Sincerely, Denise

Tuesday, July 15, 2025

John was up at 4:30 studying the latest weather forecasts and the actual data from the offshore buoys. While reports about winds were favorable, the wave height and spacing in real time at the offshore buoy didn’t sound like a super comfortable ride. After the seas are stirred up, from wind and turbulence, it takes a couple of days for the seas to settle, so while perhaps the wind was next to nothing, the water was still roiled. Far offshore it is blowing hard and stirring up everything, which means residuals roll in to where we are. The captain made the call to stay put and we went back to sleep for a couple of hours. We are down to 1/3 tank of water however, so that meant we needed to move because we don’t want to make water from the brown cedar water in this little cove. Where to….well we decided to head north a bit farther to Fish Egg Inlet as we’d never explored that area. We honed in on a little bay in the furthest reaches called Oyster Bay (why I don’t know because there are no oysters here). We basically went very little over idle the entire way to allow enough time to make water and refill our tank. We stretched it into a 3 hour run which started out in the dense fog and ended up with the blue sky popping out as we arrived! Yay, wasn’t sure we were going to see that today. This inlet was only surveyed in the 80s/90s so local knowledge stated to be careful in shallow areas as the reliability of the charts was not perfect. We steered way clear of any vague reference to rocks or drying shoals on the charts and arrived safely. We ended up pulling into Oyster Bay only to find a sailboat already anchored in here! Surprising since it is so far out of the way, we were sure we’d be the only ones. As we passed the sailboat at anchor I waved twice only to get a death scowl in return and no wave – and he was from Port Townsend! Woah, we get the message, he wasn’t happy we found this cove! We circled the bay trying to find a suitable place to anchor, but it’s very shallow in here and small. We could have anchored near the sailboat but decided “nah” we will leave him alone. We motored just outside the bay and anchored in the entrance, still protected. It is a beautiful inlet with hills and more hills for miles with nothing but evergreens, at least from what we can see. What we did notice is there are not any beaches to speak of, and everything looks the same. We also noticed no birds or any other wildlife which is a bit eerie to me, no barnacles or mussels on the rocks at low tide. We are wondering if there's just too much fresh water here? It appears there are about 50 or more lakes feeding into this inlet. It is also a rockfish conservation area which means no lines in the water for anything, aka “no fishing”. You can crab and prawn in here, but I wasn’t in the mood to drag all that gear out. We did a little exploring last night and cove after cove all looked the same, but the sun was glorious! I sprawled out on the front of the whaler in my tank top soaking up the rays while my captain escorted me around the islets, which felt splendid. While we enjoyed a secure anchorage out of the elements, we probably wouldn’t come back here again. It is still another stunning part of the coast, just different without beaches.