We’ve anchored overnight about a thousand times over the past decade. We love the privacy and independence of anchoring out, and enjoy the ever-changing view as the boat drifts around the anchor and the tide rises and falls. Key ingredients for a restful night are not worrying about our anchor dragging, or another boat swinging or dragging onto us. So we seek anchorages with good holding that are less-frequented. Typically, this means the anchorages are not mentioned in the cruising guides, so we have to discover them for ourselves.

We set the anchor aggressively—equivalent to a sustained 30-knot wind—and are pretty much willing to overnight anywhere if the anchor holds well and the water is reasonably calm. While we are prepared to move the boat should conditions deteriorate, this has happened surprisingly infrequently. Some of the anchorages we’ve tried would be popular, but are overshadowed by a more appealing stop nearby. Others are exposed to wind or swell and are acceptable only during certain conditions. And some are just plain unusual.

Although we do take a few longer trips each year, a large part of our time at anchor is spent a few miles from our slip in Seattle. While we do have favorite stops, we’re always on the lookout for new ones and have found a remarkable number of little-visited anchorages close to home. In Cruising the Secret Coast, we describe our anchoring techniques and less-known anchorages on British Columbia’s Inside Passage. In this series of blogs, we’ll share some of our discoveries closer to home, starting with Priest Point in the South Sound.

We initially anchored at Priest Point in Budd Inlet during what has become our annual Thanksgiving South Sound cruise. We wanted to visit Priest Point Park, where extensive mudflats make landing difficult in most tides. High daytime tides always seem to occur around Thanksgiving, and on that day’s 15-foot high tide we could easily reach the head of wooded Ellis Cove and land the dinghy to walk the well-maintained trails through old-growth forests.

While exposed to winds in Budd Inlet, Priest Point is a fine stop in settled weather, with nighttime views to the lights of Olympia. And it feels more private than the more popular Butler Cove nearby, where the marked channel increases traffic and crowds the anchorage against the houses ashore.

Anchoring notes: The anchorage is north of Priest Point, roughly opposite Butler Cove. Anchor in 2-3 fathoms north of the charged submerged dolphins on Chart 18456 or the 1:20,000 inset on Chart 18445.

The house and hull for new Dirona came out of the mold a few weeks back and have now been joined together. In the top left picture below, our three engines await installation. From right to left: main engine, John Deer 6068AFM75; wing engine, Lugger 40HP Lugger L844D; and generator, 12 kW Northern Lights.

The boat has a lot of height to gain—the flybridge, stack, and boat deck are still in the mold. The stack will be installed with a tabernacle hinge so that it can be lowered or removed completely, using a Travel Lift. We’re hoping to be able to reduce the air draft enough to clear the lowest fixed bridge along the Great Loop: the 19’1” AT&S Railroad Bridge on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

Eagle Island Marine State Park has long been one of our South Sound favorites. The park has everything we look for in a destination—solitude, wildlife, interesting dinghy territory, and dramatic views. The island—tucked between McNeil and Anderson islands in Balch Passage off the southeast tip of Key Peninsula—is accessible only by boat and is day-use ashore. Except for a handful of boats moored overnight, few people are about by dusk.

Evenings, however, are not always quiet. Seals frequent the area in large numbers, and snort, splash, and cavort well after sunset. During the day when the tide is low, they often congregate ashore to warm themselves in the sun.

Eagle Island itself is tiny, barely 300 yards long and 150 yards wide. The island practically doubles and halves in size on large exchanges as the wide sandy beach that surrounds it appears and disappears. The beach is ideal for lazy walking, and overgrown trails also cross the island. Along one trail is an old shelter, perhaps from some long past caretaker or squatter.

Nearby Anderson Island is easy to circumnavigate in a motorized dinghy. Or take a kayak along the west shore. Several lagoons are accessible at high tide in shallow-draft craft. The two lagoons directly southwest of Otso Pt. are Higgins Cove and Miller Cove. A collapsed 1940s-era boathouse is on the spit at secluded Higgins Cove, where on very high tides the waterway extends a fair distance inshore. Miller Cove is larger, with a house or two, and a narrow foot bridge that joins the island to the spit. Amsterdam Bay is interesting to tour by small craft, and might be deep enough for anchoring with care, but is heavily populated and not very private. The charted lagoon south of Treble Pt. is freshwater Carlson Bay, part of Andrew Anderson Marine Park (also known as Andy’s Marine Park.) The beautiful sand beach that borders the lagoon provides the only public saltwater shore access on the island.

Despite its other attractions, what first drew us to Eagle Island, and what brings us back, are its amazing mountain views. The west side faces the Olympic Mountains for fabulous sunsets, and Mt. Rainier dominates the skyline to the east. If we’re in luck, we’ll snag the single eastern buoy and have that side all to ourselves. Well, to ourselves and the seals.

Thanks to Elizabeth Galentine, author of Images of America Anderson Island (Arcadia Publishing, 2006), Sarah Garmire and Donna Golden for help with Anderson Island names and lore.

Our next boat came out of the mold a few weeks back at the South Coast Marine shipyard in Xiamen, China. The yard is efficient in moving the big molds and hulls around. The time between the first picture and the last in the first set below is less than an hour.

The interior has begun to take shape as bulkheads are installed. The bottom photos show the port-side fuel tank. The forward section of the fuel tank, with a gap below, is an extension that gives the Nordhavn 52 an extra 100 gallons per side over the 47.

Laredo Inlet extends deep into Princess Royal Island through two and three thousand-foot mountain ranges. The scenery, particularly on a clear day, is spectacular. After anchoring overnight in Weld Cove one summer, we cruised to the head the next morning to see what we could find. The morning started foggy, but lifted to a deep blue sky. The head was especially dramatic, with snow-dabbled mountains all around.

We wanted to anchor for breakfast at least, and perhaps a dinghy tour. But this was a typical inlet head, where the depths fell from 100 to 10 feet almost in a boat’s length. We eventually found temporary anchorage with reasonable holding. We couldn’t get very far up Buie Creek in the dinghy, but far enough to see a waterfall in the distance, so we landed to check it out. Princess Royal Island is famous for its bear population, particularly the rare white Kermode bear, and this felt like prime bear territory. While we would have loved to see a Kermode, we didn’t want to see one while walking ashore, so we put our bear avoidance techniques into full gear.

It turned out that there wasn’t just one waterfall—there were three. The one we could see from the boat was just the lower falls. As we neared, we could see another falls higher up behind, and a third one beside it. The higher two spilled perhaps 40 feet into a deep pool that emptied through the lower falls. What a find. While we never did see a bear while we were in Laredo Inlet, the falls almost made up for it.

Anchoring notes: We anchored northeast of Brew Island at 52°58.128’N/ 128°39.763’W in 100 feet, moderate holding.

The Pacific Northwest Trawler Fest will be held at Anacortes this year on May 7^th through 9^th. We’ll be presenting on Saturday the 9^th at 10:30am on Queen Charlotte Sound. This is our favorite cruising destination—if we could only visit one place year after year, this would be the place. The terrain is complex, the scenery is varied and impressive, and the anchorage choices are many. Most of the region is protected, with little signs of civilization, past or present. And the area is huge—600 square miles. This is 13 times the size of Broughton Archipelago Marine Park, and almost 20 times larger than Desolation Sound Marine Park. Even if every boater on the coast visited in one day, there’d still be plenty of empty anchorages.

One of the areas we’ll highlight is Kildidt Inlet. Kildidt Inlet runs northward from Kildidt Sound deep into Hunter Island. After about 3 miles, the inlet branches into two secluded lagoons connected by a narrow, islet-studded channel. The waterways are fun to explore, with good anchoring, but entry is blocked by the perilous Kildidt Narrows. A 12-knot tidal stream and several hazards require careful planning. An astonishing variety of colorful sea life grows among the reefs at the rapids. Visiting at low-water slack is like scuba diving, but without the tanks.

For many years, we’ve been planning to buy a world-capable trawler as our next boat. Dirona is ideal for extended cruising in the Pacific Northwest while we are working, and we expected to purchase the next boat when we retired and had time for longer-range cruising, perhaps in a decade or so. The plan was that this next boat would be our final boat, built solidly enough that it would outlive us.

We’ve been interested in a Nordhavn as that boat since way back in 2001, when we first requested in information packet from PAE. We eventually realized that if this boat were going to outlive us, it made more sense to get it sooner and enjoy it for an extra ten years, rather than wait until we retired. So last year we purchased Nordhavn 5263.

The Nordhavn 52 is an enhanced 47. Standard upgrades include a 5-foot cockpit extension, a 2-foot boat deck extension, a restyled flybridge and 200 gallons additional fuel capacity. The boat molded a few weeks ago, and we expect to take delivery this winter. We’ll post more details as the project progresses.

Anyone who’s written about Seymour and Belize Inlets says that Alison Sound, off Belize Inlet, is the most beautiful spot here. We agree. Several waterfalls gush from the north shore en route, and the entrance to the sound itself is striking. A massive slide has scoured a huge section of shoreline. Kilometer-high mountains soar above a waterway that narrows to a channel less than 100 meters wide.  Just before the narrows, a 150-meter sheer, black cliff rears along the north shore; scattered trees cling impossibly to fissures in the surface.  Beyond the narrows, a 500-meter cone juts skyward.

Two impressive pictographs are painted on north shore bluffs here, one just outside the entrance, and the other in a crevice directly west of Summers Bay. Provincial archaeologists believe that both may commemorate an 1868 Native attack on the trading vessel Thornton and a retaliatory British gunboat shelling of the settlement at Village Cove in Mereworth Sound.

We anchored at Alison Sound’s head, where the scenery rivaled Princess Louisa Inlet. Waterfalls spilled down 1000-meter slopes. The Waump Creek and another unnamed one empty into lush lowlands below towering black cliffs, with snow-capped peaks visible through the delta. The creeks were wonderful kayak territory. The flora and fauna were thick and healthy, and those big cliffs stood above us at every turn.

For more detail on Alison Sound, directions and anchoring advice, see Chapter Ten, Seymour Inlet, in Cruising the Secret Coast.

The Nordhavn 68 in no-load form displaces 156 thousand pounds so its considerably heavier than the standard container that these cranes normally host off deck or from below. What follows is the launching of the 68 but all three followed the same procedure. The crane lowered four chains that are attached to the cradle that mounts the boat to the deck. The entire boat and cradle assembly is then carefully raised, shifted out beyond the ship to the water, and then lowered to the water.  As the boat lands in the water, a small craft drops off a couple of crew members. As they arrive on the boat, they first check to ensure the boat is watertight and safe, then inspect the mechanical systems before starting the boat.  With the engine running and the boat safe to sail, the crane lowers it another few feet allowing the boat to float off the cradle.  Then the boat is  backed free of the cradle and sailed to the commissioning port.  In this case, Elliott Bay Marina in Seattle.

All three vessels will be commissioned by Emerald Harbor Marine under the supervision of PAE project managers. We have a slip in Elliott Bay so we’ll be seeing lots of these three boats as we go back and forth.