Thursday August 27^th – This is our last day on the water.  After 30 days cruising with friends and family we are headed back to our home port in Tacoma (20.99nm).  We take our boat out for day trips, one night here and there, sometimes week long trips, but its our big summer boat trip that we look forward to most every year.  Although at times it can be extremely difficult, stuck on a boat with your family for 30 days is incredibly rewarding.  You have no choice but to become closer than ever (or want to kill each other at times!) and your kids learn so many life skills on a boat.  You defiantly come home more bonded to your family and I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.

It may look like all fun, but it’s not at all an easy vacation.  There’s weeks of preparation for a trip like this and even when you’re out it’s a whole lot of work.  Thank you to my family for embracing the boating life that I, and now you, love so much.

Final Trip Log – 593.39nm That’s 682.87 Regular miles!

 

 

August 25^th and 26^th – We are so excited about our new new boat being built by the wonderful folks at American Tugs in La Conner.  Our 34’ American Tug has been such an incredible boat for our family, but its time to get some more room and their 48 footer will be perfect.  We are about 1/3 of the way through the build process and today we get to see the progress they made over the last few weeks.  Its such an interesting process to watch these highly skilled craftsmen take raw materials and turn it into a beautiful boat.  It was fun sharing the experience with our friends Todd & Tami as we all walked the shop floor looking at the progress.

After the tour it was time to say goodbye to our wonderful friends who we have shared such great boating experiences with over the last couple weeks.  Thanks Todd, Tami, Briana, & Zach for the fun times!

Now its back to reality.  We made our way even further south (56.10nm) and tied up at Bell Harbor Marina in Seattle for some back to school shopping.  The next 2 days were spent running around the city getting all the necessary items for the kids to go back to school.  The highlight though, was our end of trip celebration dinner at Etta’s.

Trip Log – 572.40nm

 

 

Monday August 24th – Our plan today is to get a late checkout at Roche Harbor (1pm), do some crabbing and fishing in the area, then head for La Conner. Todd, Zach, Skylar, Julie and I all climbed in Todd’s 17’ dinghy for a morning out on the water, hunting the crab and salmon!

We took off through Mosquito pass, to the west side of San Juan Island where we had intel that the salmon were running. With the downriggers dropped to the desired depth (just a guess) we trolled around for an hour or so with not even a bite. We decided to break out from the pack of other fishing boats and explore new grounds. We fished there all alone, starting to get a little discouraged. Then all of the sudden our spirits perked! We spotted Orca whales surfacing! And not just one or two, there were at least three groups of them, maybe 8 or so in total, hunting the salmon in the area! They were a good distance away but so incredible to watch. Julie started filming them with her phone as we watched in awe. Then, all of the sudden, not more than 50’ away, a group of 3 surfaced right next to our boat! It was so awesome and really kind of scary at the same time. These suckers are much bigger than our boat and so close! We all got a little nervous and raised the downriggers as fast as we could. Can you imagine one of those things tangled in the line! Julie captured the surface perfect with the camera, and they stuck around for a while all around us as we just sat there trying to blend in.

The whales moved on and so did we. We gave ourselves 30 more minutes in a new fishing spot to try and land the big one, before we needed to take off. Right away Todd got one on and Zach reeled in a nice Coho! Then 15 minutes later my pole struck and Skylar reeled in another nice Coho! On our way back to the boats we pulled up our crab pots for a nice catch. All together 16 nice Dungeness crabs!

We packed up and took off headed for La Conner (35.40nm) where we are going to meet with American Tugs tomorrow to check on the progress of our new boat. After getting tied up at the La Conner Marina we headed to town and picked up some pizza and growlers of beer to go. We had a feast of pizza, beer and fresh Dungeness Crab! What could be better! We cooked the crab on the dock, ate as much as we could, then vacuum packed the rest for a later date. We all noticed fall is coming. It was a hot wonderful day, but we all froze our butts off eating dinner and cracking crab that night.

Trip Log – 516.30nm

Roche Whales from Chris Heyer on Vimeo.