First boating trip to the San Juan Islands has come to an end

Our First boating trip to the San Juan Islands – Part 3

Our first boating trip to the San Juan Islands has come to an end. We started in Seattle to La Conner (Part 1) and then La Conner to the San Juan Islands (Part 2). Not knowing originally how long it would take us to get home, we planned to stop half way at Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island on our way home on Monday, Jul 24th. Now that we have done the trip, one regret we have is that we didn’t stay longer on each of the islands to allow time to explore them. It’s a long way up and expensive, to simply turn around and come home. But we had fun, non the less.

My brother Ron and his wife Patsy moved on to my sister’s boat, Semper Fi in the morning and we departed soon after. We really lucked out on the weather and the conditions of the sound. We decided to go south along Lopez Island, through Cattle Pass and then towards Deception Pass. Deception Pass is very very tricky to get through. Because of the severe currents that create whirlpools, it’s best to go in during slack tide. Given this information, we had to go through between 10:30am and 12pm.

first boating trip san juan channel — Leaving San Juan Channel towards Lopez Island

We went back and forth if we should travel north back through Thatcher’s pass, which we knew or head south through Cattle Pass, which was unfamiliar to us. But since Cattle Pass was east of Deception Pass, it made more sense.

As you come through Cattle Pass, especially at high tide, be very careful to not get too close to the end of Lopez Island. There are a number of small islands and reefs and we almost slammed straight into one.

We went through Deception Pass very quickly at about 18 knots, but it was definitely like driving on black ice!

After we got through the pass, we came upon Hope island in the channel. We weren’t sure if we should go through on the west side or east side and no other boats were around for us to see what everyone else was doing.

Well, we quickly found out that we should have gone on the western side of Hope Island, because we were suddenly in only 4 feet of water!! We carefully and slowly made our way towards Whidbey Island.

Skagit Bay was extremely windy and choppy on our way to Oak Harbor. When we arrived to the channel, the tide was super low. We stayed dead center, but even then we were only about 8′ of water. Then when we got to the Oak Harbor Marina, we weren’t sure where to go in. We tried calling the office, no luck and they didn’t have a VHF channel posted for the harbor master. But we did have our slip number, so we eventually figured it out. Luckily when we pulled in, another boat was next to us and they had to help us dock as the current was really strong.

The slips have picnic benches and there are seals that lay around on the logs surrounding the marina. This marina is a city marina, so it’s not super fancy, but it does offer the basic amenities, including free Wi-Fi. I will warn you though, it is very noisy due to the fighter jets from the air base that fly day and night!

We walked into town, about a 15 minute walk from the marina. There are lots of memorials throughout downtown in honor of the fallen service men who served our country.

Downtown is very small and there’s not a lot to see or do. They have a few small shops, a couple of taverns (which we found one….that was interesting!!) and we ended up having dinner at the Loakal Pub.

While at the Loakal, we ended up buying drinks for a jet engine mechanic who was headed to Japan for a two year tour. He has been in the Navy for over 20 years – we were truly thankful for his service and longtime commitment.

We ended the evening enjoying the sunset, but again it got hard to talk due to the loud jets flying over. Not super romantic. But we were so exhausted from the entire trip that we fell into bed early and slept in the next day.

first boating trip oak harbor marina seals

The Journey Home

We left Oak Harbor at high tide (yea!!) around 9:30am and we had placid waters all the way home!! This is so rare for the Puget Sound. Scott made the comment that if it was always like this, he would go up north regularly!!

I tried taking photos of the whales we encountered, but this is what I got every time! See the tail? Oh, yea, it’s already underwater!

The sight of Seattle and our marina, Elliott Bay Marina was a very welcome sight!

We got home around 12:30pm and gassed up (another $300). For the next three hours, Kokomo was scrubbed & cleaned from top to bottom. We took off all of the vinyl/canvas windows and scrubbed them clean. It was so nice to have a shiny boat again.

Lessons learned from this trip:

pack light! We ended up wearing the same clothes multiple days, no need for a new outfit every day.
Food – pack light! Our fridge holds A LOT of food, we were amazed! But we brought enough food to feed an army and so did my sister-in-law. We used every nook and cranny to store food.
Stay longer and explore the islands.
Fuel- if you travel between 18-22 knots, you will burn through a lot of fuel. Our fuel tank is 148 gallons and when we left Seattle, we put in 75 gallons, then in Deer Harbor we put in about 90 gallons and upon our return we put in another 90 gallons.

While we don’t have any major trips like this scheduled for the rest of the summer, we are going on a quick weekend trip with friends closer to home in August. Stay tuned for our next adventure!

Scott and Ally on KokomoSeattle