eagle island
Date: September 11, 2019
Time Start: Noon
Time Finish: 2:40 p.m
Cruise From: Swantown
Cruise To: Eagle Island
Engine Hours Start: 1112
Engine Hours Finish: 1114
Weather/sea conditions: Partly cloudy, breezy, warm 75 degrees, nice day!
It's time for another cruise! We're hoping for a couple of weeks on the water, wanting to confine ourselves to spots in Puget Sound, and take time to check out what is happening in our own neighborhood of waterways.
Leaving Swantown on a nice September day, we join a couple of sailboats out enjoying Budd Bay. Instead of the usual cormorants, a heron is perched atop the channel marker as we cruise by.
Time Start: Noon
Time Finish: 2:40 p.m
Cruise From: Swantown
Cruise To: Eagle Island
Engine Hours Start: 1112
Engine Hours Finish: 1114
Weather/sea conditions: Partly cloudy, breezy, warm 75 degrees, nice day!
It's time for another cruise! We're hoping for a couple of weeks on the water, wanting to confine ourselves to spots in Puget Sound, and take time to check out what is happening in our own neighborhood of waterways.
Leaving Swantown on a nice September day, we join a couple of sailboats out enjoying Budd Bay. Instead of the usual cormorants, a heron is perched atop the channel marker as we cruise by.
Off of Boston Harbor, the "Thea Foss" from Tacoma is at anchor, all 100 feet or so of her looking beautiful. It's amazing how much information we can instantly pull up on vessels!
Geoduck harvesters are at work near Johnson Point. These are tribal vessels with divers aboard to go after the giant clams. Most are sold to Asian countries where they are a coveted food.
We tie onto a buoy on the west side of little Eagle Island, a favorite spot of ours. The island sits between Anderson and McNeil Islands and is entirely undeveloped. A colony of seals often occupy the beaches at low tide, and frequently swim by our boat as they fish and frolic. We had planned for this to be a lunch stop, but it is too nice to move anywhere else today. Our annual State Parks pass covers the moorage fee, although there really isn't any place to register.
The water is so clear that I am able to see beds of anemones and even crabs under several feet of water as I row. We look up the anemones in our identification book. They are called pink tipped anemones, and it is normal to see them clone into such large clusters.
My resident marine biologist sets out to see the anemones, too, and finds that they are all along the edge of Eagle Island when you stay at a certain depth. Neither of us have seen colonies of these sizes before. We now have a neighbor, a sailboat, on the only other buoy on this side of the island. There is just one buoy on the east facing side of the island. When it is clear, there is a view of Mt. Rainier from that buoy.
There are always chores and little jobs to perform on a boat. Today, the vent filter gets changed for a fresh one. It's a task that is done in the cockpit, so we get to enjoy our great views. We note an unusual cloud formation in the blue sky, wispy white clouds in the shape of a crown. How did that happen?
Happy hour and dinner are in the cockpit, where we are really reconnecting with the beauty of South Sound.
We can hear them and we can see them in the distance, but they are too far away for photos. Cormorants are flying in from all directions and collecting in the trees of Anderson Island to spend the night, just as we have seen so many times at Jarrell Cove! This activity never fails to amaze us. And then the day fades away.
And then it is the moon's turn to shine, full and bright, rising over the island.