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.