Prudence

Indian Cove was wonderful. But eventually, the urge to be some place different overtakes us, and so we moved. It was a short trip, just around the corner to Parks Bay, just across San Juan Channel from Friday Harbor.

Parks bay is a delightful, close little cove, with room for perhaps a dozen boats or so. Anchoring is good here, and especially so in the very back. The little bight in the SW corner is full of pilings tho, and you should anchor there only after careful exploration with a dinghy, at low tide. Presently, there are some escaped dock segments tied to some of the pilings, making wonderful places for small boats to tie up (and clearly marking the pilings). This time, we rowed around in the dinghy and I marked the piling locations with my hand-held GPS (all except one, which we couldn't locate for sure, darn it!). I had made a hand-drawn map of the pilings at an earlier visit, when we had a -3 tide, so this served as the reference.

We took a wine cruise on the evening of July 3, and another on the evening of July 4. Jane made the July 4 one special - she had found a frozen shrimp cocktail plate, complete with the red cocktail sauce, and she had it stashed away in the freezer. So we took white wine and made a wonderful time of it. We drove out to near the mouth of the bay and then drifted all the way back, munching and sipping. It was perfect - we need to keep some of these frozen shrimp cocktails aboard! The bar has been raised.

There was no phone coverage and no internet in Parks. For phone, we had to dinghy out to the mouth of the bay where Friday Harbor was visible. I wasn't going to take the laptop out in the dinghy, so we had another few days with no internet connectivity.

The July 4 fireworks were a bust for us. Others in the anchorage took their dinghies out to the mouth of the bay to see the Friday Harbor ones (which sounded spectacular), and then the Roche Harbor ones following, I had already pulled our dinghy up for the night. While the man-made fireworks were a bust, the Divine ones were more than spectacular, both evenings.

We are now tied to the dock at Friday Harbor. The NOAA forecast for tonight has 20-30 kt winds howling thru the area, and while we were stewing about where we should move the anchor in Parks Bay to best hide from the wind, it finally occurred to me that the only prudent thing would be to be tied to a dock. So we drove across San Juan Channel to a dock, civilization, internet, shopping, and a brew & burger at the Front Street Ale House brewpub up the hill in town.

Prudence