10/8/22… Destination: Reid Harbor

There’s a small dinghy making its way from the inner harbor towards a Waquiez ketch anchored off our starboard side.  You can’t hear its engine because it is at the stern of the dink and projecting its sound aft away from me.  But… I can hear the bow of the dink pushing water out of the way… which makes a sound quite like the wind blowing through an aspen grove on the eastern flanks of the Sierra in autumn… when the leaves are drying, turning golden, and making ready to drop off and become duff.  It is far away, but it is so quiet, that I can hear the water moving, turning into wavelets and creating sound.

Look close you might detect where the dink is in the picture below.  Point being… it was that quiet.  Absolutely quiet.  The dull roar of any city or town for that matter… is far away from where we are anchored.  Port Ludlow is a metropolis in comparison, and it is barely a village. We like it here at Reid.

This Picture below is the same scene, but using a telephoto setting. Now you can see where the dink is and how far away it is from Great Northern.

We left Port Ludlow yesterday afternoon, and made it to Hunter bay in 4.5 hours.  The positive currents helped to push us along, but we did crank up the engines to get us to our anchorage before dusk.

The moon at Hunter was ethereal, distant, close, Earthbound…

There was one small Ranger Tug and a smallish cruising sailboat in the anchorage.  The quiet was intense.  The only sound… tugs pulling barges through Rosario Strait a few miles away to the east, and late evening ferries going through Thatcher pass more than 4 miles to the North at the end of Lopez Sound.  Yes… you can hear the base note thrum of their engines… in the distance… seagulls squalling, pigeon guillemots and their signature chirp, Canadian geese across the bay… and the moon, an optical treasure:

In the morning we made the passage from the Hunter Bay anchorage through Lopez Sound, passing Frost Island, Upright Head, Crane Island, the Wasp Islands, Limestone Point on San Juan Island, Spieden / Sentinel Islands… and tucked into Reid Harbor, Stuart Island.  Our plan is to stay there through Monday to wait out a Sunday afternoon to Monday morning blow making its way down the Georgia Strait through the San Juans…  When ready… we will then pick a transit date / time to make our way to Sidney or Van Isle to check into Canada.  The next post will cover that transition.