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Sea Kayak - San Juan Islands from Anacortes

Foggy conditions for much of the day made navigation a bit more challenging, but we had a great day anyway on this classic trip.

Will Greenough Will Greenough
July 24, 2025
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • The day use parking by the  boat ramp was blocked off for some reason, so we staged from the  day use parking on the east side of the park. Still a pretty easy carry down to the beach.

    With 4 of us in 4 cars, we elected to move two cars to the ferry parking so we would have someone to watch the boats at the end of the day while we retrieved cars from the park. The parking fee at the ferry lot is $13.

    It was foggy most of the day with visibility ranging from 100' to 1/2 mile most of the day. The crossing of Rosario was done by calculating the ferry angle and following a 240 degree (magnetic) heading to minimize time in the shipping lane and take full advantage of the 3-4kt ebb current. We checked the actual course periodically using GPS. Prior to the crossing we checked the Marine Traffic app and monitored Ch 5A on the VHS during the crossing to check for traffic.

    The fog also made navigation from Iceberg Point to Davis Point challenging - it was difficult to determine which was which of the  many islands in this area. 

    With a 6kt flood, the tide race off Davis Point was pretty intimidating for the group - particularly in the foggy conditions. The waves were large, confused and breaking most of the time to the south of the larger rock off the point. Two of us played for a short time on the smaller, but still larg waves closer to the point and got a few great rides.Screenshot 2025-07-24 220028.jpg

Everyone arrived on time or early and we were able to get on the water on schedule at 7am. It was foggy over Rosario Straight with visibility mostly around 100'. The wind was light at around 5kt from the SW. With the strong ebb current, most of the crossing was pretty bouncy with somewhat chaotic waves in the 1' range. We held a 240 degree heading for the crossing which worked quite well and we only turned a bit more south as we started to see Lopez Island as the fog lifted a bit temporarily. We landed at the small beach just north of Colville Point at 8:20am on schedule, only having seen one small power boat during the crossing.

After a short break we continued around Pt. Colville and along the beautiful southern shore of Lopez, arriving at the beach around Iceberg Point on schedule at 10:20 for an early lunch. During lunch, the fog lifted a bit, but by the time we left at 10:50 the fog rolled in again, and we had to navigate to Davis Point by compass, checking our course periodically by GPS. We arrived at Davis Point around 11:45 again in fog with the tide race in full fury and making lots of noise. The race out past the larger rock was fairly chaotic and quite intimidating, particularly in the low visibility conditions. A couple of us played on the nearer wave train and caught a few great rides before we decided to head toward Friday Harbor ahead of schedule.

Between the low visibility and the noisy and chaotic nature of the main tide race, we decided to go between Deadmans Island and Lopez Island instead of getting out in the main pass, and had a relatively uneventful ride up to Friday Harbor with fog disappearing about half way there. We took a quick break at Turn Island and then arrived at Friday Harbor at 2:30pm - in plenty of time to take the 3:50pm ferry back to Anacortes.

Total distance: 21.9nm
Average moving speed: 3.5kt
Total time: 7:30 hours
Total moving time: 6:15 hours.