Spencer Spit State Park – Riveted

Birthday Cruise

Laura Domela — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:08:13 +0000

Today is Kevin's birthday! We left Active Cove this morning and headed for Friday Harbor, where we thought we'd have some lunch, and pick up some seafood for dinner tonight at the little fish market down on the dock. Active Cove lived up to its name last night, and was pretty dang active. Our first night there was nice and calm, but last night the north wind caused the swells to come straight into the bay and we rocked and rolled all night. Kinda crazy, and we did not get much sleep. But I did get to snap this shot of the moon as it was setting…sometime around 4am:

It's super grainy becaused I cranked the ISO on my camera as high as it would go, but it still gives a pretty good representation of how it felt. In real life of course it was much clearer and a little softer.

We picked up some clams at the fish market and a few items at the grocery store in Friday Harbor for tonight's dinner: linguine with clams, and asparagus.

It was another gorgeous day in the islands, and we decided to moor at Spencer Spit State Park tonight on a buoy (but not one of those nice new ones…they still have the old style buoys here that we haven't seen since…um…yesterday).

View from our buoy (looking toward Frost Island):

Looking toward Spencer Spit:

Kevin's working on his quadcopter video from Patos Island and should have it uploaded either later tonight or tomorrow. I can't wait!

One more shot of the moon over Frost Island:

And here's our route from today:

Our First Night on a Mooring Buoy

Laura Domela — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:09:12 +0000

Our evening moored at Spencer Spit was great. A cocktail on the top deck, sunset, water, wildlife, trees…it can't get much better. A sailboat was anchored a ways from us, but there were still no other boats at the mooring buoys on this side of the spit.

We tried out our generator this evening (runs great, super quiet, even quieter outside). I'm glad we're adding solar and an inverter though…kinda nice not to have to turn on the generator when you're underway just to make a quick espresso.

The evening was pretty (the STARS!!). A little later the wind picked up, and the boat hook that hangs on the ladder to the top deck was rhythmically slapping the side each time the boat rocked, so Kevin went outside to move it to the floor of the cockpit. Pretty soon he says in the "loud whisper" voice, "Come out here!!!" It's dark except for the stars and the light on top of Frost Island reflecting in the water, but I can hear it: loud breathing to my left. I look over as my eyes adjust to the darkness and I start to make out a shape in the water where the breathing is coming from. It's a fairly good sized harbor seal (I think), light in color, and curious. I talked to him for sec and he quick swirled under the boat to the other side. We followed. It was so cool! We were out there for about a half hour hanging out with the seal and the stars. There may have even been a couple seals…or maybe that was just his bubbly underwater ghost. It was hard to tell.

The boat rocking in the wind and waves and current was so nice all evening, but what we didn't realize was that down in the stateroom, our heads are basically right against the front of the hull, where the waves are slapping the most. It's quite loud, and made it a little hard for me to sleep. (This is probably what all those boats taking up the mooring balls on the on the other side of the spit already knew.)

Because I didn't have a good image of what the boat was doing during all that slapping and rocking, I had some really crazy dreams — pirates in ski masks getting ready to board our boat, giant eels, tiny claustrophobic locks, etc. At some point I decided to go up to the pilot house to look outside. I could see our boat slowly swinging side to side on the buoy (and again! those stars!!). Once I had the visual of, well, no pirates or eels, I was able to get a bit more sleep, but we'll want to pay more attention to the local knowledge for next time.

This morning it's foggy and rainy outside, but we have work to do anyway. Happy Monday!

Fisherman Bay to Spencer Spit

Laura Domela — Sun, 28 Sep 2014 21:15:22 +0000

This morning it was quite foggy in Fisherman Bay, so we decided to walk up the road 10 minutes or so to grab some breakfast at the Galley Restaurant while we waited for the fog to burn off. We finished breakfast and walked the ten minutes back to Airship and the fog was even thicker!

We cleaned up some stuff on the boat and Kevin did some fine tuning on the dinghy's outboard motor while we waited and listened to the radio and weather. Pretty soon quite a few boats began readying to head out and we figured we'd join 'em! See you later, Fisherman Bay!

We cruised around the north end of Lopez Island and decided we'd check out the mooring buoys at Spencer Spit.

Spencer Spit is a Washington State Park just south of Swift Bay on the east side of Lopez. There are 10 mooring buoys, 7 on the north side of the spit, and 3 on the south side. Apparently the south side is preferable (probably a tiny bit more protected) but all three of those buoys were occupied, so we headed back around and grabbed ourselves the far one on the north side. We nailed it on the first try, too…we've got this mooring buoy thing down. (You take a line back to the stern, where it's low to the water, and whoever's driving the boat comes up alongside or backs toward the buoy. There's a ring on top you need to get the line through, and once you have it, you walk the line back up to the bow of the boat and tie it onto the cleat on either side of the bow. Done.)

We put the chairs up on the top deck and had some lunch before launching the dinghy and heading to shore.

The fee to stay overnight here is $12 (not to exceed 72 hours) and you pay at the pay station on the beach, pretty much like in a campground. They have trash and recycling and water up there, as well as some campsites and hiking trails (but out here in the bay, there's just a buoy of course).

Looking back at Airship, from the far end of the spit. (See it, we're the tiny white dot on the far right of the image):

The south side of Spencer Spit:

Before heading back to the boat we took the dinghy out for a spin around Flower Island. There's a little outcropping of rocks just past the island where a bunch of harbor seals were enjoying the sun:

Here's today's route, if you want to follow along:

Tonight's dinner will be leftover burgers (made from grass fed beef and chorizo, which probably cancels each other out, I know) on lettuce buns with tomato, avocado, and Sriracha mayo, and some sauteed zucchini. We'll do some work in the morning before heading back into Anacortes so that the service department (back in town after a motorcycle trip in Eastern Oregon) can start on the couple of upgrades we're doing.

LOVE the boat. LOVE.