Eagle Island, Puget Sound, WA 6-SEP-2026 6:45 AM – ‘‘Get me the dog blanket, please,’’ says Jennifer as she settles into the cockpit to drink coffee, read the NYT and look at the seals.
This our fourth day at Eagle Island (after three nights). It is an island one can walk around in ten minutes at low tide and there are no eagles. Across the sound from us is part of greater Tacoma, north is a prison island, and south Anderson Island connected to Seattle by ferry. There are three mooring balls, one on this (east) side and two on the west. This time of year there are generally mooring balls available. The bottom here has very good holding so one can just drop an anchor if there isn’t a mooring ball available and then there is no limit on how long you can stay.
Geese are migrating. A flock of Canada Geese land on the island in the evenings, when the tides match up. We see their remarkably large foot prints in the morning if we go ashore. The seals move up and down the beach, with the water, making ridiculously loud, rude noises. If they can see us on the beach with them, they collapse into the water en masse and then pop their heads up to watch. Jennifer counted 180 of them yesterday.
We have been reading, cooking, walking and doing maintenance (well,I have been doing maintenance).
Yesterday, I asked Jennifer to look up the last time the oil had been changed in the engine. The log books lists it has 300 engine hours ago. That can’t be right. I must have missed entering a change. It is twice as long as it should be. Whether it is twice or not, it is time, no matter how I calculate it. Jennifer went ashore to look for agates and I changed the oil. The only nuisance is the position of the oil filter, which spills oil simply based on its position.
I re-taped the plastic pieces that guide the halyards and re-taped the knife on the mast that we might need should we ever need to abandon ship into our Portland Pudgy.
Jennifer only found one agate and not one she is pleased with yesterday, as opposed to Friday when within 30 seconds of looking she found a very nice, clear one. I no longer walk the beaches with her for more than a few minutes or once around the island.
The water here always runs from east to west, no matter whether the tide is going up or down. I think this just because of where the mooring ball is. The water eddies around the island. It moves (in my estimate) about three knots because of the squeeze to get past the island… and then there is slack as the current changes direction.
To tie to the mooring ball, I made a line with three feet of chain in the middle. The chain guards against wear from the eye in the mooring buoy. The length of the line that I attach to the buoy has been adjusted. If it’s too long the line twists around the buoy. I’ve had a consistent length the last few years, but here at Eagle Island it was still too long. Last night, I untangled the line and shortened it by two feet. This morning the line is tangled, but the mooring ball is not involved. When the current gets running it should straighten out.
We see boats pass by, but nothing like we expected.
The pump out man came by yesterday to pump us out. His name is Paul and he has a contract with some government entity to do so. NWMobilePumpout.com He is very nice and he remembered where he last saw us. He also confirmed that boating is down this summer. We’ve heard two theories, I believe them both. One is that the bloom is off the rose after covid. People just aren’t in love with boats. The other is the price of fuel. Diesel from marinas is over $6 (USD) per gallon. The large boats use multiple gallons (some as many as twenty gallons) per hour. At over a hundred dollars per hour I wouldn’t be going out much either. Boats aren’t selling and marina prices are rising. Interestingly, there were still permanent slips available for our size boat in Swantown last week. Though this can be because people have already pulled their boat for the season.
Jennifer and I have been commenting on the number of women alone we have been seeing this year camping and boating. Camping: it seems there are more women, but we’re not sure. Women tend to camp in pickup trucks with a camper in the bed, men are on motorcycles. Boats: women are on power boats, generally small tugs or ancient, well kept wooden boats. Everyone has such different and interesting backgrounds. We don’t ask how they came to be alone and generally they don’t offer.
The new solar panels are working very well, producing, on average, twice the power the boat produced previously. This is because a shadow covering 5% of a panel turns it off. So the 160-watt panel didn’t produce much and now two of the three panels produce much of the time. An inventory of the panels indicates that one of the two 100-watt panels on the stern may not be producing what it should and needs to be replaced. Amazon confirms it is six years old. There is no warranty information on Amazon. I assume it is five years or less. I’ll check it out before I replace it.
We opened one of the packages of bacon we have with us. Packaged bacon is one of those ultra processed foods that doesn’t need refrigeration and lasts forever. But that’s why bacon was invented, to preserve pork, though it was dry bacon originally. Wet cured lends itself to manufacturing and is easier to cook.
We’re not eating carbohydrates (and getting pretty good at that). I made chaffles* of a sort in a frying pan to take the place of bread and then we had Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches with mayo for lunch Friday. Using a spaghetti squash I made spaghetti (squash) carbonara with eggs, the bacon, and a hard cheese I made last spring, with lots of black pepper. It was very good. (Don’t cook the squash too long, it should be crispy when you add the bacon, eggs and cheese.)
Today, we’ll weigh anchor and move to Quartermaster harbor to visit John Riley again. Then Blake Island Marina and onto the wall on Seattle’s Lake Union. We’ll see Jennifer’s son there, and perhaps her daughter will join us. Then Anacortes to visit another friend. We won’t get to Canada by boat this year, it doesn’t seem. The San Juans is as far as we’ll go.
We’ll keep you posted. And thanks for following along.
*Chaffles are waffles made from Cheese, Eggs and Almond flour. Sometimes, when height is needed (like for the BLTs) baking powder is added. We cooked ours like pancakes. They need to cook until they are quite dry and crisp up.
