Maury Island Circle

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Maury Island Circle

3/18/07
Report from Ken

The day started out overcast and gray as I pushed off the sand at Salmon Beach just after 8:00 am. and headed north with the current toward Point Defiance. An eagle swooped low on the water and came up with a small fish in his talons as I drifted past. Other eagles watched from the trees below Five-Mile Drive. At the point, I played for a few minutes in the strong eddylines next to the now-demolished Point Defiance light. (The story I heard is that it was hit by a tug and the skipper took off running. Not a bad idea. He really took it out.)

I paddled into Owen Beach where I met up with Jim Boyd and after a few minutes we got out on the water. The crossing to Neill Point went quickly and once inside the entrance to Quartermaster Harbor, we made for the east shore. We took a break on the beach near Manzanita, a small beach community where the only sign of life was a big hound that came out to welcome us and inspect our boats.

The sun was peeking around the edges of the clouds from time to time as we paddled further up the harbor. We passed Dockton, once the site of the largest drydock in Puget Sound, now just a sleepy bend in the shoreline. There is a very good park here, but we were trying to make it to Portage before dead low tide, so we didn’t stop.

Portage is the name given to the low-lying strut of land that connects Maury and Vashon Islands. At one time the passage was open and low-draft boats could go between the two islands with no trouble. It was filled in the early 1900's, and even though the islands still retain their separate names, they are physically joined. We had to get out and carry the boats at this point, from the quiet waters of the harbor to the big wide open of East Passage. We had our lunch here and, as we did, the sun stopped playing coy games and came out for real.

Along the side of the road at Portage, local residents have placed old and rusting exercise bicycles. "The Vashon Island Health and Fitness Club," as it's known locally is somewhat lacking in equipment but the dues are quite reasonable and the view is superb.

After lunch, we got back on the water and in a little over an hour we landed on the beach at Point Robinson. This beautiful low, sandy point has a great view of Federal Way, Des Moines and the rest of the Seattle-Tacoma bedroom metropolis. From this quiet vantage point, it seems like it's a thousand miles away. The Point Robinson light is a pretty little building and the two keepers quarters have been refurbished and are being rented out by Vashon Island Parks at a rate of $950/week.

We didn't have the time or the money to stay, however, so we got back in the boats and started down East Passage toward Tacoma. The breeze that had been blowing an hour earlier had disappeared entirely and the water was flat and glassy as far as we could see. After about fifteen minutes of paddling, Jim pointed to the east and called out, "Porpoises!" We watched as three dorsal fins broke the water then submerged, and reappeared several times. I was reaching for the camera when I looked in front of my boat and saw a half-dozen or more of the animals swimming in my direction. For about five minutes, we were in the middle of a pod of about 15-20 harbor porpoises (I took a bunch of photos, but they are pretty camera-shy.) As quickly as they had come upon us they were gone, and we started back south once again.

After we'd passed the entrance to Quartermaster Harbor again, we split up to take advantage of the building flood current. Jim was headed back to Owen Beach, so he needed to take a sharp ferry angle to get across the moving water while I just needed to ride it all the way around the point and back into the Narrows to get home. Once we started on our separate routes, the current rapidly increased the distance between us until all I could see of him was a yellow speck far across the water.

It didn't take too much longer for me to get back to Salmon Beach. The hull scraped up on the sand a couple of minutes before 5:00 pm. At almost 30 miles, this was the longest paddling day I'd put in for quite some time. As the clouds started to reassemble and the sun went incognito once again, I shucked off the wet nylon and headed for the hot tub.