Whidbey Island Circumnavigation: Take 1

Andrew thought we should try kayaking in the double kayak that we plan to use for Yukon River Quest, so we rented a Seaward Passat and set out on Sunday to attempt a circumnavigation of Whidbey Island, a trip of almost 100 miles. We were originally going to leave at 4pm on Saturday (which would have caused its own slew of obstacles, e.g. Deception Pass at midnight anyone?), but we decided to leave Sunday morning instead after Andrew developed some conflicts. The marine weather forecast for Sunday was optimal: light winds (under 5mph). Leaving at 5:30am, we caught a rising ebb that peaked shortly over an hour later in Admiralty Inlet. We cruised up the coast of Whidbey, letting our heads swell as we easily achieved paddling speeds of 7 to 8 mph. By the time we took a paddling break shortly before 10am, we had already covered more than 28 miles at an average speed of almost 7 mph.

But alas, after ebbs come floods, and after our break, we struggled to find the magic touch that we had all morning. Had we started earlier, we would have cruised all the way past Partridge Point before the flood came. Somewhere beyond Partridge Point, ebb and flood currents switch (ebb goes south, flood goes north), although currents are vague and inconsistent in this area all the way to Deception Pass, and we never got a boost from the flood as we thought we would. We struggled slowly all the way to Deception Pass, arriving there at 3:15pm (9hr45min,50 miles).

Deception Pass has its own peculiar currents (hence it has its own separate chart), and it begins to ebb an hour and a half before the rest of Puget Sound. So, when we finally arrived, we had missed slack current by an hour, and a strong ebb current was going against us. I estimated it at 5mph. Getting to the pass itself was not a problem, however, as there were some strong back eddies that we could travel up in order to get close to the pass. At this point, Andrew and I dug our paddles in and went for it, eddy hopping our way up the pass in 20 to 30 yard sections before tucking back in against the cliff wall where we were protected from the force of the current. We saw dinner-plate (and larger) sized whirlpools go by. We worried that if we did not time ourselves right poking the kayak out into the current, we might hit a whirlpool and spin ourselves around, to get spit back out of the pass. As the minutes ticked by, the current was only getting stronger. We pulled out our extra stores of effort that we had been saving for the last 9 1/2 hours and struggled through, and we eventually broke out into easier water on the other side of the pass. Whew!

Of course, by easier water, I mean that the current was maybe 2mph against us, for the next three hours. Paddling upstream is not so high on the fun list. The fun-o-meter registered right down there about the level of getting stuck in the eye with a stick. We pushed on, but slowly.

We passed Hope Island. Currents against us eased up near Goat Island as we broke out into Skagit Bay. It was dinnertime and we had many miles to go before we sleep. Given the lack of favorable currents for us at this point (we were too far behind the optimal schedule), I predicted that we would finish at 3:30am or so. Andrew had to work in the morning, so he decided to call a friend (Jen, his wife), and she agreed to pick us up in Utsalady, on the north end of Camano Island at 8:30pm. In the hour before we finished our shortened trip, we started to pick up some current assist from the ebb that would eventually wrap around the south side of Whidbey (Skagit Bay is the changeover point between currents that flow around the north end and south end of Whidbey); however, we knew that we were still too far away to finish on the ebb, and that we would be caught fighting the flood current if we tried to push on to completion.

We pondered Glacier Peak and the rest of the Cascades as the sun set and Jen drove up to give us a ride home. It was a beautiful day with perfect weather, and we had managed to kayak 65 miles in 13hr15min, a pretty good solid day. We'll be back.