Sailing Down to Blind Bay, Shaw Island

Friday 22 August 2014 ~ Echo Bay, Sucia Island to Blind Bay, Shaw Island

Here is a reference chart for our trip south to Shaw Island's Blind Bay.

We started today in Echo Bay watching this nice rowboat (we thought a Whitehall yawl) row towards us from the end of the Bay. One of the things that caught our eye is the nice rhythm of the rower's stroke. As the rower got closer we continued to be impressed with her stroke and the nice Whitehall yawl. What an awesome way to start the day. 

By 0800 we've got the engine on and are raising anchor to head out. It didn't look like we would have much wind, but we were ever hopeful.

By 0830 both the main and the stay-sail were raised and we motor-sailed out of the Bay, headed towards Shaw Island.




 Someone was curious as to what we were about.









We sailed out of the Bay and around the South side of Sucia, North of Orcas toward President Channel. Along the way, we spied the two J-24s from Camp Orkilla motor-sailing the other way. We waved. They waved back.





[Here are some photos of entering President Channel. 1st is off towards Orcas Island. The 2nd is looking back at Sucia Island. The third is Orcas Island again (borders the East side of the Channel). And the fourth is of Waldon Island (borders the West side of the Channel).















Half-way down President Channel we noticed a boat that looks familiar motoring North. A look through the binoculars confirmed it is some friends of ours from the marina. We waved at them, but were unsure if they realized who we were.








E. must be growing, as we continued to sleep through this section. But if you watch the pictures, he is soon to awake.








About this time, there looked to be some cat's paws upon the water, and J. decided to raise the jib and put the motor in neutral. Up went the jib, and we slowly - oh, so slowly - headed South. J. tried to tack us over the the other tack with no success. At this point, we realized, we were headed South at the same speed as the current. We were not sailing, we were drifting. With a sigh, J. put the engine back in gear. Those were not cat's paws, they were current ripples. Sigh.





























"How about tuna fish for lunch?"
"How about it! I'll even give up the helm to make it" M. said.

Just before we came to Deer Harbor, there were some nice boats leaving.

Isn't there an extra island?

During this time, we were trying to figure out where we were, or more particularly, what we were looking at. We continued to see this "reef" marked that we didn't want to hit, but the "reef" didn't seem to line up with what we were seeing.

And then we remembered the last time we were down here, and looked at another chart book. The chart book we were using had colored Reef Island the same color as a reef. The second chart had actually read "island" and Reef Island was the color of an island/shore.







At 1400 we were off the mouth of Deer Harbor, Orcas Island. We looked to see if we could see our old friend the barge, but it was gone.

Once we had peered into Deer Harbor, we decided to go ahead and try moving through Pole Pass.

The chart, photos, and video give you an idea of how narrow this pass is (although fairly deep at 10 fathoms/60 feet). The tide was just against us, and all of us were glad that we decided to let a larger and faster powerboat through before we ran through. With our mighty little engine, it took us 10 minutes to make it! But through we did.

We then headed South along Jones Island's Eastern shore and toward Wasp Passage (the other way around). Here we spied a quickly moving Easterly Ferry, and decided to just let it go past by our spinning around. Shaw Island was directly in front of us, and Blind Bay a little to the East. As we passed Bell Island we could now look up into Orcas Island's West Sound with her Murder Bay and Skull Island.

Here we were almost off the entrance to Blind Bay (you enter from the East). The little island in the picture is the actual state park.








The town of Orcas is across the way, with its own ferry dock, just like the ferry comes into Shaw Island at Blind Bay.


















The ferry had just left Shaw Island, heading East.











Blind Bay's island state park, again.

By 1526 we had entered Blind Bay and found a place to anchor. We waited a bit for another boat to clear her anchor and head out. "Hey, that's ATARI that we saw in the Swinomish Channel last year."





With the anchor down, we enjoyed the evening. The Log records in L.'s handwriting:

Blind Bay is gorgeous! Sunny 70 degrees. Good Day!

A little later, in J.'s hand:

And the Chef spoils us crew again with Brownies!