It's been a couple of weeks since I last did a post. I was hoping to have lots of cool things to share from a long trip to Europe, but it got cancelled at the last minute, which was disappointing. I'm now booked on a short trip to New York, which should be very fun - I love New York.
The last couple of weeks have been pretty mellow. The weather has been amazing, and we've been doing a lot of stuff around the house. Justine's sister-in-law Tammy had their second child last week, so that made things pretty exciting as well.
Saturday afternoon, as we were heading up to see the new baby we got a call with a last minute invite to join our friends Shelly and Al on their boat for a day trip out to the San juan Islands. We've been getting these very welcome invitations a couple of times a year, and the trips are always amazing. This trip was out to a familiar location - Sucia.
It wasn't a particularly early start to the day, but it was an amazing day. Sunny, warm and not much wind - perfect boating conditions! The trip out takes about two hours, which gave us a good chance to catch up with Al and Shelley and hear how their summer had gone.
Echo Bay at Sucia was a little busy when we arrived - not a big deal at all - and there were some interesting boats at anchor in the bay. The first order of business was organizing lunch and getting the smaller boats in the water.
There are always lots of interesting boats around Sucia. With the perfect, clear day we had an excellent view of Mount Baker in the distance.
If I haven't mentioned it before, Al's boat is pretty nice - at 57' it's a big boat, with full stabilizers to make the trip out nice and steady, and all the amenities one can need. We're very lucky to be able to go out on these trips.
After lunch, Justine and I took the kayaks out for a tour around the bay. We got Justine off fine, but my launch was not really quite as seamless. After getting into the kayak OK, I was trying to get more comfortable, was rocking the boat a bit and caught some wake that swamped me and dumped me in the ocean. The water was a bit cold, but nothing more than my pride was hurt. After getting the water drained from the kayak, I got back in and we had a nice couple of hours out exploring the shoreline.
After our little excursion we lounged on the boat until the other people in our little group came back from their hiking trip on the island.
After everyone was back on board we made our return trip to Blaine Harbour, with an excellent salmon dinner en route. There weren't a lot of sightings on this trip, but we did have some porpoises on both the way out and the way home, which are always nice to see.
A lone porpoise on the return trip from Sucia.