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.