At this time of year, I start to think about the one big trip we’ll do for the summer and where we might go. I’m not much of a planner, but the dark months always lead me to dwell on the long sunny days on the water to come. These thoughts that pass for trip planning bubble up during idle moments or when I’m doing some mindless task like pulling blackberry vines out of my garden. Such pleasant visions of new adventures on our boat keep my mind from the stab wound in my neck where the vine swung around and got me after I cut it.
Enjoying coffee in the quiet darkness of January pre-dawn with Tim Tim the salty old sailor dog keeping my feet warm and twitching with his own dreams of summery times (I imagine), I happily lean-in to this rumination that is both rosily reflective and forward-looking. It occurs to me how sweet the feelings of coming home from that summer trip are. Not the actual arrival at home but the way home, just before the end of the trip.
Our cruise to the Gulf Islands of British Columbia aboard our C-Dory 22 Cruiser, Sea Lab, last summer was eventful and full of marvel at new places and experiences. Boating in new waters (or even anticipating doing so) carries with it the giddiness of discovery as well as the danger of the unknown around every bend. We love the feelings that come with such fresh explorations but, after a couple of weeks, we tire a bit and have thoughts of home and the comfort of our day-to-day routines of retired life. With each day’s travel south from wherever our turnaround point was, the homeward-bound sentiment intensifies as the distance from home gets smaller, and memories flood in on a tide of friendly familiarity in every island, cove, and vista.
This ‘going home’ feeling is precisely why I don’t like to trailer the boat north to a launch point that gets us closer to our destination but would require a haul-out and drive when we get back to our starting point. I just don’t want to go home on the freeway; I prefer to savor a slower return trip. Maybe it hearkens back to finally turning around for home on each of my two cruises on the aircraft carrier in the Western Pacific. These were long voyages, with discovery in spades and all manner of distractingly hard work keeping our minds off being away from home; but oh the feeling when it was announced we were heading east. The anticipation as we drew ever-nearer was something I can never forget.
Back in the Salish Sea last summer, we decided it was time to mosey south after visiting Pirates Cove on BC’s DeCourcy Island. There were still many places to enjoy before we made it to our local waters, and we took advantage of new pathways in getting there.
Whatever wondrous reaches of the north draw us in during our summertime cruise, getting to Blake Island on the return trip is always when we sense we’re pretty well home. We have been going there since our canoe days when we would launch from Manchester Beach, paddle across to the amazing camping spots, and set-up for a weekend of campfires and beachcombing for agates. Our kids grew up there. It’s an extraordinary place that just feels right to us.
When we stopped at Blake Island at the end of our cruise in 2025, the days of early September were growing shorter. It was quiet—a good time to sit on the beach looking back at the city bustle of Seattle, reminiscing about all the times we’ve had on that cruise, and on that island through the decades. On this visit we had plenty of time, so we stayed two nights soaking in the beauty, collecting the delicious late-summer huckleberries, and kind of missing the old Argosy boats that would bring scores of noisily enthusiastic tourists and the following occasion to relish the quiet when they left.
We never tire of hiking on the island, whether we’re doing the low tide walk all the way around on the beach or the inland trails that crisscross the park. One of the days on our recent visit, luck was with me and I found my best-ever Blake agate on the north beach.
As it always does, the time came to go south through Colvos Passage. Even though we could easily make it home to Fair Harbor from Blake, we like to pad the end of our trips with a little recovery time before diving back into “regular” life—we swore off getting home late the night before we had to go to work the next morning. Just because we don’t have to go to work any longer, old habits die hard; so we still make sure we have that time at the end of the trip, we just use it differently. I’ve shifted that gear right out of the gearbox, so to speak.
Crossing through Dalco Passage we turn the corner around Point Defiance and the big bridges across the Narrows come into view. I love the Narrows transit and its sense of a grand entrance to the South Sound as we cross under the bridge. Now that our home port is in Case Inlet, the bridge is a very real landmark on our return.
After refueling at Narrows Marina, we head northwest up Hale Passage along Fox Island, taking a slow detour through Wollochet Bay all the way to Artondale to look at the fancy homes and all the ski boats on private docks. Continuing on, we pass tiny Tanglewood Island where we once anchored our sailboat Moondance in the middle of a slalom ski course—something we learned moments after we were set for the night when a ski boat zoomed out from one of the private docks and asked us to move because we were smack-dab in the middle of their fun. We had wondered what the little floating orange ball buoys meant! Sure enough, at 7 a.m. the next morning they were racing through the course throwing a big arch of water from a single ski. It was a good show with our morning coffee.
Around the north end of Fox Island, we cross Carr Inlet to another of our favorite spots, Penrose Point State Park, where the water gets real shallow on the way in toward the dock. We were always nervous going in with the sailboat but in Sea Lab, it doesn’t bother us a bit. There’s only one boat on the dock and the couple aboard are the friendly people we met at Blake Island on our way north at the beginning of the trip.
We drop the kayaks in the water and head up the bay for some high tide exploration, we had not paddled up that creek in many years and it is quite an interesting bay. Oddly, there is a small graveyard of tugboats that is photogenic in a melancholy way. There is also some very good beach walking here, and the minus-tide the next morning had exposed the long sand spit that extends northeast from the point. It’s another good agate beach, but not so lucky for me this time. As we walk and talk about leaving, we elect to slow-motor along the shore all the way around the Key Peninsula.
There is, of course, tons to see and right away in Pitt Passage the way is interesting—shallow and rocky… with current. There was a lot of seabird and harbor seal activity as we cruised through the channel, longing to beach the boat and hike around McNeil Island. It looks so untouched and wild on most of it. For the uninitiated, the only way you can go ashore on McNeil is to check into the penitentiary, so I guess we don’t want to go there afterall.
Past Filucy Bay and around Devil’s Head we go, following the 75-foot bottom contour on the Lowrance. Madrone cliffs soar from the water’s edge, trunks orange against the blue of sky, and the whole scene repeats itself on the glass of calm water.
There’s a tension between wanting to get home and not wanting the trip to be over. It’s a tension that I like to prolong for some reason, like being almost awake at the end of a pleasant dream. Maybe it’s the same reason I like sad songs.
We drift and motor up the shore of Key Peninsula past Taylor Bay then Joemma Beach State Park, where we’ve made many memories in all five of the boats we have owned. As we pass, there is not a single boat on the water and all is quiet.
More floating north, then we enter the shallow passage inside Herron Island and cross paths with the little ferry shuttling island residents home. Just beyond lies Dutchers Cove, a shallow little bay our friends alerted us to as a place to drop anchor and swim in the summer. They say it’s warm enough, I’m skeptical. Just a little farther north we reach Vaughn Bay where we turn straight west for the short crossing of Case Inlet and we’re actually home.
As we tie up in our slip at Fair Harbor I realize the sweet feeling of being home and the comfort of where we are and think, “Maybe this is why we leave in the first place.” What a privilege it is to have such a nice place to come home to. And to think, in just a few months we get to do it all again.
Dennis, Tekla, and Tim Tim the sailor dog recently changed their home cruising waters from Tacoma to Case Inlet.
