Day sail to Blake Island and decision to move Aeolus back to Friday Harbor

Not sailing for a sailor is like being put into a deep cave. You know there is a bright beautiful light out there somewhere, but it feels so distant and inaccessible. As much as I might like to explain how hard it has been living away from San Juan Island in terms of our sailing life, I don't know that the words would suffice. I was just reading some Les Miserables again, a book I return to often for inspiration, and came across a line I underlined when I first read the book years ago. Hugo said "conscience is the chaos of chimeras...". Wow. Nothing I have read is more true than this statement, and this truth explains why I cannot accurately describe how much I miss our sailing life in the San Juans.

Notwithstanding that our Life on Bainbridge is far better suited to our overall happiness and well being, it will never satisfy my desire for wilderness and nautical exploration the way our almost daily experience of these things did around San Juan. As this blog can attest, our lives there revolved around constant sailing trips to fantastic islands that had amazing hikes. That is a simple formula for my bliss.



Well, there is nothing around Bainbridge or Seattle that comes anywhere close to the wild appeal of the San Juans, which is why everyone here goes up there whenever they can. And the San Juans are just a tease for what lies further north! However, if you ratchet down your expectations quite  a few notches you can find some small satisfaction in Blake Island State Park. Like Jones or Portland Islands up north, the entire island is a park, and in this regard has a special appeal. Unlike those islands, it does not feel like wilderness in any way.

There are some nice trails on Blake, and a few nice beaches, and it is certainly a worthwhile destination for a quick day trip in the central Sound. However, I hope I cannot be blamed for having constant thoughts about Jones Island, and Stuart Island, and Lopez and Portland, and Desolation Sound and...I therefore find Blake a poor substitute for no fault of its own.

But as you might guess, we still had a great day on this day, and Owen is now big enough to steer and asked to take the wheel on the way back. We had raised sail and cruised on a broad reach all the way back to Eagle Harbor. 

For this recognition of our need to sail in wilder places, we decided today to move Aeolus back to her home waters of Friday Harbor. That is where we want to sail. We cannot muster motivation to sail here very often because there is nowhere to go that is wilderness or even just a bit wild, in comparison. And a boat that sits unused is a very sad thing indeed. So we will move Aeolus back up north and do the relatively quick trip up there for weekends and still get more time sailing than we would here near Seattle. Plus she will be there for our longer trips into BC as we have time.

So this blog will once again have stories and photos of the San Juans, even though we won't be living there and sailing quite as often. Isn't life a grand game of putting your pieces into the best possible positions?