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:
A view of Mt. Rainier from Penrose Point State Park, located in south Puget Sound.
We kicked off our Summer 2024 cruise with a July Fourth jaunt with the kids to Jarrell Cove. Now C and I are moseying our way up the entire length of Puget Sound.
That’s right, we are sailing from our home marina in Olympia, bound for Port Townsend. We’ll get there in a week or two … or three.
Then we’ll hop across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to tour the San Juans with the kids and some visiting family before pointing the bow south for Olympia again.
I’m looking forward to being in boat mode for the next six or so weeks. We often spend the fall and spring going between the boat and house, and while I’m glad we have the flexibility to be on the boat so much during the school year, the constant adjusting to two very different ways of living can be challenging for me.
So now that we are here, I can settle into the rhythms of boat life:
Waking up with the sunrise and going to bed with the sunset.
Planning my day based on the weather, the tides and the currents, instead of around appointments, school schedules and commutes.
Having less living space, which makes getting outside and moving around even more attractive than it already is.
Handwashing our dishes.
Getting my workouts on shore, on the kayak or on the foredeck, instead of the gym.
Having fewer clothes and no ready access to laundry facilities.
Being a lot more mindful about how much water we use and whether we need to use the Wi-Fi after we get done working, because it’s a bit of an energy hog.
There are about 2 miles of hiking trails at Penrose Point State Park.
Last summer, we did a five-week cruise into British Columbia, a goal of ours since before the pandemic. We ventured as far north as Desolation Sound, and spent a few days in the magical Princess Louisa Inlet. It was an unforgettable journey. We want to head that way again, and go further north. But doing that journey on a 39-foot sailboat with a tight time window was a bit grueling for me, especially because the wind never was going the right way for us. That meant many long days of motoring. That’s the way it goes, though, when you are still working, have kids and have other obligations that don’t allow us to just wait and go when the wind is right.
This summer we won’t go as far, and I’m excited to take a slower pace that might allow us to sail more. (That’s a maybe, the constant high pressure system that usually parks itself over the Pacific Northwest during the summer doesn’t create a lot of wind.)
And I’m excited to explore the Sound, from tip to tip (twice!) in a single summer.
S/V Polaris on a mooring ball in south Puget Sound
I’ve been sailing the American portion of the Salish Sea for 8 years now, and I’m not sure I will ever get sick of it. No matter where we go, there’s a good anchorage nearby with access to nearly everything a cruiser could want: You want seclusion, gorgeous landscapes, great hikes and tranquil waters? You got it. You need groceries, a good meal and a fun place to grab a drink? You got that, too.
Plus the chance to see orcas, whales, seals, sea lions, and a variety of birds along the way.
There are tradeoffs for all this, of course. The water is rarely, if never, warm enough to swim in (at least for me). And like I mentioned earlier, there often isn’t a lot of wind.
But last week, we enjoyed a gorgeous downwind sail to McMicken Island. And a recent record-breaking heat wave prompted C to don his snorkel and fins to jump in the water and view the critters along the beach at Penrose Point State Park.
So maybe, we really can have it all here in Puget Sound.
Blake Island State Marine Park is a tiny island in the middle of the busiest part of Puget Sound. Just an hour by sailboat from Seattle, and with Bremerton to the west, it feels both primitive and developed. Which makes sense, if you consider its history.
The flood brought us to Sucia Island, pushing our speed over ground to 9 kts for most of our trip north.
Our goal was to grab a mooring buoy in Fox Cove. It’s a smaller and slightly more exposed anchorage near Sucia Island, but the forecast for the next few days was sunny and very light wind.
At high tide, Little Sucia—the tiny rocky island just a few hundred feet away from Sucia—works with its sister island to create a south entrance to Fox Cove. It’s a deceptive welcome that hides the abundance of rocks lurking just under the surface. We opted to round Little Sucia instead and entered from the west side of the cove.
About a week before we got to Roche Harbor, I found an announcement on San Juan’s paper of record that the resort was curtailing its Fourth of July festivities this year.
There would be no games or parades. No bar entertainment, and attendance was being limited in a variety of ways to reduce the crowd size for the normally packed July 4th weekend. The tone of the announcement was full of regret and apology, blaming the party-pooping on COVID, of course.
Honestly, the idea of smaller crowds at Roche Harbor for the 4th was just fine with me.
We didn’t plan to stop by the very first Washington state marine park we saw after crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca. But when you come across an empty mooring in the San Juan Islands less than a week before the Fourth of July, you don’t hesitate to slow the boat down and pick up a mooring ball.
That’s how we ended up making James Island our first stop in the San Juan’s this summer. At first, we were lured by the lack of crowds here, but now I’d say James Island is worth a stop, no matter how many boats are in the moorage park.
On late afternoon of Tuesday, June 23, with a lingering list of boat projects, crap still piled up on the settee looking for a permanent home, we shoved out of our home marina in Elliot Bay and pointed for Bainbridge Island’s Port Blakely Harbor.
Seattle was warm and blustery, a rarity on a Seattle summer day. After I took us out of our slip and motored us out of the marina, C and our 12-year-old daughter, A, raised the mainsail. With the wind coming out of the north, we enjoyed a lovely beam- to broad-reach sail with A at the helm for most of the time.
Mystery Bay Marine State Park is a little bay outside Marrowstone Island, just east of Port Townsend. The park and the greater Killisut Harbor between Marrowstone and Indian islands are gems. Mariners willing to navigate the tricky, yet well-marked, shallow entrance to the harbor are rewarded with a protected bay teeming with birds and aquatic life easily explored by dingy or kayak.
