We woke to thick fog in Fisherman’s Bay on Lopez Island so opted for a slow start to the day. After lounging around on the boat drinking coffee until 9:30, we finally went for a run around the bay and out the spit, then got showers at the Island Marina. By noon the sun was shining brightly, and we headed toward our weekend destination: Sucia Island a couple of miles north of Orcas Island and the northernmost of the San Juan islands.
As we cruised up the east side of Orcas, we had a wonderful view of Mt. Baker to the east. Twenty-five miles and 90 minutes later we pulled into Fossil Bay on Sucia Island, one of our favorite destinations on our annual trip to the San Juans.
This year for the first time we’re on a mooring buoy rather than tied up at the dock, thanks to our new bathroom facilities. We’ve spent the whole afternoon gloating over our good fortune as we’ve watched boats fight for limited space on the dock, even rafting in one case. We’ve also observed a large volume of smoke spilling from the multiple BBQs spread across the dock. We’ve never been here on a weekend before and are amazed how busy it is. It’s 8PM and boats are still pulling in, though at this point they have to anchor, as the buoys and docks were full by 3PM.
Because we just bought the boat and outfitted it in a hurry for this trip, we’ve had a few “learnings”. One of them is that things lashed to the swim-step jiggle a lot. Our tender, an 8-foot rigid inflatable boat (RIB), is not yet connected by a davit, so it jiggled one of its’ oars off the boat which was then lost at sea! We bought a couple of cheap replacement oars on Lopez and spent time this afternoon modifying the oars to fit the tender. Here’s Cathryn hard at work. She did the planning, while Bob handled the execution (drilling).
Tomorrow we plan to hang out here on our buoy, reading or possibly going ashore for a walk; we ARE having lots of fun!
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