San Juan Island – Riveted

Thanks for the Cocktails!

Laura Domela — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 03:29:24 +0000

To whomever anonymously paid for our drinks tonight at Downriggers in Friday Harbor with the “Thank you for the blog” message: Thank YOU SO MUCH. That was such a sweet thing to do and we only wish we knew who you were. Please, if you see us again, come say hello. You’re why we love doing the blog in the first place. We hope you enjoyed your evening as much as we did. Thank you! xo

Photo above: Airship on a cold night in Friday Harbor, San Juan Island

P.S. Dinner and service at Downriggers was great, and we’re so glad they’ve reopened. This place has been one of our destination eats since long before we had a boat. So nice to have them back!

Airship to Alaska | Day 1 | Anacortes to Roche Harbor

Laura Domela — Sun, 08 May 2016 16:18:34 +0000

Airship Goes to Alaska 2016 – Here we go again!

We were finished with all of our boat projects and provisioning a little sooner than we expected, so we decided to head out a couple days early. We left Cap Sante in Anacortes and cruised over to Roche Harbor on San Juan Island today. We figured we'd rather do the one load of laundry we had left over here instead of at Cap Sante. It's beautiful here, and now we're just that much closer to Canada.

The weather started out a little dreary, but morphed into a gorgeous day.

Airship, all expedition-ready!

I guess we've never been to Roche Harbor in the "On Season" (which started Friday, apparently). The moorage was $65 for tonight…not $30-something as it normally is when we're here (in the Off Season). But we did have the very charming Hailey come out to our boat to take our payment right there, rather than having to go over to office to pay. Also, there are now trash cans right ON the dock…no walking up to the top to take your trash. So there's all THAT going for the On Season. :)

We did Mother's Day festivities with my mom last Sunday (brunch, some copter aerials of her home in Kelso, WA, etc.). Here are a couple of the copter shots (that's my mom in the second photo, throwing the ball for her three White Shepherds):

Kevin flew the copter while I used my iPhone and the other controller to control the camera and take photos. It was fantastic! We'll do more of this on our trip north (and show you the setup next time…it's very cool!)

Hawk on a mast, back in Anacortes:

We're going to cook dinner on Airship tonight (risotto, kale, mushrooms) and probably before dinner we'll head to the upper deck and sip an Aperol Spritz while enjoying the sunset, and the first(ish) night of our second trip up the Inside Passage to SE Alaska. We're super excited, and glad to have you along with us again!

The plan for tomorrow is to clear customs in Bedwell Harbor on Pender Island, and then stay tomorrow night in Ganges Harbour on Salt Spring Island.

Today's route from Anacortes over to Roche Harbor. 4 hours 27 minutes, 27 nautical miles:

Cruising the Back Side of San Juan Island

Laura Domela — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:18:07 +0000

We left Roche Harbor yesterday morning and headed around the back side of San Juan Island to look for orcas. (Spoiler: no orcas.) But wow what a gorgeous sky!

Kevin worked while I drove the boat and kept an eye out for cetaceans. It was a pretty chill cruise the whole way. We hit Cattle Pass at exactly slack tide, as if we'd planned it.

Seals and birds:

We eventually chose to stay the night at Spencer Spit State Park. We were the only ones there.

Dinner last night was a chicken curry that I made in my Instant Pot electric pressure cooker (boy do I LOVE this thing) based on this quick recipe. There's presently no room in the galley for the pressure cooker though, so it'll probably go back home unless I figure out a solution. (I know! Bigger boat!!)

Here's today's route (27.5 nautical miles):

Whales All Day

Laura Domela — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 20:14:07 +0000

This post will be all about whales. I'll do another post where I tell you all the other cool things about our cruise from Port Townsend north to Stuart Island, but not in this post. This post is the post with all the whale photos.

Yesterday in the middle of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we got to see our first Minke whales!

There were two of them, and they're pretty cool. Kinda boring as far as whale viewing goes (no breaching or tail slaps normally, but I love the perfect wave shape of their dorsal fins.

Then, as we got up along the west side of San Juan Island and around Henry Island, ahead of us a ways we saw a couple of big splashes (we think breaches) and eventually came upon a large pod of orcas (technically cetaceans — part of the dolphin family — and not whales), including several youngsters!! It was so cool! We turned around and ran parallel with them for about an hour, taking way too many photos. Here is a very VERY small percentage of them.

(See the baby peeking out from behind mama?)

Orca on its belly with fins in the air beside the rocks:

Rounding the tip of Henry Island:

Pretty sweet, huh? Conditions were perfect and they were super active. We even got a couple of spyhops and good body/tail shots:

This morning when we left Stuart Island we decided to head back via the back side of San Juan Island to see if we could see them again. We were trucking along and all of a sudden there was one right on my starboard side, pretty close and headed the opposite direction. We quickly pulled the throttle and waited for it to pass, and it looked like there were two more behind that one heading north, but it was a little too rough to get any decent photos. But yay! More orcas!

There you go, the whale report from yesterday. Also, there are whale watching people who know way more about which whales these might have been, and they report on them frequently here.

Here's yesterday's track (you can see where the Orcas were by the green doubled line on the west of San Juan Island, and the Minke whales are near that little circle southwest of Minor Island out in the Strait). All told we traveled 55.4 nautical miles over 8 hours.

Sucia Island to San Juan Island

Laura Domela — Mon, 02 Mar 2015 20:31:28 +0000

Fossil Bay on Sucia Island last night at dusk:

Sucia Island sky from bed this morning:

Fossil Bay, not from bed:

In the stateroom up front there are two portholes and one skylight, and I can usually tell by the color of the light if I should get up and see how pretty it is outside.

We got up and did some work early this morning, and I made us a smoked salmon and spinach omelette, topped with a little hollandaise and chives. It doesn't look super pretty (I usually make one omelette in a pan and we share it), but trust me, it was SO delicious:

We left Fossil Bay (headed to Friday Harbor) on the early side, since the wind was supposed to pick up significantly this afternoon/overnight and we wanted to be somewhere with good protection:

SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM PST THIS EVENING

GALE WATCH IN EFFECT FROM 6 PM PST THIS EVENING THROUGH TUESDAY
MORNING

TODAY
N WIND 15 TO 25 KT. WIND WAVES 2 TO 4 FT.

TONIGHT
NE WIND RISING TO 25 TO 35 KT. WIND WAVES BUILDING TO
4 TO 6 FT.

Our planned route took us around the west side of Orcas Island, but once outside the protection of the bay, we were in some pretty hefty chop. We were definitely in 4ft wind waves and they were pretty much directly on our beam (hitting the boat sideways, which makes for some side-to-side rolling action…not much fun). Waves on the bow or from the stern, you wouldn't notice a thing, but when the waves hit the boat on its beam, it can be a bit unnerving with all that sideways rolling. A little further out, I'd say we were now in 4-5 foot waves, mostly abeam. We got one REALLY good roll, turned into the waves immediately, and decided to change course and go around the east side of Orcas Island instead.

Here's how that one good roll rearranged the salon:

Kevin calls this look "postmodern post frat party." (That pillow at the bottom of the photo…that pillow is from the pilot house!)

Here's us, changing course:

The new course was much better, and much calmer. (Note: when in rough conditions, boating in socks is not advised. Not enough traction. Check.)

It's another gorgeous day in the San Juan Islands, and the rest of the cruise over to Friday Harbor was great. We washed all the salt off the boat (there was A LOT of it), then grabbed some lunch and a few things at the market and the marine store, and now we're back to work.

Check out the wind sock:

(That wind was not fun to dock against, by the way…but I rocked it anyway. Today was all about good practice in challenging conditions.)

Morning in Griffin Bay

Laura Domela — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 17:46:09 +0000

This was the sunrise yesterday morning from our anchorage in Griffin Bay (off of San Juan Island):

I know, I was awake for another sunrise. It's not that weird though, since sunrise was at 7:54am yesterday. Right behind us, the moon was slowly setting. Seriously, these were taken within minutes of each other:

We had some coffee and waited for it to get a little lighter out before taking the dinghy ashore to explore some before heading back to Anacortes.

Airship, anchored:

This end of San Juan Island is made up mostly of San Juan National Historic Park, so we did some hiking around in the park, made our way up Mt. Finlayson, and had this incredible view. Looking north(ish) into Haro Strait:

Looking south toward the Cattle Point lighthouse, Lopez Island, Whale Mummy Rocks (!!!) and to the right, the Straight of Juan de Fuca:

The trees up here show evidence of some rough weather, don't they?

This is called Third Lagoon, and you can't see it very well, but the teeny tiny white dot way off in the distance on the right side of the photo is Airship, anchored in the bay:

Back at the boat:

We pulled up our anchor and headed out past Cattle Point and around the bottom of Lopez Island on our way back to Anacortes.

Cattle Point Lighthouse, from the water:

Two big bald eagles on a rock:

Sea lions and sea birds:

Anacortes with Mount Baker backdrop:

Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous day for a cruise!

Here's our route:

A Visit to the Nordic Tug Factory

Laura Domela — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 13:33:00 +0000

A couple months back while we were looking at boats and trying to zero in on which might be right for us, one of the things we did was get a tour of the Nordic Tug factory in Burlington, Washington. These are very well-made boats (as are the American Tugs, made in nearby LaConner, Washington — our runner up) and you couldn't go wrong with either boat. It was great to see the process, and we're very happy with our choice.

I didn't show you these earlier, because, well, it was a surprise (and we hadn't decided yet)!

Early on Tuesday morning we'll be heading north to close on the sale of our boat, and then starting right in with a few days of on-the-water training. We want to learn as much as we can (while there's someone right there to answer questions) before we strike out on our own (where we have to look things up on the internet).

After the 29th, we'll be having a few upgrades done to the boat, and once those are finished we'll probably explore the San Juans a little bit (if the weather's still decent) before bringing Airship back to Portland for some Columbia River time.

Morning at Cap Sante Marina, Anacortes:

I've already purchased a couple of the things from my Airship Decor post yesterday and I'm excited to see how they look on the boat. (I just want to be ON the boat already!) I'll wait to decide what else we want/need until after we've actually lived on the thing for a little bit. The boat is coming to us already outfitted with so many things we won't need to buy (fantastic!) but we know we're going to want to personalize the look and feel with our own bedding, throw pillows, towels, etc.

That pillow with the woodblock print of the giant octopus attacking the boat? Yeah. I got two of those.

We Flew to Friday Harbor with our Bike Fridays

Laura Domela — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 01:02:40 +0000

On Saturday we decided to see if the new bikes would fit nicely in the Cirrus, so we planned a flight up to Friday Harbor for lunch and a ride. This photo on takeoff is blurry because my camera focused on a dead bug on the windshield instead of the runway, but I still kinda like it:

Here are the bikes in their bags tucked nicely in the back of the plane (that's the luggage door open, on the right, but I took this photo before we took off, don't worry):

The flight up to the San Juans is always such a gorgeous flight and the weather on Saturday could not have been better.

Mt. Rainier off the wing:

The Olympic range:

Approaching Friday Harbor:

Right over the airport:

We got the bikes out and unfolded them and off we went into town for some lunch.

We have a favorite spot we like for lunch in Friday Harbor called Downriggers. It's right on the water with a nice big outdoor deck where you can watch the ferry and the fishing boats and sailboats go in and out of the marina. As we got down to the waterfront, um, well, there was nothing but an empty lot surrounded by chain link fence where Downriggers used to be:

Unfortunately, in August of 2013 the building burned down (electrical fire, accident, 2:30 in the morning) and we hadn't heard. (Even though as I searched the blog for the last time we were there, which was July 2013, I noticed a comment from our friend Eric telling us of such news…somehow I missed that I guess!)

Anyway, they are rebuilding and will be back! But as a backup, we ate at the place across the street called Cask & Schooner and it was great! Not the same view as Downriggers, but the burger and the fish & chips we shared were both very good.

After we'd had lunch, we browsed a map of the island on my iPhone and planned a rough route across the island and around one end, and then headed out. Although this is not a particularly mountainous island (like, say Orcas Island is), this was still a hilly, hilly ride! Gorgeous, but hilly. It mostly looked like this (but with more hills). I wasn't going to stop on a hill to take a photo because, well, starting back up on a hill is hard.

Horses running (there were also deer, and alpacas):

We rode about 20 miles with about 1250 feet of climbing overall (Tuscany, here we come!) It was basically this ride, with a couple more miles in while we were bopping from the airport to town and around:

My top speed was about 35mph. Bet you can tell where that was:

The flight home ending up being a sunset flight and was just beautiful! Islands at dusk:

Olympics at sunset:

In the early days when I was in art school, when we first started coming to the San Juan Islands, we used to drive up to Anacortes after work and school (about a 4 hour drive without traffic), our backpacks loaded up with our tent, candle lantern, sleeping bag, Thermarests (and our titanium spork, of course). We'd sleep in the back of our old Ford Explorer overnight at the nearby campground, and catch an early ferry over to Orcas Island in the morning (about an hour ferry ride). From there we'd head over to Doe Bay Resort (about a half hour drive) and get a campsite (Lone Pine was our favorite). We used to say two days of vacation there felt like a week of vacation anywhere else…it was so relaxing (hot tub, sauna, cafe, great views, generally chill atmosphere). But man it was an ordeal to get up there. Those were wonderful times, and these are wonderful times as well. Now, we can be on Orcas or San Juan in just over an hour, and we can take our bikes! We just need to find the Lone Pine equivalent in a little hotel or B&B and we're set. Or maybe we'll just dust off our backpacking gear and strap it to the bikes!