Living on the most eastern of the San Juan archipelago islands, Fidalgo island, the variety of trip & training paddle routes from here are endless. While strong currents do exist in nearly every channel surrounding our island shores, learning how to use these currents to travel in the back eddies, the mid-channel-river-like 'green tongue', along with harnessing the strength of the winds (with kayak sails), is what paddling the San Juans is all about to us... Efficiency. Speed. Using what Nature offers to help us achieve our paddling (distance travelling & racing speed) goals. Which sometimes mandates a combination of styles & skills from river and sea kayaking mixed in with occasional surfing and sailing. Adreline rushes. Personal Speed Records. Risk-taking. Innovation. ~Paddle the Islands and let Nature Inspire.~

Friday, May 29, 2009

San Juan islands- 3 day circumnavigation- 87 miles / 140 km~

Day 1 ~ 40+ miles in...rounding Turn Point, Stewart Is.
Sunset over Haro Strait & the BC Gulf islands
 
Day 2- 57 mi's paddled ~ Patos island lighthouse     




Salty, chaffed, blistered, sunburned, dehydrated & beat up by Mother Nature...We set out with the goal to circumnavigate all of the San Juan islands and that we did- paddling the 87 miles total around this island archipelago in just 18 hours- over 3 days & 2 nights of blissful island camping- big currents all weekend meant big rips & waves out there.


Here's how it went down...

Day 1- 45 miles - Anacortes to Stewart island
Day 2- 12 miles - Stewart to Patos island
Day 3- 30 miles - Patos to Anacortes

We launched at 7am Sat morning from Guemes Channel in Anacortes & flew out & across Rosario Strait with the raging ebb on over to Lopez island with the necessary goal to get past Cattle Point by 10am & catch the flood up along the westside of San Juan island...In a loaded tandem Necky Nootka Plus, we easily travelled the first 11 miles in an hour and a half thanks to the big currents we were purposely using...

The first day we paddled 45 miles, stopping only once to eat a quick lunch, making it to the north end of Stewart island with hours of sunshine left to cook up our fav. indian curry, rice & garlic bread dinner & nap in some soft moss on a steep cliffside as we watched the sunset over the Gulf islands...Slept ever-so-comfortably under the stars on the beach & then lolled around lazily in our private cove until early afternoon the next day, waiting for the flood, until we could again used the favorable currents to cross the open 12 miles over Boundary Pass to Patos island in an easy 2 hours.

On Patos Sunday afternoon, we watched inumerous reckless power boaters, including 9 teenagers in 4 boats & 7 drunken sailors in another - all minus PFD's, zooming around Patos uncontrollably, as we ate our deep dish, outback oven pizza safely from our cliffside campsite...

Monday we again rose early to take advantage of the river-like ebb, and paddled the 30 miles back home non-stop, brutally against a 20-25 mph headwind w/ 2-4 ft waves down Georgia Strait - then the current switched on us around Pelican Beach on Cypress & we had to tiredly fight against the strrooonng currents down Bellingham Channel until we got to Guemes Channel & the surging flood rocketshot us across.