Beaches & Back Injuries

Sunday July 30^th – After 2 nights at The Cut we set a course for Manson’s Bay on Cortes Island. Julie did some research and this bay sounds really cool. It’s a little exposed to the south but the weather forecast was good so we decided to make the 20nm run to check it out.

After arriving in the bay and motoring around a bit, we found it was going to be a little tricky to anchor in. It’s deep, 80 feet, quite a bid deeper than the anchorages we are used to. We tried one spot that was about 60 feet but the anchor seemed to just skip across some rocks. Back to the 80-foot area we set out 225’ of anchor chain that seemed to hold really well.

We sat on the boat for 30 minutes or so making sure all was well then took the dinghy to a huge lagoon. This thing is massive and the water was clear. It was running out of the lagoon like a lazy river with multiple pathways around small islands. Ava, Skylar and I took a nice (and cold) swim floating down the “river”.

Our anchorage that night ended up being great. The sunset was awesome and Skylar could catch small rockfish right off the boat.

The next morning we were scheduled to meet back up with our friends in Gorge Harbor just 3.5nm away. But first, we decided to hike to a lake we read about. After a short dinghy ride and a 1-mile hike we made it to Hague Lake. This was an incredibly beautiful lake with a white sandy beach. We all relaxed in the sand and swam in the lake.

Back at the boat we pulled anchor and headed through the narrow waterway that opens up to a large bay with Gorge Harbor Marina nestled in the bay. After getting tied up we went to the pool while waiting for our friends to come in. They arrived and we met them on the docks learning that Todd had severely hurt his back a couple days before. He was confined to a chair just trying to keep things stable while his back heals. While we were away Todd had done a little shrimping. Our boat had the only shrimp pot puller so he was forced to pull the shrimp pots from 400’ below. He was fine for a while then everything locked up with some serious pain. The only saving grace was that the pots had a lot of shrimp in them but that probably also contributed to his injury. Thankfully, after a lot of rest, his condition improved dramatically over the next several days.

We went to the small grocery store and stocked the boat then the four of us had dinner at the Gorge restaurant that evening.