Closed on Tuesday...
Desolation Sound Vacation 8/6/2019 🍒
Montague Harbor --> Garrison Bay --> Roche Harbor --> Spenser Spit State Park 🌛
From Montague Harbor to La Conner. We left Montague harbor with fun memories and a destination back in the USA. Garrison Bay and Westcott Bay Shellfish(www.westcottbayshellfish.com) for fresh oysters. The trip back into The States was very pleasant. The sun was out and the water was calm. We cruised directly to Roche Harbor for clearing customs. That was uneventful. (our Nexus passes are in work!). Now off to Garrison Bay! The Oyster plan is to get anchored in Garrison bay, and dinghy over to Westcott Bay and visit Westcott Shellfish.
We cruised through Mosquito Pass and into Garrison Bay. . We had never been here and we weren’t sure what to expect having heard the stories of currents in Mosquito Pass. However that was uneventful. It seems that regularly navigating the Swinomish Channel prepares one for a lot of the notorious navigation in the area. We were able to get anchored quickly and relax for a few minutes before preparing the dinghy and go looking for Westcott Shellfish in the next bay over.
The Oyster Place
So we are now in the dinghy and headed around the corner from Garrison Bay into Westcott Bay. And we see the iconic long dock that is in many of the Westcott Bay Shellfish Company pictures. We found it. It was still half a mile away, but the excitement is building. As we approach the dock, we see no other boats, but we did find the dinghy dock and got tied up. As we get our bearings and decide we really are in the right place, and start walking down the dock toward shore.
As we make a few steps we see a gentleman at the shore end of the dock, wearing Grundens bibs with his hands cupped around his mouth and he seems to be yelling in our direction. So we begin to listen. He is yelling’ “We are closed on Tuesdays!” He yells it several times, “We are closed on Tuesdays.” This news took a moment to sink in once we realized that today was, in fact, a Tuesday. Our long planned adventure to Westcott Bay Shellfish Company was not going to happen today because they are, say it with me, “Closed on Tuesday”.
Really?! Closed on Tuesday huh?!
We turned around and headed back to the dinghy not knowing whether to laugh or cry. We mostly laughed, though. All the way back to Cerise. How could we not know that they were closed on Tuesday? After all, wasn’t every Oyster bar closed on Tuesday? The next several days had us repeating the line “Closed on Tuesday.” Damn. . We thought about spending the night and coming back tomorrow, but that didn’t fit well with the remainder of our plans the next few days. We made a pact to each other to get back there in the next couple of weeks. We had to succeed and a couple weeks is all we have. This had just become the goal of the summer. Spoiler Alert – We achieved the goal – Via the Washington State Ferries. That will be the subject of the next blog post.
Mooring at Spencer Spit State Park
We arrived back at Cerise. Still laughing, and needing to decide what to do with our, now open, afternoon. We decided that we would just move along toward La Conner. We will spend the last night at Spencer Spit state park on a mooring buoy, before heading back to the La Conner Slip on Wednesday.
After a little time relaxing. We put the dinghy away, pulled up the anchor and made a short stop at the Roche Harbor Fuel Dock. We had stretched the fuel about as far as we could, not wanting to get any more fuel in Canada due to the cost. Then we left Roche Harbor and motored our way to Spencer Spit State Park. Spencer Spit is a nice place
with plenty of mooring balls and a long sandy beach. Not the most protected, but we will be there on a calm night so that wasn’t a worry. We managed to get the last mooring ball on the south side of the spit. We made a nice pasta dinner and drank Champagne to celebrate our first Desolation Sound trip and relaxed until late. An excellent way to end our first Desolation Sound vacation.
We awoke the next morning and some light fog. The fog was gone before we were ready to head home. We untied from the ball and headed toward La Conner. We pumped our holding tank on the way in and were back in our familiar slip about 2 hours after leaving Spencer Spit. As they say, the vacation is nice, but it is always good to be home. We cannot say enough good things about this Desolation Sound experience. We learned a lot about cruising. We met a lot of great people, we got a chance to forget about the work a day life that I will need to back to in a couple days. We had a ball and we do plan to go back to Desolation Sound on our own.
Heading Home
Thanks you for reading about our adventures and misadventures mostly north of the border. We would encourage anyone with a boat to make Desolation Sound a destination. If you like the San Juans, you’ll love Desolation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us and we can certainly give you our opinion or thoughts based on our first trip up there.
More pictures from this trip