After our weekend in Victoria it was time to start heading back to Bellingham to set ourselves up for our trip back to Boise and Salt Lake City for Grace’s graduation.

Skipper’s Perspective

We left Sunday afternoon at 3pm, waiting for the flood tide to start up. Perception was rewarded with a speed boost from the current, reaching 11 knots at one point while passing between Ten Mile Point and the Chatham Islands. We pulled into a mostly empty Reid Harbor on Stuart Island after just a few hours of motoring.

Our experience with the US Customs and Border Patrol was a bit different this time. We have been happily using the CBP Roam application for a few years now, which has allowed us to clear in from the boat as soon as we cross the border from Canada. We’ve had responses from CBP that are as simple as an “accepted” message with a confirmation email, up to a one-way video call with an agent. This time I cleared in from the helm as we crossed the Haro Strait without informing Melinda, and received a confirmation by email. A minute later Melinda popped out of the saloon on the phone with a CBP agent. When I submitted our arrival the form had listed her as the “master of the vessel”, so they called her number with the typical questions about where we’d been and what we were bringing into the country. They also noted that my submission had last year’s CBP tag number (the new one was waiting for us in Boise), so gave us the new one. Every time is a bit different, but it sure has been nice not needing to clear in at a physical location!

We hung out in Reid Harbor for two days with me in my work meetings and Melinda furiously organizing our spares, tools, and other boat items that we’d brought aboard this spring. We also turned on our water maker for the first time, even Melinda found the pure water to be tasteless in a good way.

Tuesday we left Reid Harbor to get a bit closer to Bellingham for our anticipated stay there on Wednesday evening. We motored out of the harbor and turned north through John’s Pass. We’d never been through before and I’d been a bit trepidatious about it after hearing someone aground there over VHF a few years ago. We found it to be fairly wide and deep, no concerns as long as you are paying attention.

We entered Shallow Bay on Sucia Island in the late afternoon as clouds were rolling in. There were four other boats in the little bay, which surprised me given we hadn’t seen this many in the San Juans so far this year. We anchored not far inside the channel markers for the bay to leave room from the other boats anchored further in.

Wednesday morning Melinda motored us back into Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham and we tied up to the guest dock in front of Nikki’s Bella Marina restaurant. Not the best spot for my ongoing feud with our avian friends the gulls, as they would swoop in to the restaurant balcony above us and raid the plates left behind by departing diners. We (again) saw a gull take off with a full cup of ranch dressing clamped in its beak – but it wasn’t ranch dressing the gulls left behind on the deck – ugh!