Matia Island – Riveted

Matia Island to Anacortes

Laura Domela — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:40:00 +0000

After hiking (and ALL THOSE MUSHROOMS) yesterday morning, we left Matia Island and decided to take our time getting back to Anacortes. We went the long way 'round the west side of Orcas Island. We didn't see any whales, but it was a lovely cruise.

Oh yeah, this was the sky at sunrise Sunday morning at Matia:

Airship, from the hiking trail:

Mount Baker and friends toward the end of the day in Guemes Channel:

Even the refinery looked cool:

As we approached the marina though…that's when the sky went crazy. Such a great sunset!

Here's today's route (32.5 nautical miles):

The Mushrooms of Matia Island

Laura Domela — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 23:08:27 +0000

This post is for my mushroom nerd friends.

We noticed SO MANY mushrooms on our hike yesterday around Matia Island, so on our hike this morning before we left, I decided to take photos of every different kind of mushroom we saw. Here's what I found:

Not all of these are completely and perfectly in focus because…macro shots on the ground with an iPhone. :)

So there you have it. Some of the many mushrooms of Matia Island! (Hi Kerri!)

Chilly Days in the San Juan Islands

Laura Domela — Sun, 22 Nov 2015 14:38:07 +0000

We left Portland on Thursday afternoon RIGHT at the perfect time to put us in near Seattle at rush hour. Smart! We arrived at the marina in Anacortes right around 7pm and spent the rest of the night putting stuff away, organizing, and making dinner (steak frites with sauteed spinach). In the morning we got up early and headed back into Seattle for an 11am photo shoot. The boat and the docks were frosty, and the temperature was around 33 degrees Farenheit when we left right around 8am. Brrrrr.

The weather was perfect and the photo shoot went well (so well, we even shot some outside!). We returned to Airship by 3pm and were out of our slip in no time! We had a plan to meet some friends (two other Nordic Tugs!) over in Eagle Harbor at Cypress Island for the night.

Low light on the way to Cypress Island:

Friday night on Mount Baker:

Dan and Eileen (Nordic Tug 32 "Fortunate"), Sam (NT 37 "Safe Harbour), and Kevin and I all hung out on Sam's boat for the evening (it's the biggest) and had a great time catching up. Dan and Eileen went to Alaska this past summer in the second Waggoner flotilla, led by Sam. Dan cooked dinner for everyone (a delicious curry), and in the morning I made some breakfast tacos and we had coffee and more laughs on our boat before we all took off around noon.

Dan and Eileen heading for Jones Island:

We decided to cruise over to Matia Island (where there were previously two mooring buoys, but now there's only one…same at Patos Island the last time we were there….what's happening to these mooring buoys??). Here's our previous post about Matia, before we left for Alaska.

We dinghied to shore and did a nice hike around the island while we still had daylight.

And there we are again!

Back at Airship, Kevin worked on a little revamp of the entertainment system (that now includes our Xbox One from home), while I cooked up some pad thai noodles for dinner.

Check out this morning's sunrise sky:

Today we'll probably do a bit more hiking before leaving Matia Island (after perhaps a little Xbox and some work). We're going back to Anacortes for the night, because tomorrow morning we're visiting the Nordic Tug factory to look at a couple of new models — the 40 and the 44, but we'll probably take the long way home.

Happy Sunday!

We Moved to Matia Island

Laura Domela — Sun, 26 Apr 2015 19:22:09 +0000

This was the view from our top deck in Echo Bay at Sucia Island last night as the sun set:

And this was our little beggar buddy who hung out by the boat for a while. We didn't give him anything, but I think they must get conditioned that the sound of a generator on a boat means that humans are making food and are often suckers for cute bird antics:

Here are a couple more shots from the top deck last night (that's Mt. Baker):

Last night was calm and lovely in Echo Bay, but at around 2am the wind picked up, as did the waves, and therefore so did the movement of the boat. This morning we decided to head over to Rolfe Cove on Matia Island for a less rocky night (we hope).

Our new view:

Here's our 2.5 nautical mile track from Sucia to Matia:

Hey! More cute baby geese in Rolfe Cove:

After we got settled, I put together a nice brunch for us: a small tortilla topped with wilted spinach, bacon, an over easy egg, salsa, avocado, a little crumbled Cotija cheese, salsa, and then a drizzle of Deke's wing sauce:

After brunch we took the dinghy to shore to hike the loop around the island. Matia Island is 145 acres, and all but 2 acres are designated as a wildlife refuge. Those other 2 acres are for public use as a marine state park. There are a couple campsites near Rolfe Cove, two mooring buoys, and a small dock. Matia is officially pronounced Ma-TEE-ah, but you'll hear many locals call it May-shah.

Matia was named in 1792 by the Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza as Isla de Mata, meaning "no protection." Matia also has several meanings in Spanish having to do with lush plant growth, but I think it really translates to mean "Island of the Giant Slugs."

Seriously?!?! Those are my BOOTS!

Matia also is known for "the Hermit of Matia Island" — a man named Elvin H. Smith, who for 30 years lived in a cabin on a bay in the island's southeast corner (opposite Rolfe Cove). Smith was born in Wisconsin circa 1835. He fought in the American Civil War during the 1860s, rising from private to brevet captain in the Union Army. Embittered because Army bureaucrats never recognized his battlefield commission and disappointed by an unhappy love affair, he left home for good and headed west. After a stint as a newspaperman, he worked for years as a traveling passenger agent for the Northern Pacific Railroad until he gave up railroad business in 1890 and came to Bellingham, WA.

Once in Bellingham, Smith joined forces with a lawyer to make some money on land speculation. There were rumors that the federal government was going to open Matia Island for homesteading. The lawyer fronted money to buy out a pair who had acquired squatters' rights on Matia. Smith moved to the island in April 1892 to perfect a claim the partners could sell at a profit.

Smith built a snug cabin near the bay at the island's southeast corner. He raised chickens, rabbits, and sheep for himself and for sale and stretched a net across the long narrow bay near his house to catch cod and salmon. Most Saturdays, Smith rowed two-and-a-half miles to the north shore of Orcas Island, then walked another two miles through woods to the village of Eastsound to visit, buy supplies, and collect his mail.

He was later dubbed "The Hermit of Matia Island", and remained there until his supply-laden rowboat vanished on in a storm on February 23, 1921 en route from nearby Orcas Island.

[From Wikipedia and Historylink.]

This may have been the cove where Elvin fished:

Here's a map of our hike (and the dinghy ride we took after our hike):

I think the little spur we took at the southeast corner of the island might be Elvin's cove.

The hike brought us back around to Rolfe Cove, and hey! There's our boat!

The island at the entrance of Rolfe Cove (can't find anything that shows if it has its own name or not, but it's pretty, and around the other side, there are a bunch of harbor seals lounging about:

We're back at Airship now just doing some tweaks and making sure there's nothing else we need before heading to Alaska.

When we bought this boat, we had solar panels and a charge controller installed, but we've never been very happy with the output from it. We even talked about not getting solar on the next boat, since it hardly seemed to matter even when you had lots of sun.

Kevin decided to do a couple tests when we got back from our hike (involving covering the panels one at a time with a big towel and watching the current down below) and it turns out one of them wasn't even working! He removed the headliner and wire chase in the pilot house and hey, what do you know? The plug from one of the solar panels wasn't even plugged in! And just like that, we doubled our solar output! Sweet!

Next up: a few hours of work and probably a little quadcopter flying.

For tonight's dinner I think I'm going to repurpose the leftover "fried" chicken and put it with a marinara sauce over some veggie noodles, with some grilled zucchini. Boom, from chicken and waffles to chicken parmigiana. Sort of.

San Juans: Rosario, (Humpbacks!!), Matia, Sucia

Laura Domela — Sun, 16 Nov 2014 22:44:11 +0000

We woke up early at Rosario this morning and I snapped the above shot from the back of the boat (outside, about 31 degrees Farenheit, brrrr). We had coffee and showered and headed up to the Mansion Restaurant for breakfast. We'd checked out the menu during our cocktail and snacks last night and it looked great. (The dinner menu also looked great, but our snacks last night ended up being dinner.)

One of the things on the sample menu was a Croque Madame, which I was really excited about (open-faced ham and gruyere sandwich, topped with sunny side up egg and creamy béchamel sauce, served with local mixed greens). However, today's menu did not have the Croque Madame on it (awwwww) so we both ordered the traditional Eggs Benedict and they were PERFECT. The eggs were perfect, the ham wasn't too thick, the Hollandaise was great and lemony…served with asparagus. Delicious.

The restaurant is on what used to be the porch (now enclosed) of the Moran Mansion and it's got a great view of Cascade Bay. That's "shadow Kevin" on the left.

After breakfast we headed back to Airship and took off toward Matia Island (the very long way, around the west side of Orcas). The weather was gorgeous, again. We are so lucky this November weekend to have such beautiful weather.

So, we're coming around the west side of Orcas, and I head down to the head, and all of a sudden Kevin yells "Whales!! Humpbacks!!" and so I bolt back up to the pilot house and holy crap! More humpbacks. Super cool! There were two in front of us and we eventually noticed a couple more behind us…

We put it in neutral and just hung out with the whales for about a half an hour. Incredible. (And this time I had my long lens with me!)

After thanking the whales for a fantastic show, we headed on our way to Matia Island. Here's another shot of the Garmin, using the Mariner's Eye view mode (our boat is in the center, toward the bottom of the screen). It's pretty neat! (The red is radar…stuff you want to avoid…but in rough water even waves show up as red.)

We got to Matia Island (Rolfe Cove) and found the two mooring buoys there as advertised, but the current was pretty bad in the cove. After we snagged a mooring buoy (the second time past it!), we decided it wasn't going to be a very chill night of sleep decided to head to our backup plan.

The next island over: Sucia Island. We are docked at Fossil Bay:

When we arrived, there was only one other boat moored here: a Grand Banks. Its owners had taken their dinghy and gone ashore, and they were returning right as we were docking. We had a nice conversation with them: they just bought their boat in September (same as us) and it is their first "big boat" (same as us). They are from Vancouver B.C., commuting South to use their boat, as we are commuting North to use ours. This was their first time at Sucia, and we told them some of the places we liked up here after exploring as much as we have since we bought our boat. (Tonight is night 30 on Airship!)

One more boat was coming into the bay as we headed back to the boat after filling out our registration, so three boats total in Fossil Bay tonight:

Sucia sunset:

Dinner: fresh halibut, rosemary fingerling potatoes, and sauteed spinach. Tomorrow morning I think Kevin's going to do some quadcopter flying/photography. Finally!

Here's today's route map (click to enlarge):