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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Re: Goat Island--Oops--here's the map
Posted By: Shawn Baker / Pete Roszyk In Response To: Goat Island (Shawn Baker / Pete Roszyk)
Date: Friday, 30 July 1999, at 6:01 p.m.
> I took off from Larry and Sue's at 8:15am so that I could have time to
> deal with the rush-hour traffic on I-5. I had to go to West Marine first,
> though, to swap for a compass that pointed north! Luckily, the Bellingham
> store would do the exchange for me so that I wouldn't have to drive
> through Seattle to find the other store and do the swap. I didn't realize
> how easy it would be for me to get lost in the relatively small city of
> Bellingham, but I did. Anyhow, I got the compass traded out and took off
> for LaConner. I got there at 10:15, just 15 minutes late-not bad after
> having been lost-and met Pete Roszyk. We looked at the pictures of his
> pickup and strip-built topper that got munched in a rear-end accident two
> weeks ago. It looked like a real bummer, but he figured he would be able
> to bring it back to beautiful like-new condition again. I also looked over
> his Pygmy Coho-he did a remarkable job of sanding and finishing it. I was
> a bit embarassed as I got impatient to paddle during my last varnish coat,
> and had a few sags and holidays that I ought to sand out. He really did a
> nice job mounting his flush hatches with the interior pulley hold-down
> system, and his recessed compass mount was nice.> We paddled south down the Swinomish Channel and out the jetty. It was an
> absolutely gorgeous day. We had some motor-yacht wakes to play on on the
> way out, and Pete even surfed a couple. We got out of the channel and
> rounded the point of the jetty and out into Skagit Bay. It was low tide
> and flooding, so we had to search to find a deep enough channel to paddle
> up to the island. Needless to say, we were there a bit too close to low
> tide and we both ran aground on sand bars several times. We got about
> halfway to the island and got hung up about the same time, so we just sat
> there and talked boats for about 20 minutes and waited for about 3-4 more
> inches of water to come in. As we neared the island, we noticed a seal
> sunning itself on a sandbar. I'm sure we were a lot closer than 200 yards
> away (per the Marine Mammal Protection Act), but I didn't even notice the
> guy until we were even with him. It was pretty humorous, as the seal
> wanted to swim away, but was in the same shallow stuff we were in. He
> flopped and flipped about 10' before hitting a deeper spot and swimming
> away. We paddled on to Goat Island. There is an old fort on the island
> that was placed so that a foreign navy couldn't invade the Puget Sound
> without a fight. It was abandoned around WWII because aircraft became a
> more efficient means of defense. Neither Pete nor I noticed the fort, but
> we didn't want to go paddling (er, poling) around too close to the island
> since it was damn shallow closer ashore.> We pulled into a nice little cove on the south side of Goat, and hopped
> out for a stretch. I borrowed Pete's Coho for a quick paddle around the
> small bay. I really enjoyed how it felt and responded to leaned turns. It
> felt a lot more maneuverable than the Chesapeake, but still tracked well
> enough to not be uncomfortably "loose". Pete didn't have knee
> hooks, so I didn't attempt a roll.> We got in our own boats and continued on around the island. When we
> reached the east side, there was a pretty serious eddy out off a small
> point; we crossed it and coasted downstream with the current for awhile
> before paddling up-current to a little fish hole in the jetty. The
> fish-hole was left in the Jetty for migrating salmon that missed the
> Swinomish Channel and still needed to get upstream to spawn. The fish-hole
> was about 12 feet wide with a couple of random-sized riprap boulders along
> the right edge. We set our boats down on a little sandbar and walked up to
> scout a way to walk around. I snapped a picture to show that CLC and Pygmy
> boats can be friends. We carried Pete's boat around, and I started getting
> tempted to run down the chute in my boat. There was probably about 6-700
> cfs flowing down it, and enough room to clear the boulders on the right
> side, but there was a submerged rock on the left side at the top that
> would have made a mistake in judgement result in, well, fuzzy fiberglass
> and torn okoume. So, I tied my tow rope to the stern grab loop and let the
> boat go down without me, and just pretended that I was in the boat.
> Without my weight, the boat easily cleared the submerged rock, so it made
> judging whether or not I could have paddled the chute tough.> Hopped back in the boats and surfed yacht wakes back up the channel.
> We hauled the boats out and visited a bit more and headed up the road.
> Est. Distance: 7.5 miles; 3.5 hours
> Shawn
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