I joined a group of others last weekend to crew a flotilla of six sailboats navigating the waters of the Salish Sea. Our purpose was to sightsee in the San Juan Islands, make a crossing of the Strait of Juan de Fuca at the border with Canada, and visit the turf of the old United States government quarantine station at Point Hudson. The event was organized by members of the sailing club to which I belong, and this was the second consecutive year I participated in this annual excursion. The boat I was on was Le Rêve (The Dream), a 2008 Berret‐Racoupeau‐designed Beneteau Oceanis 40 out of Shilshole Marina in Seattle. I saluted the morning of departure with a sleeping bag and sunscreen in hand and blue skies above as the warming day conducted a thin breeze along the seaboard.

Our journey would trace shorelines where several Coast Salish languages were spoken by the Native people at the time of Euro–American exploration. Northern and Southern Lushootseed, Northern Straits Salish, Twana, and S'klallam all could be heard in the communities that once overlooked the route we were to follow. The Duwamish tribal leader Si'ahl (siʔaɬ), after whom the City of Seattle is named, spoke Southern Lushootseed and met a shore party from the Vancouver Expedition in 1792, who had anchored off Restoration Point on Bainbridge Island aboard HMS Discovery and HMS Chatham. Today, there are no living native speakers of any but the Northern Straits dialects. As we happy few gadded about in our easygoing navy, it was impossible for me to not think of the Zack de la Rocha lyric, We’ll kill them off, take their land, and go there for vacation.

Our destination for the first night was Hunter Bay at Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands, about 56 nautical miles from start to finish. The San Juan Islands archipelago is made up of 743 islands, reefs, rocks, and pinnacles during low tide, a number that shrinks to 428 when mean high tide covers lower formations. 176 are named.¹ The highest point on the islands is Mount Constitution on Orcas Island, named in 1841 after the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides), which, at 2,410 feet elevation above sea level, is the second‐highest ocean island peak in the 48 coterminous United States.² The endangered southern resident orcas, known to the Lummi Nation as people beneath the waves (qwe’lhol’mechen), tend to remain in the vicinity of the islands from late spring through fall, making them one of the many attractions people find for visiting the region this time of year and among the creatures we hoped to encounter along our way.

In order to arrive at Hunter Bay with time to anchor and prepare dinner before sunset, the distance to travel meant that a few hours were spent using auxiliary power rather than the sails, but we had favorable currents and freshening wind through midday and so were proper sailors well into the afternoon. Mount Baker was undisguised by clouds throughout the day, preening in the sunshine, its towering presence a supernal example of the peaks of the Rim of Fire, and, with its permission, I tipped my cap in the direction of the light at Admiralty Head in tribute to having visited a few weeks ago, reciprocating my gesture at that time made in anticipation toward where I now glided past upon the blue water of Admiralty Inlet.

The bay was in the lee of a gusting blow as we arrived, making rafting a simple evolution despite the wind blowing overhead. The name of the bay was reportedly given because the last elk on Lopez Island was killed here by Native hunters. A religious colony established ashore in 1912 was abandoned in 1922, one of many utopian communities founded in the Puget Sound Basin and its environs in the 30 years cleaved by the commencement of the twentieth century.³ Anchor set and spring lines taut, I was in charge of dinner for the Le Rêve crew and got busy transforming frozen lasagna, bagged salad, and homemade garlic butter on warm bread into a company of satisfied appetites.

We did not dally over coffee the next morning before moving on from Hunter Bay, as, though our destination for the night required but a third of the distance traveled the previous day, we wanted to toss up the sails early and spend as much time as we could before the wind. Our ambitions were rewarded with a good reach northward toward Orcas Island, standing to for the Washington state ferries that plied their routes among the islands. I love the ferries. We cleared Lopez Island at Upright Head and bore northwest through Cayou Channel to inspect Shaw and Orcas Islands while in transit to San Juan Channel. Traffic was light and the weather fine.

Once through San Juan Channel and having made Limestone Point on San Juan Island, Spieden Island became a topic of discussion as it appeared off the bow. In 1969, a local group purchased the uninhabited 556‐acre, three‐mile‐long island for $675,000 and introduced hundreds of grazing animals and nearly 2,000 game birds from around the world, then invited hunters who paid trophy fees to shoot everything from Asian fallow deer to African guinea fowl. The communities within distance of stray bullets, and CBS television news anchor Walter Cronkite, himself an avid yachtsman, were not happy about the arrangement. After CBS Evening News aired a segment on November 18, 1970, reporting the activity on the island, three state legislators filed a bill to end the hunting of captive animals in Washington. The hunting operation on Spieden Island closed in 1971. Today the imported species still graze on the island and many individuals could be seen as we sailed past.

Our day ended dockside in the marina at Roche Harbor Resort on San Juan Island. It took little time after securing the boat to discover Beech Tree Espresso at the end of the dock, where the friendly staff brewed up a latté especially for me to sip as I reconnoitered the surroundings. In the meantime, my shipmates had persuaded the marina staff to wheel a gas grill out to our slip so that our flotilla could make dinner without straying far from the shelter of biminis and dodgers, as a storm then disemboguing from Vancouver Island was headed our direction. Three of us walked up to The Company Store for steaks and vegetables to put on the fire and sat in the cockpit of the boat listening to the downpour strike the canvas as the chef for the day scuttled to and fro bringing perfectly medium‐rare ribeyes to the table. Swapping tall tales after eating, we relaxed while the weather blew itself out and calm descended over the harbor with the last of the sun; another crackerjack day entered into the log.

Before the San Juan Islands became part of the United States in 1872, San Juan Island had been subject to a joint military occupation by British and American forces for the prior 12 years. Roche Harbor was named for British Lieutenant Richard Roche, who scouted the area to help identify a site for what became the British Royal Marines encampment (English Camp) at Garrison Bay in 1860, immediately to the south of our moorage. During their stay, the Royal Marines became the first to produce lime on the island, mining and processing it to construct their camp as whitewash, mortar, and paint. Their example was quickly followed by others elsewhere on the islands, and the remains of the 13 lime kilns erected by the Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company, the largest of the producers at its 1904 peak of almost 300,000 barrels of lime per year, may be explored just beyond the docks of Roche Harbor Marina. The British withdrew their Royal Marines from the island on November 25, 1872, and the National Park Service today maintains the old English Camp. Tacoma and Roche Harbor Lime Company ceased operations in 1956 and sold its assets to the Tarte family of Seattle, which would use a part of their acquired acreage to develop the resort where we had spent the night.

After a return visit to Beech Tree Espresso and a bagel with cream cheese on the bow for breakfast the next day, I bid farewell to the harbor as we worked the boat through Mosquito Pass. The weather was sunny with a light breeze as we entered Haro Strait.

The waters into which we proceeded are described by cetologists as being among the best in the world for whale watching, and we murmured summons of wonder to the orcas (which are oceanic dolphins) we believed to be nearby. Passing the light at Lime Kiln Point invigorated our surveillance for a visit from those famous neighbors, but our ardor was to be unrequited; another boat in our fleet was the one to be greeted by an orca later in the morning. To the south as we crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the United States Coast Guard cutter Swordfish out of Port Angeles passed ahead of us from the port side about three nautical miles off, then described an arc through the water to our starboard stern quarter, where others in our cavalcade could be seen at that distance intersecting the course of that Marine Protector‐class patrol boat. VHF channel 16 lit up with instructions from the Swordfish directed at the nearest of those vessels to heave to for boarding, and we could see a detachment of Coasties pay it a visit. We later learned the purpose of the boarding was to conduct a routine safety inspection, which lasted about 20 minutes. Another of our sisters closed on the scene to offer aid if needed and was itself boarded for inspection. We sailed along carefree.

We made the light at Point Wilson in the late afternoon at 35 nMi distance for the day, then rounded Point Hudson and nosed into the marina for the night. The marina occupies a compact waterway adjoining what in the early decades of the twentieth century was a U.S. government quarantine station for ships arriving from ports with known outbreaks of disease or with sickness onboard, and it has hosted the annual Port Townsend Wooden Boat Festival since 1978. One of the former quarantine buildings, which had provided housing for nurses, is now home to Doc’s Marina Grill, where a number of us tucked in to a hearty dinner. Some walked into the nearby historical district of Port Townsend after eating, which I now wish I had also done because I am generally enthusiastic about such moseying, but I chose to sit on a bench overlooking Le Rêve to listen to the sounds of boats at their ease. The crew eventually returned to the boat to relax and compare scars in time‐honored fashion.

Next morning after stowing my gear for the day, I took a stroll around Point Hudson, which was named in 1841 in honor of William Levereth Hudson, who had been commander of the sloop‐of‐war USS Peacock during the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–1842. There is an RV park with 47 sites assembled on three sides of the old quarantine buildings, structures to the number of which the United States Navy added during World War Two. I admired the stunning B.B. Crowninshield‐designed 1907 wooden schooner Martha, which claims to be the oldest working sailing vessel on the West Coast of the United States, in repose alongside its home slip in the water mere yards from Le Rêve. I had a nice visit with Lori, the owner and shopkeeper at Chums A Shop by the Sea, situated on the walk above our dock, who had only just got her business up and running and was filled with understandably conflicted optimism and anxiety over its prospects, and who I think was pleased when I purchased a few sundries from her, among them a chilled Starbucks beverage, which I immediately settled onto a nearby bench to quaff while reflecting on the words of Paul Theroux, who wrote, Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life.

We departed Port Hudson Marina under sunny skies and into light air, bound for home and glory or, at least, a pizza dinner. The wind came up in the afternoon, and we prized the ensuing few hours reaching our way past the light at Point No Point and onward beyond Port Madison Bay; then, with a final jibe into Shilshole Bay late in the afternoon, we slung the fenders over the side and readied the docking lines for the final time. I think we all acquited ourselves handsomely as we worked together to keep the boat and one another contented and free from injury throughout the long weekend, and earnestly tendered a friendly congé to all when the moment for leave‐taking was upon us. Our sailing club had once again brokered its membership in a way that enriched our lives and abetted new sea stories for each to tell.