Puget Sound Sustainability Armada Invades Blake Island: August 1st and 2nd
On Friday, July 31st, Whisper joined up with Sustainable Ballard for the first
ever camping trip to Blake Island, gathering up the local Puget Sound sustainability communities for a weekend away. (We tossed around names like “Camp Carbon Feather” but never arrived at a name that felt right. Maybe next year!)
Now, any sailor worth his or her sea salt knows that no trip is complete without good libations, and we were lucky enough to receive a generous donation of Naughty Nellie and Pike Pale Ale from Charlie and Rose Finkel, owners of Pike Place Brewery. Somehow, Whisper wound up being the boat to sail that beer over.
About 40 people arrived at the island. Part of the group headed to the reserved Group camp site, while a couple others grabbed beachside campsites below. The Group site promptly got dubbed “Upstairs”, the beach site, “Downstairs”. One of the cooler decisions we made was to bring over two open festival tents which provided shade from the hot sun: Upstairs received its chaise lounge and banner of “Relaxation Cabana”, and Downstairs received its lounge and banner of “Pirates for Sustainability”.
We co-mingled supplies as one person discovered they had overlooked packing matches, another missing cooking oil–in the tradition of camp, it all evened out.
We found the mooring balls on the east side of the island, and Whisper dropped two anchors. We rafted up to Soliton, a 35-foot Catalina which has made the produce run up to Sequim several times. The rafting up, however, wound up a bit of a mistake. The water proved choppy and the boats started grinding too hard against each other. Just as we decided to unraft,
one of Whisper’s stanchions bent under the pressure.
On Saturday, the beautiful gaff-rigged schooner from Bainbridge Island, Shan, moored nearby (picture follows below).
Saturday morning dawned surprisingly foggy, with the muffled thickness broken occasionally by passing boats’ horns. By noon, however, the fog had burned off and people relaxed into different activities: kayaking, chatting over beers, hiking around the island trails, or the familiar summer routine of simply heading down to the water’s edge, sunscreen and good book in hand.
We were spoiled by the fact that Blake Island is an unusual state park—it has a concession stand—so dripping vanilla ice cream cones made an appearance in the 90 degree heat. On Saturday afternoon, too, a couple parents arrived with their children, so our adult conversations became punctuated by the high pitch of the children’s voices and energy, darting in and out like the dragonflies along the shoreline.
Saturday evening after dinner, we enjoyed guitar-playing from Sustainable Bremerton’s musicians, and danced by the beachside campsites. The merriment continued into the evening, just barely crossing that fine line so that we got a visit from the polite ranger, cautioning us to keep the noise down.
On Sunday, we headed Upstairs for breakfast in the form of an omelette-making contest, where campers got creative with vegetables and eggs in intense pursuit of The Grand Prize: a genuine plastic rooster from Archie McPhees!
Pizza rounded out the uneventful sail home. While it can’t be delivered by boat in Ballard, we do enjoy bicycle delivery from Snooze Junction Pizza. Moon Dog called ahead as it approached the Shilshole docks, and sure enough, the bicyclist met the sunburned but happy crews at T dock for dinner delivery.
All in all, a fun way to spend a hot summer weekend!