Day 343 Off to James Island

The view across the Rosario Strait from Zephyr's deck.
From shore on James Island.

After rowing ashore for a bit of exploring at Watmough Bay, we took off to James Island (48 30.4580N  122 46.2348W).  The anchor had set so well at Watmough that I had to really cinch down the windlass so it could pull it out.  Zephyr's forward motion helped but boy we were anchored in deep.  I'm just glad the only mud that came up with it was what was struck to the anchor and that the chain was clear.  It makes cleaning the foredeck much easier.

We'd stowed "Puff"(dingy) on the deck and out we went.  We decided on James Island about 5 miles North of where we were.  Not the smartest place to stay as it turns out.  The West side of the island is subjected to lots of tidal flow and keeping an anchor watch if you anchor there.  The East side is subject to wave action from passing ferry and freighters.  We decided to tie to a state park buoy for the night on the East side as there were no buoys on the West.  There was a dock but we weren't sure we could get in there without hitting bottom at low tide.  There was a power boat there on one side as we passed but they didn't answer the call I made to them on channel 16 as to what the water depth was so we just went to the East side.   Just as well as after we tied up to a buoy and went ashore, we walked over and there were four power boats now tied to the dock.  They were rafting up to each other(tieing along side each other).  If we had stayed there, they probably would have wanted to tie up to us.

There was another power boat on a buoy on the East but other than that it looked great as you can see from my pictures.  Boy, were we wrong.  It's like a freeway out there with ships passing all the time and their wakes flowing into the inlet like an arrow.  Up and down, back and forth depending on how it catches us at the time.  Rocking and rolling into the night.  Enough that at times you have to hang on.  Luckily you get a bit of warning as you can hear their propeller sound for quite a while before the wake gets here.  We'd thought to spend a couple of days here but have changed our minds.  We'll be out of here later this morning and head for Olga on Orcas Island--maybe, who knows.  If we see someplace else that intrigues us we'll stop there.

We lowered Puff and rowed ashore for a hike and put our information in the State Parks box that we were here.  We have a year pass so we don't have to pay for our night which is nice.  It's only $10.00 per night so that's not so bad.  We need to find a dock we can tie up to.  That's when it really pays to have a park pass as it's $23.00 a night to stay on the dock.  We have our park book and will be scoping out parks all through the islands.  No point in having a pass if you don't use it.

The weather has been great since last Friday but is supposed to turn colder and have rain by Wednesday.  We'll find a nice place to hold up in for a day or two.

We tried to hook up an antenna to our TV last night but the signals out here are so weak that it's just about impossible to pick up anything.  We'll try again at a different anchor to see if there is a better signal not that there is that much to watch.  I've even started reading a book with a plot!!!  Plus another manual of course.  Learn, learn, learn.

We'll let you know where we end up tonight.

Have a great day everyone.  We're finally living the dream!