Bainbridge Island

It was time to saddle up in the kayaks and get out into the sound. This Saturday turned out to be the perfect day for a circumnavigation of Bainbridge Island! It ended up being just shy of 30 miles and took JVG, Aaron and I 6 hours and 30 minutes to complete. We stopped for about 45 minutes total, including 3 bathroom breaks, one time to put on more layers and a nice picnic stop on the northern most part of the Island.

We paddled the Seascape 3 from Northwest Kayaks and had smooth paddling for almost all of the trip. We did leave our spray skirts in West Seattle (dumb mistake) and took the ferry over with the boat on the car thinking they were in the boat. As we started our Clockwise paddle from Eagle Harbor (E/SE side of the Island) and headed out into the sound the wind was starting to pick up and we thought we might be in for some bilging excercises. But as we rounded the Southern tip things mellowed out and we got into our groove. This paddle was a great change of scenery and had all of us looking forward to the next bend in our route to see what was next.

The tide shifted from high to low at 7:45 AM so we fought the current for a bit on the SW corner as all of the channel heading into Bremerton was flowing towards us. We viewed the tidal flow before our trip off of the Sound Rowers link list. Once we headed North we were cruising, and although I did not have a GPS, I would guess our rate at 7-8 mph...totally awesome.

We saw some sea lions and sea otters while out but not much more wild life. It was great to get out in the Sound and see the tides really move some water. We discussed setting a long term goal of circumnavigating every Island in the Sound...wonder how long that will take? Next up, Vashon Island!

I need to get a camera...ours is at the bottom of the Pacific from our Baja exploits. Hopefully getting a new one this week so I can continue keeping the posts picture heavy.