It’s quiet, teeming with marine life and has epic mountain views. It’s home to about a dozen state-managed marine parks that make it easy to bop around from place to place and explore by kayak or on foot. And it gets little to none of the commercial shipping traffic seen between Tacoma and the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
Cruisers don’t often mention South Puget Sound as a sailing destination. That’s their loss. The waters south of the Tacoma Narrows bridge have a lot to offer sailors looking to get away from crowds, do a little (or a lot of) exploring by foot or kayak, and get some great sailing in—even during our notoriously windless summers.
Here are some of our favorite stops in south Puget Sound:
Getting through Tacoma Narrows
Anyone sailing the Salish Sea should check tides and currents before slipping the dock lines. Sailors heading into or out of south Puget Sound will have to navigate the Tacoma Narrows, which has notoriously fast currents at peak ebb or flood. Timed correctly, they could make your journey very quick—or stop it completely.
Once on the south side of the Tacoma Narrows, boaters will find several state marine parks within a few nautical miles of each other. It’s quite easy to get between marine parks with only an hour or two of sailing (or motoring). The parks we hit up most frequently each seem to offer a unique experience, so often we choose where we want to go based on what we want to do: kayak, hike, snorkel or just get some peace and quiet.
While anchoring is possible at most, we usually take advantage of our annual moorage permit and tie up at mooring buoys instead.
Cruiser’s tip: Most of the parks in south Puget Sound are nowhere near restaurants or grocery stores. It’s best to provision for your trip before heading south of the Tacoma Narrows, or plan a stop in your itinerary by the southernmost port in Puget Sound—the charming town of Olympia.
A great first stop is Penrose Point State Park.
Penrose Point State Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Showers
- Recycling and trash dropoff
- Restrooms
- Dock for boats under 30 feet
- Mooring buoys
The book-cover worthy view of Mount Rainer is reason alone to make a trip to Penrose Point State Park. You’d miss out on everything else the park offers, however, if you just stayed on your boat.
Penrose Point, located up Carr Inlet on the east side of Key Peninsula, is a 230-acre park with 2.5 miles of hiking and biking trails, picnic tables, and lots of shoreline to explore, especially at low tide. After tying up at one of the mooring buoys on the south side of the point, we usually drop the kayak to check for critters in the shallows near the point. At low tide, you can see tons of dungeness crab scuttling across the bottom and buried clams spitting from the beach.
There’s a trailhead hidden in the trees on the south side of the point. To access it, we beach our dingy or kayak near it—making sure to drag it ashore according to where we are in the tide cycle at that moment, of course. Just a quick note: When we last visited in July 2024, part of the trail was closed for restoration.
During the summer months, the park has a dock, but it is limited to boats under 30 feet. There are campgrounds, too, and it’s clearly a great place for crabbing and harvesting oysters.
For the warm-blooded, or well-equipped, this is a great place to snorkel, too. We saw moonsnails, a sunflower star and even spotted some opalescent squid eggs.
When ready to move on, a great next stop is nearby Joemma Beach State Park.
Joemma Beach State Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Recycling and Trash
- Restrooms
- Dock for small boats, dinghies, etc.
- Mooring buoys
On the west side of Key Peninsula, around the corner from Penrose Point, is Joemma Beach State Park.
Also a prime spot for crabbing, clamming and oysters, Joemma Beach is nestled in Whiteman Cove. It has a lovely, long beach that would be great for sunbathing or evening walks, a short 1-mile hiking trail in the 100-acre park behind the shoreline, a large pier and four mooring buoys.
During the summer, it has a boat ramp and a dock.
We were the only boat during our last stay here. We saw eagles, hooted back and forth with an owl and watched sea lions and harbor porpoises swim past in nearby Case Inlet. We kayaked around the cove a few times and went close to shore briefly our last evening to see black sand dollars covering the beach during low tide.
The next morning we headed for McMicken Island.
McMicken Island Marine State Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Restrooms
- Mooring buoys
McMicken Island is a tiny isle in Case Inlet, nestled close to the much bigger Harstine Island behind it.
It’s a 200-acre, heavily wooded island with a 1-mile hiking trail, a picnic bench and two vault toilets. There is no camping on the island and no services at all. A small portion of the island’s southside is still privately owned. Low tide reveals a tombolo that extends between McMicken and Harstine, allowing people to walk between the islands.
While relatively primitive, it’s quite popular with local boaters. There are several well-placed mooring buoys, but if they are taken, there’s plenty of good anchoring on the north side of the island.
The first time we visited McMicken, we had a bit of a shock. We were motoring toward a mooring buoy, making sure to give the shoal that extends off the island a wide berth, when suddenly our depth sounder jumped from 30 feet to just 3!!! Our boat draws 6.5 feet. Clearly, something was not right, because we did not run aground.
After we tied up to the buoy, we settled into the cockpit only to hear a large splash off our stern. Sea lions! And near them, several harbor seals and seagulls.
That’s when we looked into the water beside the boat and saw a massive school of herring. We were surrounded on both sides and it seemed to extend at least 100 yards off our stern if the sea lions’ activity was any indication.
We figured that was what our depth sounder was hitting when we saw those freaky readings.
In addition to the amazing marine life show, we enjoyed several kayaks around the island to check out the shallows and wave at other boaters from afar.
A great next stop—and a personal favorite of mine—is Jarrell Cove State Park.
Jarrell Cove State Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Showers
- Recycling and Trash
- Restrooms
- Dock for boat and dinghies
- Mooring buoys
- Nearby private marina with fuel and a small selection of groceries
This lovely spot, on the northwest side of Harstine Island, has a private marina on one side, and the state marine park on the other side. It has one mile of hiking trails, a large campground with several campsites and picnic tables, and a dock with electrical hookups.
There is a pump-out, but it has never been operational when we’ve visited.
We always opt for a buoy close to the entrance as it gets quite shallow the further you go in the cove.
We love Jarrell Cove for its protected waters, which make kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding and dinghy sailing a lot of fun. There are several little nooks and crannies around the cove to explore and because it gets so shallow, we could see the bottom easily in many places.
Jarrell Cove also offers a lot of places to explore on land. It has an amphitheater, horseshoe pits and an area to play badminton (you will need to bring your own gear to play).
We recently enjoyed a fantastic sail from McMicken Island to Jarrell Cove, which is located on the other side of the northern tip of Harstine Island. We lucked out, too, when we rounded that corner and came across a pod of orcas.
Like I said, the marine life in south Puget Sound is underrated.
Speaking of which, anyone looking for that should definitely stop by Eagle Island.
Eagle Island Marine State Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Mooring buoys
Eagle Island is a tiny island located in Balch Passage, between Anderson and McNeil Islands. Our guide book—”Gunkholing in South Puget Sound”— gave a lukewarm review but noted that cruisers Jennifer and James Hamilton were enthusiastic fans of Eagle Island. (The Hamiltons authored a great book about cruising the Inside Passage in British Columbia called “Cruising the Secret Coast.”)
We decided to give it a try during our first-ever cruise of the south Sound in 2020.
As we approached it was low tide and the beach was covered with what I first thought were large gray boulders.
Then I saw some of the boulders move. They were harbor seals, dozens of them, covering the entire beach.
As soon as we pulled up to the mooring buoy all of them plopped into the water, making a series of loud splashes that sounded like, well, boulders being tossed into the sea.
That wasn’t the end of it though. While the seals stayed off the beach as the tide rose, they started hauling out as it receded again. As evening approached, we sat in the cockpit and heard a few of the seals growling at each other, which I had never heard before. A cursory search on the Internet revealed that perhaps these growls are common during pupping season.
The growling picked up at night. They sounded like zombies! The clip below doesn’t begin to capture how loud they sounded from our boat.
There are no hiking trails and the beach is only accessible during low tide. Even then, we have never gone to shore because the beach usually is covered with seals. Nevertheless, it’s become one of our favorite stopovers when heading north since moving our sailboat to a marina in Olympia.
As for favorite stop in south Puget Sound, it’s very close to our new home marina: Hope Island State Marine Park.
Hope Island State Marine Park
Key Cruiser’s Amenities
- Restrooms
- Mooring buoys
Hope Island State Marine Park is located just south and west of Squaxin Island and at the entrance of Totten Inlet. Accessible only by boat, it is popular with kayakers, who paddle in from Olympia, Harstine Island and other communities in the south Sound.
The entire island is a state park, and has 2 miles of hiking trails among old growth trees, several campgrounds, an interpretive trail and an apple orchard that bears enough fruit to attract the deer and raccoons we often see when we visit.
We often see boaters and kayakers searching for clams along the shore with the tide goes out—unless the raccoons get there first. Because of the wildlife that call Hope Island home, dogs are not allowed on Hope Island.
We always grab a mooring buoy when we come here, though anchoring also is possible. The currents that rush in and out of nearby Totten Inlet can make kayaking and stand-up paddleboarding a bit of a workout at times.
But Hope Island also gives us a mix of our favorite things about cruising: Time to play on water or explore on land; access to wildlife and gorgeous scenery, and opportunities to meet others who love the outdoors who also share in our desire to get away from the frenetic, attention-sucking energy of modern life.
The last time we visited Hope Island, I met a kayaker from Seattle who was visiting the island for the first time. This place is amazing, he told me. I wonder why there aren’t more people down here, he asked.
I wonder why sometimes, too.