The Journey Begins - Shilshole to San Juan Islands

Well, Frog Prints is all loaded up and we head out today. We have plenty of provisions, grill and Walker Bay dinghy (from Windworks), our asymmetric spinnaker, and our new inflatable tandem kayak from Advanced Elements - boy am I glad Frog Prints has the hold (the sail locker which would be the third cabin in different layouts).

We planned to do a one-day run with the tides all the way from Shilshole to somewhere in the San Juans (given Labor Day weekend, we weren't sure where we'd stay this night) in the manner of the Northwest Yachting article. We planned to leave by 0600, but we ended up a little late (as usual), although we still left by 0700.

We started out with an absolutely beautiful day - bright, sunny and comfortable. No useful wind mind you, but still a beautiful day. As we motored north on the ebb, we focused on getting everything stowed away. Everything was looking good until just about Point No Point.

Approaching Point No Point, we spied the first fog bank making its way down the Sound. It was only a few hundred feet high, but thick as pea soup. Since Frog Prints doesn't have radar, and knowing how complicated the western shore would be (not to mention dealing with the Hood Canal junction), we made a run to make the East side before the fog arrived. We made it far enough across before entering the soup that, with a constant plot on the charts and a good depth contour to follow, we were in pretty good shape. As an aside, the little PostIt arrow flags are great for keeping a plot on a paper chart - particularly if you don't always erase all the pencil lines from previous plots.

One thing we noticed in the fog is how few other vessels sounded fog signals. We came across a couple power boats who, save for their engines, we would never have known about. One ended up following us for a bit off of Double Bluff since we seemed to know where we were going. The ferries did sound signals, as did some large traffic out in the VTS lanes.

The one that was quite disturbing though appeared as we were passing though a pocket of thinner fog. We heard the thrumming of something big, but we were way outside the VTS lanes, so we weren't expecting anything. However, as the fog thinned for a minute, we could see the tug and barge passing off our port side. Not only was it not making any signals and operating outside the VTS lanes, it was also headed southbound on the east side - it was completely where it should not have been. We just hope he had us on radar because there certainly wouldn't have been anything we could have done had we been closer.

The fog thickened back up as we followed the eastern shore up towards Partridge Point. We plotted a new course up Whidbey to the eastern San Juans in case the fog continued into the Straits of Juan De Fuca. As we approached Partidge Point though, the fog cleared up back into a beautiful day. We reset to our original plans and headed for Cattle Pass - we had considered Roche Harbor, but we figured it would be a little too crazy (and they wanted a three-night minimum). I missed the donuts, but cest la vie.

As we approached Cattle Point, we heard one of the first Maydays of the trip. A 63' power boat had lost propulsion in the tide rips just inside the pass, and the caller was quite frantic. Unfortunately, they didn't seem to be very familiar with either their vessel or with procedure. Not only did they call a Mayday (rather than Pan), but they also didn't know how to change the channel on the VHF when Coastguard Port Angeles wanted them to move to a working channel. Granted, I can understand their concern - the tide rips were quite boisterous that day - but avoiding panic is so important in any kind of trouble. We found later they were picked up by Vessel Assist and managed to go on with their vacation (we saw them in Deer Harbor the next day). Apparently, they had run out of fuel (all 1400 gallons of it - Frog Prints carries 27).

Entering the channel was quite the E-ticket ride, since we arrived well towards max flood. You can see on the track plot below that we managed to hit 10.5 kts over ground with the current - and that's when we were doing about 6 kts water speed under engine. Some of the rocks under the rips come pretty far up (10-12 feet of water) which was a bit nerve-wracking, but that's why we have a shoal keel.

We decided to head for Deer Harbor for the night. They've done a really nice job with the marina there, there's a good restaurant within walking distance, and we could both fuel and pump out before departing. We were headed for Stuart Island the next day to finish the hike to the lighthouse we didn't finish last year.