IN A MONTH OR TWO, scores of cruising
boats will be heading for the beautiful San Juan Islands, in northwest
Washington state, about 80 miles north of Seattle. Many of them will be
attracted to the busiest and most famous town in the islands, Friday Harbor.
And many will be disappointed.
Nearly 20 years ago, when June and I
acquired a little 22-foot sailboat, Tagati,
people said: “Oh, you’ll have to visit Friday Harbor. Don’t miss Friday Harbor.
Friday Harbor is gorgeous.”
And it is indeed a charming little
town in a wonderful setting. And that’s the problem. Everyone wants to go
there.
It was August 7 when we rounded Pt.
Caution to enter Friday Harbor, and there we ran into traffic galore — The Victoria Clipper, large Washington State
ferries discharging tourists and vehicles, seaplanes landing and taking off,
and half a dozen lost-looking souls on sailboats milling around the harbor
entrance, where a young man sat with a hand-held radio and a list of mooring
slips.
We ducked into the harbor and tucked
ourselves into a little space that was vacant on the inside of the entrance breakwater,
not realizing how lucky we were to be able to fit in there. Bigger boats
clinging to the outside of the breakwater were being thrown around by wakes, jerking
at their mooring lines, popping cleats, and gouging gunwales.
One woman on a Catalina 30 in a very
exposed position told me they’d been there 24 hours waiting for a slip to come
free. Channel 66A was filled with pleas
from boats wanting berths, and having to be put on the waiting list. “It’s a
zoo,” said the Catalina woman.
All kinds of boats came blundering
to the breakwater, some sideways in the current and out of control. People
sprinted from their own boats to fend them off. I fastened our dinghy amidships
on the outboard side to discourage any of the larger idiots from trying to raft
up alongside, and that made more space aft of us which was immediately filled
by a small Bayliner powerboat whose two occupants started to change their
baby’s diaper on the aft deck.
I watched the berthing master at the
end of the breakwater crack up with laughter when a 60-footer called on the VHF
and asked if he could have a slip. But the berthing master was very polite when
he replied, and offered to put the 60-footer on the waiting list. He didn’t say
the wait would probably be days.
June went ashore and took a long
walk all around the perimeter of the marina to find a hot shower, for which she
was charged only $1. She came back all perfumed and smiling, and we cast off
from the breakwater, heading for a lovely quiet lagoon called Fisherman Bay,
just four miles away, across the San Juan Channel.
As we pulled out of Friday Harbor,
the skipper of a boat from Portland, Oregon, said enviously: “Are you going to
a real berth?”
“No,” I said, “we’re outta here.”
Fisherman Bay has one of those
entrances that requires you to both navigate and concentrate, which probably accounts for the peace and quiet
you find inside. We followed the winding passage without trouble, using the
chart in Migael Sherer’s cruising guide, which I happened to have edited for
the publishers a few months before.
Migael mentions a tavern/restaurant
halfway along the east shore, so we went that way, located it, and anchored Tagati about 200 yards offshore in water
about 8 feet deep.
That evening we rowed ashore and
enjoyed a lovely meal of delicious clams boiled in their own broth at the
Galley Tavern. We sat upstairs, where wooden tables and chairs were set out
under colorful shade umbrellas, and we soaked up the sunset view out over the lagoon.
We counted only six other transient yachts in the whole anchorage.
Fisherman Bay was calm. It was
serene. It was beautiful. And you can hardly imagine how grateful we were to be
safely removed from that utter bedlam just four miles away across the San Juan
Channel.
Today’s
Thought
The
most common of all antagonisms arises a from a man’s taking a seat beside you
on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
— Robert Benchley
Tailpiece
"John, what's my mother going to
say when I tell her you kissed me twice?"
"But
I haven't kissed you twice. I only kissed you once."
"Yeah,
but you haven’t gone yet, have you?"
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
We used to potter about in boats in the San Juans quite a bit about 20 years ago.
ReplyDelete'Fish' Bay was one of our favorite spots, for most of the reasons you mention. And it was worth the walk into town for the bakery that used to be (and maybe still is) there.
You're right. The entrance requires navigation and concentration.
And a tide chart.
To amuse ourselves, we used to dinghy out to the spit at low tide and wait for mariners who had forgotten theirs. They were usually the ones who came charging through at full bore.
And they say a boat can't stop on a dime.