Sailing the San Juans Day 6

Day 6:  San Juan Island, Friday Harbor

No wind! But a deck shower

and crab omelets for breakfast made a great start for the morning.

Even without wind, the morning just got better.  A transient pod of orcas showed up!  We spent about ½ hour watching the whales feed.

The orcas were playing with their food, a seal that was not quite quick enough. 

The seal feeding distinguished this pod from the resident pods that only feed on salmon (primarily chinook, fattier than the other types).  The resident pods of orcas are threatened by a combination of reduced salmon numbers, noise pollution in the water from increased boat traffic, sonar, etc., and poisoning from PCB’s and other carcinogens in the environment.  

Wind speed finally came up above 6kts and we put up sail for a little while until it dropped back down below 4.

If we kept at this, we wouldn’t make Friday Harbor by nightfall, so we furled sail and motored the rest of the way.  Friday Harbor on San Juan Island is the largest port in the San Juans and home to a slew of enormous yachts.

 We went ashore to check out the town of Friday Harbor, and spent about an hour at the Whale Museum

and then went for ice cream (as if we didn’t have enough food). We found this great ice cream place that had some exotic flavors including Kentucky bourbon that had real bourbon and required ID.  It paired nicely with apple pie ice cream.  I was thinking about going back before we left port tomorrow morning after breakfast. 

Marty also found a cute little toy store where we made a very important purchase, Scrabble.  As soon as we hit dry land, the Scrabble tournament will begin.  I’m glad I have my first aid kit with me, we may very well need it.

Dinner tonight was our first disappointing meal on the cruise.  In Jette’s defense, she had nothing to do with it-we went out for dinner (which gave her and Jon a break).  Vinny’s (there was also a Cousin Vinny in Friday Harbor) looked great on paper, but the service was terrible, and the food was very inconsistent ranging from Toby’s inedible (and 20 minutes late) eggplant parm, and Dave’s overdone salmon, to my interesting (but very hot-spicy) Pasta from Hell (yes that was the name of the dish, although on the bill it was listed as Heaven*).  They even blew dessert, we ordered a coffee ice cream thing for the table and they served a brownie sundae.  I guess we won’t go back there!

When we got back to the boat, we watched a documentary called “Morning Light” about the TransPac sailing race from California to Hawaii.  Dave is now looking for a sailboat (hopefully it comes with sailing lessons!).  We were all pretty exhausted and decided to do the movie in 2 installments, leaving the final outcome for tomorrow night.