Taking it easy
We made our way to Eagle Harbor on Cypress Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypress_Island
after NAPS in Anacortes. A very short hop in great weather. Eagle Harbor is a well protected bay with free mooring buoys installed by the Department of Natural Resources. They use screw in mooring to avoid damaging the sensitive eel grass on the bottom and the whole area is a voluntary no anchorage zone. We grabbed one of the buoys in the deeper parts of the mooring field and launched our tender.
We're still a little new to beaching the tender and had to explore around before finding a spot we liked. We were greeted on arrival by a bald eagle. Not surprising in Eagle Harbor I suppose, but still a nice welcome.
As soon as we reached the shore, Princess was in paradise. The whole area is protected, with no houses or roads, just nice walking trails around the preserve. Our first trek was to Reed Lake via a steep trail in a deep forest of huge douglas-fir. Lots of things to smell, sniff and hunt for her. Lots of running. laughter and excitement for all of us.
Subsequent treks let us explore the rest of the trail system and we soon settled into a nice routine of 3 walks a day for Princess. The trails and destinations all have interesting names, Pelican Beach (?? no pelicans to be seen of course), Eagle's Trail, Smugglers' Cove.... Most involve a fair amount of steep hills, certainly a lot steeper than what Di and I are used to from living in flat Houston and Florida for the last 20 years.
Picnic on Pelican Beach.
One of the questions we'll address as we get more experienced, is how much time at anchor / mooring versus time on passage and time in marinas. Both Di and I enjoy the beauty and calm of being moored here, and neither of us is interested in pushing hard the navigation aspect to reach more places faster. Instead, we feel like taking our time, spending time when we enjoy a place. Moving on when we don't. That's one of the benefits of having retired early: We feel like we can take the time to go slow and we'll still get to see the world.
At anchor, we fall into a nice rythm and days go by much faster than they should. Go ashore by tender to walk Princess, back on the boat to run the generator and recharge the batteries from their overnight state.
Running the generator, we might also run the water maker and/or the washing machine, not always by necessity, but because it is better for the generator to be running heavier electrical loads than being under loaded. A great excuse to run all sorts of electrical gizmos under generator.... which resulted in pulling out our electric waffle maker one morning. How decadent is that?!
Another consequence of loading the generator, is that -in essence- it feels like we have unlimited water since we easily refill our tanks with the water maker. Plenty of water, unlimited hot showers and waffles. Why wouldn't we take it easy?!
Ona & Stephen here, looks AMAZING guys! Sophie and Bella are jealous of Ms. Princess (we are too of course). So glad you are doing this blog so we may check in from time to time. What an adventure!