San Juan Islands Excursion

On Saturday I was up bright and early to catch the Victoria Clipper catamaran up to the San Juan Islands, where colleague Lynn and I had planned to go on a whale watching trip. The clipper is an ideal way to explore Puget Sound, also known as the Salish Sea after the indigenous people of the region, and get an appreciation for the size, location and character of its many islands.  The place names evoke the times of exploration and smugglers and could come straight out of 'Swallows and Amazons'.

Heading north, we sailed up the east side of Whidbey Island, past Possession Point at its southernmost tip and on up through Saratoga Passage, which lies between Whidbey and Camano Islands.  Whidbey Island is the largest island in Washington State, around 60 miles in length.  We rounded the top of Whidbey and sailed through the narrow gap of Deception Pass, from early morning clouds into bright sunshine on the far side where the San Juan Islands were scattered like jewels across the blue water, rising thickly wooded from sandy shores.  We sailed around Lopez Island and past the foot of Orcas Island, which has the highest peak of all the islands, Mount Constitution, to reach Friday Harbor in San Juan Island.

By now the sun was blazing and Lynn and I enjoyed strolling around the local art galleries, admiring sculptures and paintings by local artists.  We stumbled on a farmers' market where locals were selling everything from home made goat cheese, smoked tuna, clams and oysters and lettuces from the islands, while wandering minstrels strummed on banjos or sang, barbershop style. It was just delightful.  We grabbed some seafood (delicious Dungeness crab roll for me, fish tacos for Lynn) from a gourmet food truck in the harbor before boarding the boat again for the whale watching part of the tour.  This had been pushed later in the day when the crew had received reports from other whale watching boats in the morning that there had been no whale sightings in the area.  Happily patience was rewarded and we sped up to Canadian waters to find three humpback whales feeding off Saturna Island. 

We followed the female (identified by the white spots on the underside of her tail flukes) for quite some time before heading back to Friday Harbor.  I was a little disappointed not to see orcas, of which there are three resident pods of as many as twenty animals each that live in Puget Sound and feed on salmon, but apparently they had been spotted the previous day far, far north in British Columbian waters and evidently they were still up there, out of range of our boat.  We did see a couple of harbor seals basking on a beach, a couple of bald eagles and some pigeon guillemots and cormorants, and we sailed past islands where blue herons and tufted puffins nest, but we weren't close enough to actually see the birds.

The long (three hour) cruise back took us around the other side of Lopez Island and then across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which opens on to the north Pacific, and down the other eastern side of Whidbey Island which is much less sheltered, with eroding sandstone cliffs facing the water. It was a beautifully clear afternoon and we could see the Olympic mountain ranges to the west, and the Cascades to the East, starting with Mount Baker in the San Juans all the way down to Mount Rainier, south of Seattle.  The Seattle skyline was just spectacular, with Mount Rainier one side and the Space Needle on the other, reflected in the blue water.