Our family of four visit Cypress Island, part of the San Juan Islands in the Puget Sound. Our boat is a 41ft motorsailer that we completed the purchase of in mid-August 2021. This is our third outing, jumping off to the islands from Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham.
We experience our first story day on the boat, prior to heading out for the weekend. A small craft advisory in the evening kept us at the slip until the next morning. At the time we thought it was pretty windy. Port Townsend would teach us that was nothing.
We’re headed off to Cypress Island – aptly named for it’s juniper trees mistaken for cypress trees by Captain Vancouver. Vancouver explained in his log that the island was “principally composed of high rocky mountains and steep perpendicular cliffs.”
Today it’s managed by the department of natural resources. There are a limited number of mooring buoys around the island, all managed by DNR. The island is the largest relatively undeveloped publicly owned island in the San Juan Islands.
We felt pretty secluded at Pelican Beach behind elephant rock. We saw that boaters have named it little cabo as it resembles a miniature Arch.
Shane is working towards his goal of circumnavigating all named islands of the Puget Sound. While we’re there he checks Cypress Island off his list and we get to explore land while we’re there.
The deep coral reds, greens, and teal blue colors are so beautiful here. The weather is pretty moody the entire weekend. It would pour rain for a bit and then the clouds would separate and the sun would come out repeatedly. The light from the storminess added to the effect of how bright the colors were.
The kids had fun playing along the rocks seeing what creatures lived near shore. We’re excited to go back to Cypress Island this summer to hike more of the trails, maybe anchoring over in Eagle Harbor next time?
We moved over to a mooring buoy at Smuggler’s cove to spend the morning on. Shane and the boys went for a dinghy ride to check out Smuggler’s Cove Trail while I made lunch. I was able to go paddling after lunch, which was fun.
In the next video we head to every boater’s favorite destination in the San Juan Islands – Sucia, where we spend a couple days exploring, and paddling.