The night at Blakely was wonderfully quiet. After the sunset saw the City of Seattle showing her lights, a prime reason to stay in the harbor.
In the morning after breakfast I did some cleaning of the boat, a small space gets messy quickly – but is also a short task to set right again – and did some more organizing of spaces. The more time on board the more Sweet Pea feels like a home.
The wind was blowing about 5kts and I raised anchor and sailed out of Blakely – NO MOTOR! The winds were, in general, from the north to northwest so I had a nice reaching-downwind-reaching sail to Blake Island.
Blake Island State Park has a marina with a narrow entrance with a strong cross-current. The wind had lightened significantly during the short sail from Blakely so I sadly started the motor.
Being early May the marina wasn’t near full so I had one section of the dock to myself. I tied off, registered, and made a late lunch. The sun was out providing a nice warm afternoon even though the forecast say there will be rain by the evening.
Blake is a great location that has always been a favorite. This means that many others also love to visit the island. For this reason I prefer to visit early and late in the cruising season. The popularity means that the dock has been upgraded since I visited with family and friends in the 70s and 80s and now has electrical power available. This contrasts with the on-land facilities not seeing much improvement since I first visited in the mid 1970s. They are maintained but haven’t been improved. Some things have even been closed (like the porta-potti dump) after other boaters have improperly used the facilities (based on the sign on the locked dump my guess is someone(s) was dumping chemicals and/or other non-human waste). The holding tank pumpout is present.
There are a lot of geese, raccoons, and deer. You need to watch out for all three – the geese are a bit mean, the raccoons actively roam the docks and will get into your boat if you are not careful, and the deer have no fear of people.
As a shower was available I decided to avail myself. As noted above the facilities are well maintained just not at all fancy (ie, essentially untouched from the 1970s). The water was warm and Washington State Parks is liberal in the three minutes for 50-cents (you purchase tokens at the ranger’s building).
Through the afternoon most of the boats present when I arrived left and a few classic boats arrived –
I cooked myself a nice dinner and wondered when the rain would come. The clouds arrived but no water had begun to fall from the sky.
M17 #375 - SWEET PEA 