BLIND BAY AND EAGLE HARBOR

We have actually planned out the next few days. We don’t usually do much planning, other than say “Well, where do you want to go tomorrow?” But, we have specific things we need to get done soon - like get the boat hauled out of the water and have the bottom painted, and retrieve our car from the garage where it is stored in Tacoma.

So, we have made arrangements for the boat to be hauled in Bellingham on Tuesday, August 1st. We will rent a car there, then drive down to Tacoma, return the rental car and pick up our car. We will then drive home to the Bay Area to attack our pile of mail, pull up the plants that have died, make a few appointments, then, in a week or two, fly back up to Bellingham to continue our voyage. The general idea is to bring the boat back down to San Francisco Bay, hopping down the Pacific Coast during periods of good weather and hanging out in harbors of refuge when conditions aren’t just right.

Since we have had a few days to kill before getting to Bellingham, we are just slowly wandering through the San Juan Islands, gradually heading east. Yesterday we anchored in Blind Bay on the eastern side of Shaw Island, dinghied in to shore and took a nice long walk of several miles along the roads. There was minimal traffic, and what little there was came by only just before, or just after the ferry landed on the island.

This morning was a lazy morning. We slept in a bit, then, trying to use up our food stores, cooked breakfast (Spam & eggs burritos) rather than just have the usual cup of coffee. Late morning, we weighed anchor and cruised over to Eagle Harbor on Cypress Island. This is a beautiful little cove where we stayed a night last year when we chartered a boat out of Bellingham. A large portion of Cypress island is owned by the Department of Natural Resources and maintained as a nature

preserve. To prevent damage to the underwater vegetation they have installed mooring buoys so you don’t have to anchor in the cove. We picked up a mooring, then took the dinghy into the beach to go for a hike. Last year we hiked up to the top of Eagle Crest, so we decided to go the other way this time and hike over to a couple of lakes. The trail signage is pretty good, but not perfect, so we put in a little extra milage. We hiked a total of about three and a half hours, over trails that had, obviously, seen little use. It was a nice, warm, sunny day, and we only saw only one other group of hikers. We don’t know exactly how much we climbed, but it was significant - the island tops out at over 1500 feet, and we were very near the top at times.

We will leave here in the morning and head over to Bellingham, spending tomorrow night in the marina in anticipation of having the boat hauled on Tuesday morning. I’ll be taking a short break from the blog while we run home for a week or two, but will resume when we’re back on the boat.

Thanks for reading - hope you have enjoyed it…