We hadn't planned to go far today, so we decided to just wait out
the rain. The forecast was for drier
skies by afternoon, and right at noon the rain stopped and the sky
brightened. Still overcast, but we
decided it was good enough to get going.
We pulled anchor and headed for the Swinomish Channel, a narrow dredged
channel that runs through the town of La Conner. Normally picturesque and fun to transit,
today was a different story. By the time
we entered the channel on the south side, the tide was so low that the depth
under the boat was measuring between 2 and 4 feet. That’s too close for comfort, but there was a
similar sized boat just in front of us and he seemed to be moving forward, so
we took a chance and followed him. After
maybe 100 yards, we got back to 6 feet, but then a very strong current started
pushing against us. Bad timing – a minus
tide AND strong opposing current. No
real harm done, we just kept poking along and the trip took about an hour
longer than we had figured.
Three hours later, we dropped anchor in the north bay of
Saddlebag Island. This is a tiny island
that is also a state park, but mostly it is known as a crabbing “hot spot.” It’s usually not hard to catch your limit of big,
tasty, Dungeness crab here. Seemed like
a good way to kick off the trip. The
brightening sky from earlier turned into VERY low clouds:
But we dropped a crab trap and took the dinghy to shore to
stretch our legs. There were some
campers there, also dismayed by the change in weather, but otherwise enjoying
the island. After a 90 minute
exploration of the island we returned to the crab trap and had dinner for the
night! We reset it and planned to check our luck in the morning.
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