It was wonderful spending time with Kees and Amy in Eastsound. In addition to spending great quality time with friends, we got to take showers, do laundry and restock our food supplies. We also sat down and began planning the next leg of the trip. We still had three more weeks of paddling ahead of us and didn’t know where we’d head to next. So we consulted the Current Atlas to see I where the water was flowing and discovered that it basically was all headed towards Canada. If it weren’t for Covid and if the Canadian border were still open, we would’ve happily set our sights on the Gulf Islands and headed north, but being bound to the U.S. we had to come up with another plan.
I can’t find any photos of our paddle from Eastsound to Spencer Spit, but it was a pleasant enough trip and we had a tailwind the whole way. The coastline of Eastsound is relatively steep and wooded, but honestly not very interesting. We stopped at Obstruction Point State Park for lunch and got to see Amy’s son, Hans, who was there working on a Youth Conservation Corps trail crew. Great program. Get kids outside in the summertime doing physical labor and learning how to work. They even get paid. Not a lot, mind you. I think it’s about twenty-five dollars a day, but for a twelve year old, that’s like a dozen blow pops, so that’s pretty sweet.
There are two designated Cascadia Marine Trail sites at the park (both up a really steep hill, which sucks for hauling gear, by the way) and both were occupied. The first site was being used by two couples – Gretchen and Rand, and Julie and Ben. Rand and Julie are siblings and the four have been doing trips together for years. They paddled two massive fiberglass kayaks, each about twenty-three feet long. They said they could travel over five miles an hour comfortably. After almost a month in our plastic Tempests, we were quite jealous. Given that each site held up to eight people, these folks offered to share their site with us, which we gladly accepted and enjoyed their company during our stay. Julie and Rand’s great-grandparents homesteaded on Orcas Island, so their roots run deep in the area.
We spent the next day on a circumnavigation around Decatur Island.We tried to time it with the tides so we could shoot through Lopez Pass in the morning and then shoot back through Thatcher Pass in the afternoon. Somehow, we got it all wrong and felt like we were paddling against the currents much of the day. I did get out my fishing pole and tried trolling from my kayak for a while. Our friend Omar had suggested I use a DeepSix sinker to keep my lure from floating at the surface while I paddled. It worked quite well at that, but that meant I was pulling against the force of the DeepSix, which acts like a sea anchor. I did it for about thirty minutes, didn’t even get a nibble and decided to stick with paddling. The water was flat, the skies were blue and the air warm, but not hot. All in all a lovely day to be on the water.
We returned to Spencer Spit and spent the rest of the day lounging in the hammock and enjoying the views. It really is a lovely spot. We would be leaving for Jones Island in the morning and so traded trip plans with Gretchen and crew and stayed up probably a bit too late laughing and enjoying some more good company before tucking into our sleeping bags.
