Kama Hele: Patos?

All 4 of us went out to pull the crab pots after leaving them in all night. The pots were set in only about 25 feet of water making the pull much easier than the 150 feet we experienced at Oro Bay. Skylar was able to get the up all on his own. The first pot had 2 legal crabs and the 2^nd had 1! Not bad for 1 pull.

We pushed off from the Roche Harbor docks with Patos Island being our destination. Patos is the northern most island in the San Juans and has some of the most beautiful shore line we have seen. Its fairly small but the whole island is a state park. With only one small bay (Active Cove) suitable for overnight moorage, the issue is finding room to anchor or tie up to one of the 3 mooring buoys available. We’ve been in here twice before wanting an overnight stay but were not successful. We were hoping 3^rd times the charm but unfortunately this time was no different. The small cove had 4 boats in it and that’s about the maximum.

We decided Shallow Bay on Sucia Island would be a great overnight anchorage. We have been over there many times but never stayed the night so we were excited for a new experience. As a bonus this bay has some of the best sunset views in all the islands. We anchored in 10’ of water at low tide after 17.75nm. Skylar took the Kayak out for a spin then all of us jumped in the dinghy to set the crab pots. We had no idea if there were any crab here, no other pots were around but we figured we’d try and picked a spot. The next cove over (Fox Cove) separates Sucia Island from Little Suca Island. A nice vacant beach on Little Sucia was perfect for Julie and I to search for sea glass while the kids turned over rocks to play with the creatures.

As we motored back to Shallow Bay we noticed quite a few more crab pots around ours. We thought we must have chosen the hot spot. We pulled the pots to find a few females and a pesky starfish. The other people with their pots next to ours both said they only put theirs in that spot because they thought we must know what we’re doing. Our luck would not change with later pulls.

Skylar and I went out for some fishing with no luck. The sunset was awesome that night as we went to bed early for a long passage tomorrow.

Trip Log – 276.82nm