This winter's annual trip was to paddle around Bainbridge Island which is located just west of Seattle. Jumped on the Seattle -Bainbridge ferry at 7:10 am for the half hour ride across Puget Sound. Dropped off our boats and gear at the city park located on the water which made the start / stop point very convenient. Finding a parking place for over night parking, not so easy. After driving around for 20 minutes looking at the all the '2hour limit or we'll tow you' signs we ended up parking a lot close to the ferry dock ( $23), oh well, it's a nice day for a half mile walk back to the boat launch.
On the water at 9:30 on Tuesday 12/28 we paddled South towards Blakley Rocks, past Fort Ward SP and up into Rich Passage. Lot's of large floating logs, big chucks of wood and flocksum in the area of Pleasant Beach where we planned to stop for a quick break. As we headed to the beach thru all the floating logs, one of my paddling partners and a very, very large seal lion surprised each other, quite funny from my vantage point... not sure which participant was going to have to change into clean drawers later, but I did have a good guess.
The trip from Bainbridge to our first day's destination of Brownsville and the watertrails park is approximately 15 miles. The first 10 miles was under overcast skies, 45 degrees and light breeze. The second 5 miles up to Brownsville was in a nice 'freshening' breeze which made the last third of the paddle a slog into 15 kt winds. We took just about 4 hours to get up there.
The watertrails camping site is located on high ground behind the Deli/post office/latte stand/ Laundromat/liquor store, yep one stop shopping for all your needs. The Brownsville Yacht club is also part of the one building complex. One highlight is the heated bathrooms complete with showers and hot running water and all for your entry fee of $3.00! bargain..
After enjoying 'Taco Tuesday', a beer and evening watching a football game with the colorful locals we adjourned to our tents, under beautiful clear star filled skies. Venus was shinning brightly down on the all the moored sailboats in the harbor many had their masts fully decorated with Christmas lights.
Wednesday forecast was for 20-30 kt winds out of the north which will be a nice push going down the east side of the island, only trick is to time our arrival and passage thru Agate Pass, which has a 4.6 ebb in the early morning, slack occurred at 10:52 am.. Agate Pass is located about 5 1/2 miles from our campsite at Brownsville.
Wednesday arrives with the crows arguing with the Blue Herons over something, no rain last night, we have breakfast , pack our stuff, carry the boats down to the water, load up and it's 8 am... too early to start paddling, wonderful bright sunny skies and no wind at all, we don't need to hurry up to Agate Pass and fight ebb tide. It's one more stop in the deli for coffee and a snack before our planned 9:30 departure. The forecast has been modified today, small craft warning is 'scheduled' for 3 pm this afternoon, so we should be well on our way around the east side of Bainbridge by then. It was an interesting forecast, winds 20-30 Kts out of the North to Seattle then out of the SW at 15 Kts south of Seattle.
Under sunny skies an a minimal breeze we paddled up to and around the north end of the island. You could see a thick fog moving south from Admiralty Inlet, a sign that the temp was going to get cooler real soon and the winds pick up. We stopped at Fay Bainbridge SP for a quick lunch/pee break. In the 15 minutes we where there the temperature dropped noticeably, the sun went away and the predicted winds picked up. Paddling in a snow flurries now but with a nice strong push from behind it was an enjoyable windy ride back to our launch site just west of the Bainbridge ferry dock. This portion of the trip is 16 miles and it took us 3 hours 35 minutes to complete. Winter paddling in the Puget Sound, in our 3 1/2 hours on the water we experienced bright sunshine, rain, snow, flat calm water, fog, 3 ft sea's. Spent water time with sea lions, seals, tons of wintering birds and a large number of eagles soaring high above ..
It's all good...........................
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