San Juan Island Ferry shedule

Will ferry wakes make boat camping dangerous?

No, surprisingly ferries do not make horrible wakes, but friendly boaters do!

When making your plans to visit places in or near the San Juan Islands, you will invariably end up dealing with the Washington ferry system in one way or another.

Boaters sometimes need to send someone home or meet an arrival. Simply avoiding a Friday Harbor traffic jam out on the water or on land is avoidable if you know when and where ferry's hang out. For most of us, the ferries are never an issue, we just give them plenty of room out on the water.

According to WSDOT the busiest ferry travel times are Thursday and Friday evenings westbound and Sunday afternoons eastbound.

  Peak travel times from Anacortes are Thursday and Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings. Peak travel times from the islands are all day Sunday and Monday mornings.

If you think about it, you will realize that commuters and vacationers share the same system. People are heading to work and coming home from work mixed in with tourists.

     Armed with a little ferry knowledge it is easy to work out a vacation schedule that minimizes or complements just about all visitor plans.

    Follow this link to the WSDOT ferry schedule page. 

Ferry schedule

Five Easy Steps To Anchor Any Boat

How do you set and secure your anchor properly for safe boating?

Proper anchoring is more than just tossing the anchor over the side — you need to pay out enough scope (rode), let the anchor dig in, test the set, and be ready to reset if it drags. By approaching the spot into wind/current, letting out 7–10 × the water depth before cleating, testing with reverse, and checking again, you greatly increase holding power and reduce dragging while cruising or overnighting

    Anchoring your boat is easy, but if you don't follow basic rules, your pride and joy will float away.

Take a look below at # 1, when you lower your anchor, it will just be sitting there on the bottom, and that's not good enough for anything but the calmest most temporary of visits. To be secure, the anchor must be set by pulling it (blue arrow) sideways,  # 2 with a little tugging by your boat, the points will dig in, creating a strong temporary home for your boat, # 3 & 4.

       There can be an endless discussion about anchor types and anchoring techniques but for now, lets just help first timers get hooked.

Notice in the drawing below, the anchor line (rode) is laying on the bottom.  When this vessel pulls on the rode it will dig the points in and stay put.  If the rode were shorter, say almost straight up, any pulling would lift the anchor right out and you would be set free to drag somewhere bad. (rocks, or into another boat) So it is obvious that the longer the rode is, the better your anchor will set and stay set.

  

Drawing courtesy of West Marine

Okay, you have the basics, lets talk through what you do to anchor that monster.