We awoke the next day just after sun-up. The weather was beautiful. It was a warm July morning. The boats in the marina adjacent to our anchorage sat calmly in their slips. You could hear their lines tapping gently against the masts, sending out soft pings across the water. Seagulls were out in full force, hopping around the beach, flying overhead, squawking (or “mewing,” as I’ve come to learn to be the correct term). You could even hear a brass bell ringing from time to time. I couldn’t see it, but its feint distant sound made the entire experience feel surreal.
I thought to myself, “Is this really happening? Am I really here?”
It was as if my life was part of a movie, and I had awoken just moments after the stage was set. Everything was in place; people were casually walking about, a fisherman was casting his line from the end of the dock, and all was right in the world.
We cooked up a simple breakfast for the kids—I was still quite full from the ridiculous amount of pizza I had eaten the night before—and hoisted anchor. We rounded Sandy Point and headed south.
On our port side, we passed a small island called, Hat Island. I didn’t know much about it other than, despite it being such a small island—one and a half miles long and half a mile wide—it was home to the Hat Island Yacht and Golf Club. It had a fully functioning marina on the northeast side, and a 9-hole private golf course—members only. The Club considers the course to be a full 18-hole course, but really it’s just 9 holes, golfed twice.
We sailed past Hat Island, navigated through the Clinton-Mukilteo ferry lanes, and began to see the rocky shores of Possession Point ahead to the southwest. I had ridden the Clinton-Mukilteo ferry before, but I had never turned around to see the south end of the island. I suppose my eyes were always fixed forward, as our destination would have been eastward. The only time we ever rode that ferry was when we needed to take a trip into Seattle. Returning, we would always opt to drive north along I-5, and come down onto the island via Deception Pass Bridge.
Needless to say, this was an exciting moment for me. I was finally able to see what the southern point of Whidbey Island looked like, and it didn’t disappoint. The beaches were rocky, with steep cliffs, and homes were built not but 25 feet back from the high tide line. There was a large channel cut into Cultus Bay extending northward into the island so boaters could dock their vessels at their own private docks, which extended down from every single house in the bay. It was like every house had replaced its driveway with a dock.
Looking south we could see into the busy waterway of Puget Sound. Large container ships and ocean liners were everywhere. Countless recreational boats filled the gaps in between. It dawned on me that the Port of Seattle was only 17 miles south of us, less than half the distance we had already come. I had never seen Seattle from the water, but I figured that was a trip for another time.
Rounding the southern point of the Island was a bit tricky. Winds and currents seem to collide with one another. The currents themselves also collide near this point. Since Whidbey is a long skinny island, it traps a massive amount of water on its east side. Every time the tide ebbs, the water is forced to go either north or south. To the north, it flows out of Deception Pass at vicious speeds. To the south, the tide whips around the bottom of the island and collides with the tide flowing north from Seattle and lower Puget Sound. The whole ordeal makes for quite a chaotic channel of water. Eddies and odd reverse-currents seemed to be everywhere.
For a moment I thought about what it must have been like to go around Cape Horn for the first time. Sailors would have traveled south and encountered the violent water and storms at the Horn, flailed around the deck of their ship in pure bewilderment, likely leaving them wondering if they would even be able to successfully navigate the turn northward. I was rounding my own miniature Cape Horn. Okay, so that’s a bit of an over-dramatization, but I still felt connected to those sailors in some small way.
We made our turn around Satchet Head and were now sailing to the northwest. I was much more familiar with the western side of the island. While still in high school my dad would take me fishing during the salmon run at Admiralty Bay, which was coming into view off the starboard bow. I was really excited for this part of the trip because we were going to pass right in front of Fort Casey, an old WWII fort built on the headland just north of the bay.
My excitement was a bit juvenile. The reason for it was because, while I had seen Fort Casey from the water before, it was always from the Keystone-Port Townsend Ferry. This time I would be able to see Fort Casey and its massive artillery guns that extended out from the fort walls high up on the cliff, from my own boat, traveling along its coast, and not away from it. As I said, the reason for my excitement was a bit silly, but exciting nonetheless.
Sailing past the fort made me wonder what it was like in its heyday. Thankfully the fort never had to see open warfare or combat during the 40s, but I can imagine what it would have been like had a vessel approached the coast and been bore down upon by one of the many canons atop the fort walls. At any moment a fort gunner could yell, “Fire!” and send the vessel down to the locker. Fort Casey would have been an intimidating sight, to be sure.
As we passed by Ebey’s Landing and Point Partridge, we turned and set a course north-northeast. It was about this time that the weather began to pick up as well. The wind was at our quarter, we were surfing 7 or 8-foot swells and doing about 8 knots.
Cruising.
Down below, the kids were playing with my brother, laughing hysterically every time something rolled off the galley counter, or when he’d lose his balance. The boat’s downwind rolling was quite entertaining to them.
It took most of the day to sail up the western side of the island. We ate sandwiches, chips, junk food, and more sandwiches. I checked the tide chart and saw that we would be approaching Deception Pass just after low tide. This meant that we’d be able to make our turn eastward and slip through the pass just as the currents were beginning to flood inward. As long as we kept our speed up, the currents wouldn’t grab our stern and flip us around.
Before I knew it, the sun was nearly set and the bridge was in view. It was like an image from a postcard. As a matter of fact, I think there really is a postcard with the exact image I was seeing at that moment. The sun was going down just behind us, and the bridge seemed to glow in its failing light. I turned my head around to see the sun shooting bright orange and red streaks up through the clouds into the sky which reflected on the surface of the water as if it were on fire. The pine trees along the shores of Whidbey and Fidalgo Island stood tall with rays of sunlight sneaking through along their edges.
Again I thought, “Am I really here? Am I really seeing this with my own eyes?”
And just like that, we were pulling into Cornet Bay on the other side of the pass. We arrived just in time to tie up to one of the floating docks. There were a handful of local anglers with their rods and buckets fishing for herring off the main dock. All the tourists that usually frequent Cornet Bay during the summer months were gone. It was quiet and calm.
I turned to my brother and said, “We should head back out the pass tomorrow morning, spend a day in Bowman Bay for old times’ sake, and then head to Friday Harbor! Why not?!”
“Friday Harbor?” he asked. “Out past Spencer Spit?”
“Yeah, why not?” I replied. “Friday Harbor has a killer ice cream shop right up from the dock. We’ll stay a night there, and on our way back, stay a night in Eagle Harbor on Cyprus Island, where I used to deer hunt.”
Josh looked at me for a moment, as if he was slowly realizing what an amazing idea it all was, and said, “Yeah! Why the hell not?! Let’s do it!”
With the thought of Friday Harbor ice cream on everyone’s mind, we climbed into our beds, each of us turning off our lights one at a time (a bit like the lost boys did in Hook), and fell asleep.
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