Wayfare by Water: Blake Island

Jason heading out to drop the first pot!

This weekend we took little Wayfare to Blake Island, through the locks and into the Puget Sound. The Island is located about 7 miles from Seattle and nestled between Bainbridge and Vashon Island. We were able to get a mooring buoy on the west side of the island, which is very peaceful and quiet. We kayaked, went ashore, cooked dinner and had a relaxing time. The water was so clear you could see the bottom. We kept saying that we don’t get this in the bay! The tide was quite low the next morning and we saw a sailboat up on its keel and at the moment were glad we weren’t sailors! We made coffee in the French press for the first time and it was quite good! We also went crabbing for the first time, since it was opening day of crab season. I had no idea what to expect. Jason took the collapsible crab pot out a few hundred yards on the dinghy and we set the pot for about 90 min. In our first pot we caught a starfish, a rock crab, and a rusty bungee cord – not what we were going for. The rock crab was less than 6” in length, so we had to throw him back. We decided to try it again and went to the other side of the island, dropped the pot and went ashore to the Tillicum Village to kill some time. We went to retrieve the pot once again and it was a bigger challenge than we expected. The water was rough and I had to grab the pot with the boat hook while Jason drove the boat. It took a few tries and finally we got it. Unfortunately, there were no crabs. After feeling defeated for the second time that day, we decided to head home. While on the way, Jason’s friend and co-worker called us. He was catching them by the handful. We headed his way and hoped the 3^rd time would be a charm. We set our pot once again and caught 2 – one male and one female. You are required to throw the females back, so we lost one and the male didn’t measure up. Jason’s friend was kind enough to give us some of his catch so at least we had something to come home with. After a long day, we headed for the locks and waited about 2 hours to go through them. It’s not a hard process to go through them, but can be timely. We did see the Wizard, one of the boats from The Deadliest Catch. That was pretty cool to see and I found out the captains daughter goes to school with my little cousin. Talk about 6 degrees of separation! Jason was braver than me and killed our ‘catch’ and we had a wonderful dinner of fresh crab! Hopefully during our big trip, we’ll have better luck and more patience.