By Gabi, Chloe, Daniel and Paradis —

Wake up at 7:00AM to leave Saddlebag for Pelican Beach. It was a beautiful morning, and we were all excited for what today had to offer us. We didn’t have our cups of coffee to help us start the day, but luckily we had skip-and-dip. We put on our swimming suits, warmed ourselves up, and then ran into the COLD, freezing water. The feeling was amazing. We later had breakfast: yogurt and granola and then began to prepare ourselves to leave the most beautiful island ever.

We got on the boat, stood by our oars, and started our journey for the day’s trip to Pelican Beach, an estimated 7.5 nautical miles from Saddlebag. If that wasn’t already a long enough journey, we didn’t have the wind in our favor. That meant that it would be a long, intense day of rowing for our crew. After rowing for what seemed like an eternity, we finally got to our first check point, which was Clark Point. We, as a group, decided to take a break so we set the anchor and enjoyed a bagel lunch. After our break, we began to row hard to catch the slack tide.

Unfortunately, the ebb was still continuing and impeding our progress. We decided that it would be in our best interest to change course from Pelican Beach to Cypress Head instead, since we could see that Pelican Beach was crowded and all the moors were taken by various sailboats.  The final push against the winds and currents to cross the Bellingham Chanel in order to get to Cypress Island was strenuous to say the least, but we did it by working together and using the power of pop music to sing our way through the struggle.

After dropping the anchor at our new destination, we eagerly unloaded all of our belongings and items we needed for the night.  The dinner crew worked quickly so we could all indulge in the wonderful comfort food of mac-n-cheese after our long day out on the water.  With full stomachs and weary bodies, we set up our sleeping arrangements in order to recharge for another fun filled day in the San Juans.

By: Gabi, Chloe, Paradis, Daniel —

After packing all of our belongings in countless dry bags and learning some basics of our boat: the Townsend, we finally pushed off the dock in the Marina to start our journey to our first destination, Saddlebag Island.  Within the first few strokes with our paddles, we all quickly realized that the old-timey way of transportation of longboats is not an easy task.  Rowing took some serious muscle power, but when we all worked together and got our strokes in sync, we were able to row our way to Saddlebag Island, which was about 2.5 nautical miles away.  With the winds on our side, we were able to raise two of our sails to help push us to our destination, which was a joyous relief for all of us.

Arriving at saddlebag island, we were welcomed by the rocky shores of a small beach. Saddlebag gave our crew a quaint yet great place to stay with two small grass patches just perfect for our two tents. We decided at Saddlebag that the girls and boys would be alternating between the boat and the tents for sleeping—luckily for the girls, land would be their sleeping spot for night one. But not to get to ahead of ourselves, before any talk of going to sleep happened, we all enjoyed a lovely dinner of burrito bowls and a desert of hot cocoa with chocolate squares. We all sat out by the beaches’ edge and talked over our difficult yet fulfilling first day.