmough Bay, Lopez Island – Sept 21-23, 2024 We escape the rocking and rolling from ferry traffic, cruise through Thatcher Pass, and continue along the squirlly waters of Rosario Strait. Ahead of us is a great big oil tanker bound for the international waters of the Juan de Fuca Strait under the escort of a hug tug: 134′ long with a beam of 45’it plunges 19 feet below its normal waterline. The Anacortes refinery receives crude from Canada’s Trans Mountain pipeline, trains from North Dakota and the midwest, and tankers from Alaska and beyond. More reminders of how much fossil fuel is being consumed – including by Morning Light and how hard it’s going to be to mitigate climate change before it’s too late.

As we motor in, we watch a dozen turkey vultures riding the thermals high above the cliff that dominates the North side of the Bay. We choose one of the three free mooring bouys. Watmough Bay and its beloved beach where local gather every afternoon is cooperatively managed by the San Juan County Land Bank, the San Juan Preservation Trust, and the federal Bureau of Land Management. I sit in the sun, moving my chair from cockpit to bow as the boat slowly spins with the tide. Moments before it disappears under the horizon, the sun casts a red glow on a rocky mountain ridge that lies in front of Mt. Baker. Some day, I’d like to visit the Cascades, drive up Mt Baker, and look down on it.

When it’s time to leave, we float away on flat water, less than 5 knots of wind, and two feet of wind waves. But soon, we encounter fog – a whiteout thick enough to cut with a knife. We set our course on the yellow marker in the safety zone where the shipping lanes from Rosario and Haro Straits meet those of Admiralty Inlet and Juan de Fuca Strait. We come up the yellow buoy just in time to slip by and get a shot of the sea lions hauled out these. (I’m unsure whether they are Stellars or young Californias. The latter would be capable or diving to the depths there.)

Fortunately, today the traffic is light on this busy corridor connecting Puget Sound with the ports of Asia. We’re hailed on the radio by a sailor whose GIS transmitter is down and a commercial ship that wants to pass starboard to starboard. We see neither, nor can we see the Point Wilson lighthouse as we creep past it. Less than a mile beyond, however, the fog dissipates just enough that we can make out our house.