Hope Island

It's been a year since we bought Sweets and four months that we have been fulltime liveaboards and we figured it was time to have our first overnight trip at anchor. We have spent so much time working on the boat and making it liveable that we really haven't had any time or opportunity to actually sail.

We decided to stay pretty close to home for the first time out, we dug out the old moldy charts the previous owner had in the engine room and picked Hope Island as our weekend destination.

A small island just inside of Deception Pass. It's a State Park run island, no one lives there, they have some mooring bouys and campgrounds on the island which cost $12/night.

We are discovering that Whidbey Island really isn't the greatest place to sail, the wind is so extreme, in the summer, it is almost always becalmed, not even a breeze causing a ripple and in the winter its a constant 35 knots, there is no happy medium. So this trip we had no wind and didn't even put up the sails, so we motored for 3 hours to get there. 

Instead of using the mooring bouys we dropped anchor beside them. It was a gorgeous weekend, the weather was beautiful, a bit cold, we had our skippy wood stove going the whole time, which was a bit of a hassle, all the kinks aren't worked out of that whole system yet, but it did keep us warm even if the smoke alarms were constantly going off.

We baked a gluten free cake while underway. 

Skipper

Our reluctant sailors.

Winter crabbing season opened up that week, the whole anchorage was littered with crab pots, so we added our own.

Once we got the anchor set, we hopped in the dinghy to go explore the isalnd.

The tide was out and we discovered a little beach close to us.

A rope swing, kind of high though.

Skipping rocks

Sea shells 

Sunday at sea, we made a church pennant to fly. 

We figured since we were at Hope Island we would focus on hopeful verses.

The next day we sailed around the island and stopped in at another beach on the far side.

Found some caves. 

Cool drift wood.

Dug for treasure.

The first night was good, Mark slept in the cockpit for the first half of the night just to keep an eye on the fire, one of the reasons we had trouble with the wood stove was that if the fire burned down too much it would choke out and smoke would start coming through the stove and chimney, so wood needed to be added almost every hour.

The next day we went to the main beach across from the mooring bouys. We found a usuable tree swing. 

Some camp sites.

Made a fire and roasted some marshmallows. 

SweetHaven through the trees.

Warming the toes.

We stayed until late the next night and decided to night sail back home. Of course the wind still was nonexistent so we motored again, but it was nice at night. The kids tucked up in bed, no other boat around, my job was to keep th fire going. We arrived back at the dock around midnight and thankfully docked without any problem. Overall we had a great first overnight trip out, nothing super exciting, but all went without a hitch and that's all we can ask for.