The early morning sun cast a rosy glow on the clouds and created a nice reflection in the calm water at our anchorage at Double Island in West Sound, Orcas Island.
We woke up to another calm morning with a rosy sunrise. We’ve certainly had wonderful weather for this short cruise! Can’t remember another September when we’ve had such a long string of dry, warm days. Love it!
At sunrise in our Double Island anchorage, two sailboats rafted near us cast a rosy reflection in the calm water.
The last day of our one-week cruise!
We woke up Sunday to a calm anchorage and clear skies. A gorgeous morning! We decided to play the currents again on our way back to Anacortes, and elected to enter Rosario Strait through Obstruction Pass and make our way along the back side of Guemes Island in order to avoid an outbound current in Guemes Channel.
At sunrise in our Double Island anchorage: a wider view of sailboats anchored near us.
Sunrise in West Sound, Orcas Island, from our anchorage behind Double Island.
The slack tide in Obstruction Pass was at 0806, so we left Double Island at 0715. We had the current with us the whole way — in Harney Channel, Rosario Strait, and along the back side of Guemes. And no whirlpools or tide races! It was a really easy trip. It was sunny the whole way, and fairly calm. We arrived back at Anacortes Marina at 1015 under a light northerly breeze. We were back early enough in the day to have time to clean up the boat and go to LaConner for dinner out — pizza at LaConner Brewery. Yum!
We split a Neapolitan pizza at LaConner Brewery.
It was a short cruise—only one week, but still was good to be out on the boat. We never were able to get the knot meter working. Had a diver come look at the paddle wheel to see if there was anything obviously stuck in it or wrong with it, but he said it looked okay. He spun it around, but it still did not display our speed. It may be a bad sensor on the paddle wheel, or there may be something wrong in the electronics interface between the knot meter and the chart plotter. We need to pursue this problem with Raymarine.
Back in our home slip in Anacortes Marina, Rosie and Mickey enjoy a breeze from the cabin door.
Our next cruising opportunity for this season will be in September, as we have to return to Bend for a few weeks in August to take care of replacing our asphalt driveway. The 13-year-old original asphalt has been seriously damaged by tree roots over the years, and has become bad enough that it’s time to tear it out and repave. Sorry to cut our summer time on the boat short, but we need to schedule the paving to be done at a time of year when we don’t have to worry about freezing temperatures, and there’s a short window for that in the high desert climate of Central Oregon.
This map of the Canadian Gulf Islands and Washington San Juan Islands shows where we stopped on our one-week cruise in July 2012.
Cruising With Phoenix 