Hood Canal – Riveted

Pleasant Harbor to Port Ludlow

Laura Domela — Sun, 22 Feb 2015 01:17:36 +0000

Our original plan this morning was to hang out at Pleasant Harbor until a little before low tide and then book it out to Duckabush in the dinghy for some more oyster gathering. It was pretty windy this morning though, and we decided to walk up onto higher ground to see what it looked like outside our little pleasant harbor, and whoa! It was WAY whitecappy. We decided to bail on the Duckabush plan and head for Port Ludlow instead (and maybe find another spot for future oystering).

When we first left Pleasant Harbor, we were met head-on with some pretty hefty waves. The forecast this morning said 15-25kt winds and 2-4 foot wind waves (upgraded from "less than 1 ft" forecast last night to a small craft warning today). But we've been in 2-4ft waves several times before and the it's no big deal for the Nordic Tug (it's always us we need to worry most about). I'd say our first few miles today were solidly on the 4 foot end of that spectrum, and it was dramatic but FUN! Nothing rattled or creaked, even when we were slamming down pretty hard (not even the non-plastic dishes, mom!)

Kevin took this video to give you an idea of the high seas drama:

And here I will address the freakin' windshield wipers. OMG. If you're like me, you watched that video and all you could see was the fact that those windshield wipers are TOTALLY NOT IN SYNC. The first two are usally fine, and the far right one is like, whatever dudes, I'll do my own thing thank you very much. Each wiper has it's own on/off/intermittent frequency switch, and I always carefully turn them on so they are perfectly spaced…click…click…click. They are perfectly rhythmic for about 3 minutes, and then the right one will all of a sudden, out of the blue, wipe twice, messing up the WHOLE THING. The only way to get them back in order is to turn them off, start the click…click…click…again, repeat. What is UP with that, Nordic Tugs???

(To be fair, we were in a bit of chaos here, so I may have just jammed those switches on high gear with no regard for rhythm, but trust me, it happens just like I described above most of the time. Wipe. Wipe. Pause. Pause. Wipe wipe wipe. Wipe. Wipe wipe.)

Alright. Rant over. Gorgeous view of the Olympic mountain range, huh?

So, the waves eventually mellowed out and as we were passing underneath the bridge just south of Hood Head, we noticed a bunch of cars parked, and then a bunch of people on the beach with buckets, and then a few boats anchored. Just north of Hood Head (according to my map of open public shellfish beaches) was a good oyster and clam beach, and it was just after low tide so we decided to anchor and see if we could get some more oysters. The Rocna grabbed and held quickly, we deployed the dinghy, and off we went.

Here's the route from Pleasant Harbor to Hood Head:

The wind picked up though, and the tide was quickly rising, so our haul of about 12 (large) Pacific oysters was hard-won. We headed back to the boat with our loot, only to get stuck bringing up the anchor. We need to pull it from the other direction, but as mentioned before, the wind and the current was against us and it was pretty tough to get the boat around to the other side of the anchor. Eventually we got it loose (good practice!) and were on our way again.

It wasn't much further to the marina at Port Ludlow and now we're set up and chillin'. Look at this view!!

Route from Hood Head to Port Ludlow:

We wandered around a bit as the sun was setting. There's a resort here with what looks like a pretty good restaurant, and some nice trails. The marina was closed when we got here, so we'll go register in the morning, check out the store (cuz we need more panko breadcrumbs and horseradish), and maybe have breakfast up at the restaurant. Some shots from our sunset walk:

I'm a sucker for a cool totem pole (must be those early childhood memories in Alaska):

Kevin took this one (love it!):

I cooked up our hard-won oysters as an appetizer (but we're thinking that might have been enough to be dinner), and we're listening to the new album from Whitehorse (Leave No Bridge Unburned), sipping Manhattans. It was a pretty great Saturday, with some challenging conditions and a ton of fun.

Tomorrow (we think): Port Townsend.

Panko Fried Oysters (that we harvested ourselves!)

Laura Domela — Sat, 21 Feb 2015 14:31:33 +0000

Yesterday was pretty cool…getting our own Pacific oysters from a public beach in Hood Canal, shucking and cleaning them right there in the dinghy, coming back to Airship and cooking 'em up all yummy!

Here's the messy, "during" photo:

This is how we prepared them. First, I made some hot sauce for dipping:

1/4 c light mayonnaise
1 Tbsp horseradish (I used the small package of prepared wasabi left over from the supermarket sushi we grabbed a week ago or so…I knew that would come in handy!)
1 tsp Dijon
1 Tbsp lime juice
a tiny bit of sugar
about 1 tsp. chipotle tabasco

Into to fridge with that until we need it.

Next, we mixed up in Bowl 1 – an egg dip (egg, milk), in Bowl 2 – a flour dip (flour, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, chili powder) … (I would have used cayenne instead of the paprika/chili powder but we apparently don't have cayenne on the boat…yet.).

Then, Bowl 3 was the panko coating (panko breadcrumbs, with some dried oregano and basil). I rinsed and patted the oysters dry, then did (1) egg dip (2) flour dip (3) another egg dip, and then (4) panko coating. Coated oysters went onto a tray with plastic wrap, layered with plastic between oyster layers.

That tray went into the fridge for an hour or so until we were ready to cook. Several recipes I found said to use peanut oil for frying, butI used coconut oil.

Fry them until golden brown on one side (about a minute and a half), turn and brown the other side for another minute or so. Drain on paper towels and serve immediately with the hot sauce (which was really good!) I served ours with sautéed spinach and a bottle of Dominio IV 2013 Viognier from Oregon.

These oysters were delicious! Kevin said they were the best fried oysters he's ever had, but I'm pretty sure gathering and shucking and cooking your own oysters right where you are probably contributed to that feeling. (But wow, they were seriously good.)

Guess where we're headed at low tide today before we leave?

We Harvested Our Own Oysters!

Laura Domela — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 20:27:12 +0000

This is the best feeling, gliding across a wide expanse of calm water, with no one around for miles. Sometimes I let myself imagine that the water is land, and the feeling is surreal because you really can't get this experience driving a vehicle across land. There may be a few middle-of-nowhere on a motorcycle spots that get close, but it's probably not quite as peaceful as being on the water.

We left Alderbrook this morning around 7:30am. We thought we might head up to Quilcene Bay where I found a couple of public beaches open for oyster harvesting. We stopped in Hoodsport again at the public dock (which was much, MUCH calmer than it was a few days ago) and walked up to the Shell Station next to the Hood River Market to get ourselves some shellfish licenses.

Today was cloudy with some occasional sun and blue sky, and water that was calm as can be for our cruise back up the canal.

I was browsing the good, public, open oyster beaches, and found one just south of Pleasant Harbor that looked easily accessible by dinghy, so we headed to Pleasant Harbor again.

We arrived at about 11:30am, and low tide was at 11:52am, so Kevin quickly deployed the dinghy while I grabbed a couple oyster knives, a couple bowls, and a couple of ziploc bags and a towel and then we headed south around the point toward the Duckabush public tidelands. According to the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife, Duckabush was formally a commercial oyster beach, and is a superb place to harvest oysters. We also checked the shellfish safety information and all looked good for our chosen spot.

Heading around the point in the Zodiac:

Hey look! Oyster beds!

The rules for harvesting oysters is that each licensed person can get 18 oysters. The oysters must be shucked on the beach and the shells left at the same tide level where the oyster was found. The low tide was 3 feet, so we mainly just hung in the Zodiac and gathered and shucked from there. Pretty quickly we each had our limit so we headed back to Airship for some recipe research. (We each had one fresh on the half shell right there and it was great!

We figured we might pan fry them with some Panko bread crumbs back at the boat, so we opted to get some of the larger ones. This here's a big'un (so delicate, though):

This one had a little Chiton buddy so we put him back:

Counting travel time to and from Duckabush, we spent about an hour and a half total…36 oysters and a really fun experience! The oysters are EVERYWHERE and it's super easy to find single oysters (rather then clumped together oysters, harder to shuck).

See you (maybe) tomorrow, Duckabush.

Kevin, drivin' the Zodiac:

On our way back into Pleasant Harbor, just around the point, Kevin tapped me on the arm and pointed. There was a large bald eagle flying just in front of us toward the rocks with a fairly big fish hanging from his talons.

We killed the engine and rowed along the shore watching him tear at it. All I had was my Fuji x100s (fixed, wide angle lens), but I managed to get a couple of cool shots, even though the action was pretty far away for that camera. The eagle is just to the left of that stump:

We may have gotten too close for his comfort, because he made a few loud calls and pretty soon two more bald eagles were flying overhead and hanging out in the trees near him. Was he calling for backup so he could enjoy his meal, or advertising he had a fresh kill to share?

It was a great first oyster gathering experience and I think we may head back over at low tide tomorrow, before we head north toward Port Townsend. We'll probably go to Port Hadlock tomorrow, and then on to Port Townsend on Sunday. The marina at Point Hudson (Port Townsend) is full over the weekend due to the 2015 Olympic Peninsula Salmon Derby (which starts today and ends Sunday).

From the PT Leader: "The derby includes 500 square miles of fishing, five weigh stations (Freshwater Bay, Ediz Hook in Port Angeles, John Wayne Marina in Sequim, Gardiner and Port Townsend Boat Haven). It boasts a $10,000 first prize, with new prizes coming in daily. The total purse is more than $20,000, including four $500 mystery fish prizes for fish of at least 6 pounds. Most prizes are donated by area businesses and residents; the largest single donation is the $1,000 third prize, donated by 7 Cedars Casino in Blyn."

Breakfast and Morning Hike at Alderbrook

Laura Domela — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 18:24:29 +0000

After breakfast we set out to hike ALL the trails. There are over 3 miles of trails here at Alderbrook, and they're beautiful…hilly, green, forest, streams, birds, ferns, squirrels….it was a great hike!

Not today:

But, this:

And we learned some stuff along the way:

These guys REALLY wanted a house with a view, I guess.

Walking back to the boat at low tide today (underwater).

There are SO many oysters (most not in bags) here on this beach.

I just did some research on the public oyster beaches in Hood Canal where the season is open, and there are a bunch of them that are open! Hmmmmm.

There's a mixology class up at the lodge this evening I think we're going to attend (you know, to learn some more stuff), and then I think it's dinner on the boat and an early start tomorrow back north up the canal. We may stop at Quilcene or Dabob and give the oyster harvesting a shot.

Hood Canal – Alderbrook

Laura Domela — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 01:43:50 +0000

This morning we left Pleasant Harbor and headed further south into Hood Canal to explore a bit. Sunrise light was pretty this morning:

We really wanted to stop for an oyster lunch on the beach at Hama Hama Oyster Bar, but we couldn't figure out a way to get there by boat. In front of Hama Hama it's super shallow and covered in oyster beds and stuff, and on either side of the shallow parts it looked like private property. Unsure about the anchorage and after a bunch of research, nothing really gave us that "go" feeling. Plus, motoring the dinghy over oyster beds might not be cool, and when I called to find out their hours and told them we were trying to come visit by boat, they said they had no facilities for that…so, bummer. It was pretty choppy out today too, so if we'd found a place we thought we could anchor…there was the super-chop to contend with. Maybe we'll work out a plan for when we're heading back past on the way north. And maybe it will be calm. Here's a link to the entry from our previous Airstream trip to Hood River, and the Hama Hama Oyster Co.

There it is, calling to us:

We decided to stop in Hoodsport at the public dock and see if there was a good spot to grab lunch, but the public dock left a bit to be desired. As I mentioned, it was a bit choppy, and the dock felt, um, a little rickety. The wind was blowing us into the dock and the waves were keeping us tight against it (smushing the fenders pretty good). We tied onto a metal cleat with the bow line, a metal cleat with the stern line, and one of the wooden rail/cleats with the midship line, but every time the boat surged with the waves, the wooden rail/cleat pulled up away from the dock, along with the plank it was bolted to. I decided I'd walk up to the IGA (supermarket) while Kevin stayed with the boat. Maybe they had oysters in the market.

Turns out, as far as seafood was concerned, the market was a bust. Oh well. I grabbed a few things we needed, so not all was lost. (As famous as the oysters from this area are though, you'd think there would be a couple more places to get some!)

Getting away from the dock was a little tricky, but we managed it, and not like noobs, either.

It started out cloudy, but cleared up nicely by the afternoon:

We checked out the Potlatch State Marine Park mooring buoys, but there's really nothing at Potlatch State Park except for a small grassy park alongside the highway, so we continued on. (Plus, the marinas were sounding pretty good…we could really use a fresh water wash down after all this salty spray!)

Next up: Hood Canal Marina (seemed fine, but it didn't look like there was much to do there either) so we ended up at the Alderbrook Resort. They've got a gigantic guest dock out front, some hiking trails, a really good restaurant, and like Rosario Resort on Orcas Island, your mooring fee lets you use the facilities, which include an indoor saltwater pool and hot tub. (Their water was turned off, but after we paid our moorage fee and asked about it, the harbormaster came out and turned it on for us. Also, the gals at the front desk fumbled charmingly around for quite a while trying to figure out how to process a payment for dock moorage. I think no one has boated themselves here since last summer!)

Here we are, behind the schooner Pleiades (available for charter):

Looking back at the resort from Airship:

It's a beautiful place, nicely landscaped, with lots to do (and probably WAY more to do in the summer months). However, we DID see one guy on a Jet Ski come screaming around the point west of the resort earlier…in a wet suit.

We made a dinner reservation for early evening, and after some more work and a shower, headed up to (finally) have some (more) local oysters. The oysters are harvested from the beach out in front. We had 6 kumamotos and 6 Pacifics (and a couple Manhattans):

Every single thing at dinner was fabulous. First courses: Grand Marnier prawns, a caesar salad. Main courses: seared sea scallops, and crab cakes. We couldn't tell you what we liked the best. This is definitely a great destination spot, and I think we may stay two nights.

View from dinner:

As it got dark, from our table we watched a guy in a cart loading a bunch of firewood into a giant fire pit, lined with 6 Adirondack chairs along the shore. Nice! We went to check it out on our way back to the boat. Toasty warm (with dock lights in the background):

Also on the way back to the boat, we stopped and talked to a guy on the beach who was harvesting oysters by headlamp. It was low tide (a minus 1.2 foot tide or something) and it looked like he was being VERY productive. (Hey! Lunch tomorrow!)

Obviously an extremely low light photo, with my iPhone, of oyster guy with a PILE of oysters:

The sky is clear and dark here, and filled with stars and planets. It's nice to be away from the lights of the city again!

Today's route (26.6 nautical miles, 4 hours 20 minutes cruise time):

Kingston to Pleasant Harbor

Laura Domela — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 23:38:34 +0000

We left Bell Harbor/Seattle this morning just after 8am. It was such a beautiful day (again) that we wanted to spend most of it on the water if possible.

Passing a couple tankers anchored in Puget Sound:

We stopped in Kingston to grab some breakfast/lunch.

The Port of Kingston is a very well-maintained, attractive marina with guest moorage free for 2 hours (and cute picnic areas right there on the dock):

We walked up to a little spot called J'aime Les Crêpes and ordered two different savory crêpes: (1) "Chicken" — grilled chicken, provolone cheese, spinich, toasted almonds, with artichioke pesto, and (2) "Special" — black forest ham, swiss cheese, sauteed mushrooms, spinach, green onions and dijon mustard.

These hit the spot! We walked around a bit and then hopped back on Airship, fueled up, pumped out, and continued on our way.

Our initial plan was to head north toward Port Townsend, through the Port Townsend canal, and stop in Port Hadlock for the night, but as we passed Point No Point and were approaching Foulweather Bluff, we thought it would be a shame to miss (this time) Hood Canal, so we rerouted on the fly and headed toward Pleasant Harbor.

You just can't beat a (mostly) clear day view of the Olympic mountain range:

The sun was at the perfect angle to completely blind us as we tried to enter Pleasant Harbor:

We made it though, and headed over to the Pleasant Harbor State Park dock (just inside the harbor on the right):

Home Port Marina is just next door:

We took the chairs up to the top deck and had a cocktail while watching the pastel sky turn to navy. Kevin took these two shots:

And here's one I shot just before we came inside:

Dinner tonight is going to be an easy grilled chicken and zucchini.

Here's our track from today:

Total nautical miles: 51.31
Total time: 7 hours 47 minutes (30 minutes stopped)

I was at the helm most of the day, and Kevin worked (I did most of my "today" work last night and early this morning). On our cruise today, Kevin wrote a 1500-word article, had a couple of phone briefings, worked with our sales and operations team via chat, and answered a plethora of email. Not bad for moving office, is it?

Mignonette Sauces for Oysters

Laura Domela — Sun, 27 Jul 2014 15:02:06 +0000

For raw oysters eaten on the half shell, I normally make some variation on a classic mignoette sauce: champagne vinegar, Prosecco or Champagne, shallots, fresh ground pepper. Since we picked up enough oysters yesterday for more than just one meal, I decided to make a few different sauces, so I googled "mignonette recipes" and found several that sounded interesting.

I ended up making five:

1. Classic mignontte (front, standard favorite)
2. Lemon/cucumber/jalapeno/vodka (right, bright light yellow, one of our favorites)
3. Shoyu/scallion/rice wine vinegar/ginger (dark one in the back, least favorite…we needed pickled ginger or seaweed for this one to work better)
4. Sriracha/grapefruit/tequila/scallions/vinegar (red one on the left, another favorite).
5. The fifth sauce (not shown) was more of a relish, with minced cucumber, ginger, rice wine vinegar, shallots, and pepper. It was good, but not as good as the two favorites and the classic.

We had three oysters courses last night. For the first course we smoked/grilled a few of the Shigokus on the Traeger with a bourbon chipotle butter sauce (delicious, we'll definitely be repeating this). The second course was a half dozen of the teeny tiny Olympia oysters, with the classic mignonette, and the third course was a dozen Shigokus with the variety of sauces, and a side of sauteed spinach. It was fun and delicious!

Exploring Hood Canal

Laura Domela — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:19:22 +0000

We headed out to explore Hood Canal today. We're staying right near the town of Hoodsport on Hood Canal near the Olympic National Forest in Washington. Hoodsport is apparently renowned among SCUBA divers as a staging area to view the giant Pacific octopus (cool!!!)

The shores along the canal are mostly rocks and shells (oyster, clam). Clam season is apparently over, but oyster season is not, and there were plenty of people out doing what looked like gathering shellfish as we drove past.

We were headed down toward Shelton to Taylor Shellfish Farms to pick up some of their Shigoku oysters (our favorite). Shigokus were developed by Taylor Shellfish Farms (right here!) and we were lucky enough to discover them about 1/2 mile from our house in Portland at our local market that happens to carry them most of the time. (But it's still fun to get them right from the source!)

Taylor Shellfish is quite an operation.

The seafood store had everything we wanted (Shigokus, and the tiny Olympia oysters) and we left with four dozen Shigokus and two dozen Olympias. Hey guess what we're having for dinner tonight and tomorrow night??

Shigoku oysters are grown in floating bags that are attached to stationary lines and floats that rise and fall with the tides, so the oysters are tumbled twice a day. This low-energy, low-maintenance method is a variation on British Columbia’s more labor-intensive Kusshi, and it continuously chips off the oysters’ growing edge and forces them to “cup up." The shells end up deep and scoop-shaped.

This results in a small, dense oyster with a light clean taste of cucumber and salt. (My mom does NOT like oysters, and she liked these, so if you're not an oyster fan but want to be, try the Shigokus.) Also, they're super easy to shuck compared to many other oysters.

More scenery along the canal:

The road runs right along the water in most places:

Cute little beach house:

Our next stop was the Hardware Distillery Co. in Hoodsport. I read about this place online and decided we should check it out. The owners, Chuck and Jan, started the distillery a few years ago near their vacation cabin in Hoodsport and it's become quite a little hot spot in town!

Chuck was pouring today, and started us right off the bat with their award-winning aquaivit. (It was great!) He had a special bottle from the freezer out for the folks who were finishing their tasting as we arrived, so in all the excitement we were included in that special moment, and then started at the beginning with the vodka made from peach wine (oh hey, and ended full circle with another tiny pour of cold aquavit).

We bought a bottle of the R Gin and a bottle of the Bee's Knees Plumb. For the R Gin, Chuck takes up about 100 pounds of barley to Hama Hama Oyster Co. (just up the canal a bit) and they cold smoke it in their big smoker. R Gin has a subtle smoky taste, and the name comes from the (discredited) old wives’ tale that oysters are best in months with the letter "R".

The Bee's Knees Plumb is a distilled honey mead, made from 80% honey and 20% plums from Chuck's friend's plum trees. It's good! I'm not sure what we'll do with it yet, but we'll figure it out.

The building housing the distillery used to be the Hoodsport Hardware Store, hence the name Hardware Distillery. They've got a great vibe in there, and the decor is all old hardware and cool distillery equipment. Definitely worth a stop if you're coming through and are into this kind of thing. We also tasted in sequence the white dog, and then the same spirit that had been aged for just a little while in that small barrel…interesting to taste the difference a little wood makes.

Next we headed back up the canal and decided to try the Hama Hama Oyster Bar for lunch.

There's a market where you can buy fresh oysters and clams and other stuff, and outside around the corner they've got a "snack bar" where they're serving up oysters (raw and grilled), crab cakes, steamers, etc. while you sit outside on the water, in the sun, having a totally chill day eating delicious fresh seafood.

Fun atmosphere, great service, nice people, delicious seafood! We had some grilled oysters (since tonight's meal will be mostly Shigokus and Olympias on the half shell), a crab cake, some steamer clams, and a glass of Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc. Everything was delicious and we'd come back here in a second!

The grilled oysters with served two sauces: (1) a chipotle bourbon sauce (so good!) and a classic escargot sauce of butter and herbs (also good, but I loved the chipotle bourbon one best).

Hoodsport is a cute little town, and this whole area feels authentic and not too touristy at all. There are several state parks along here that (of course) are pretty dang crowded right now (a sunny weekend in July) but overall the place still feels pretty mellow.

We're just back hanging out at the Airstream now. The RV park here (Glen Ayr Resort) is totally fine. It's nice, right across the road from the water and we're backed up onto what I hear is a small creek (I'd have to go check to verify). We've got full hookups, but their internet is out (we're using our AT&T datacard with router and doing just fine). I'd stay here again, but I might try to see if this place had any waterfront spots first, because it looked fabulously close to the water as we drove past an hour ago.

From Victoria to the Hood Canal

Laura Domela — Sat, 26 Jul 2014 04:27:12 +0000

The 7:30pm ferry ride from Victoria to Port Angeles was gorgeous. We saw two different pods of orcas during the 90 minute trip, and the sun was setting just as we approached Port Angeles. It was a bit of a tight squeeze on the ferry, but no issues:

The light was perfect as we were leaving Victoria:

There were three cruise ships in port:

Ferry at dusk:

Approaching Port Angeles:

Back to the Airstream:

After disembarking at Port Angeles around 9pm we drove about an hour and 45 minutes south on Highway 101 to Hoodsport, where we're now set up (well, we're parked, but not unhooked or plugged in — we are level though…I used ALL the blocks!!). It was late and we didn't want to be annoying, so we made the least racket possible and just decided to deal with the rest of it in the morning.

Tomorrow we plan to hit Taylor Shellfish Farms, just a bit south of here in Shelton, WA for some of our favorite oysters: Shigokus! It looks like they also have Olympia oysters (the teeny tiny ones we had up at the Willows Inn on Lummi Island) so we'll probably need to get some of those too.

So far, the place we're staying in Hoodsport seems nice, but I'll have to report more tomorrow when it's not pitch black out. (Bonus: stars!!!)