Five years ago, at the start of my third (15-year) sabbatical, I started this blog with a sailing trip in the Sporades Islands of Greece. At the outset of my fourth (20-year) sabbatical is seemed appropriate I update Sabbatikos with another sailing adventure.
We left Cap Sante Marina in the late afternoon of Saturday, July 28th on the good ship Pangaea (in her 40th year) and timed our departure with the 5pm start of the Around Guemes Island sailing race.
Around Guemes Island Race start
We never intended to finish, but the direction of the race down Guemes Channel was the direction we were going and the only planned agenda we had. Pangaea needed simply to start the race so she’d continue to earn points for the Anacortes Yacht Club summer series, of which this race was included. We left the race as the fleet rounded Guemes and kept our heading straight on across Rosario Strait towards Lopez Island. While it was a sunny day, the Strait brought a biting cold wind off the ocean, but we found shelter from it in our night’s anchorage in Swifts Bay.
Sunday morning we pulled anchor and ferried ourselves on towards Orcas Island‘s West Sound. We had no clear itinerary but thought it would be a good place to explore for a few hours. We took advantage of the Orcas Island Yacht Club‘s dock and went ashore for a walk.
In West Sound, we noticed a sign for Orcas Island Pottery pointing North, but no indication of how far it was. We thought that might be the gallery associated with an artist our daughter (an accomplished ceramicist herself) really likes. A few months ago we had been in Fairhaven near Bellingham and had happened upon Good Earth Pottery. Upon entering the gallery our daughter exclaimed, “OMG! That’s Sean Roberts work. I follow him on Instagram! He’s my favorite artist! He lives in the San Juan Islands”. We thought perhaps we could go there and find a piece as a gift for her. But how far was it? Tawny did a little sleuthing. She called Good Earth Pottery, confirmed the artist was named Sean Roberts, and then called Orcas Island Pottery to confirm they had his work and their location. They did! Unfortunately, they were a good 5 miles walk from West Sound. They told us if we were traveling by boat we could dock at West Beach Resort and we’d find them within an easy 1/4-mile walk.
While West Beach Resort was only a short 5 miles by road, it was several hours by sailboat and more than we could take on that late in the day that was growing hotter. We decided to spend the steamy afternoon at nearby Massacre Bay and find anchorage behind Skull Island for the night. Yes, you read that right. In 1858 a group of northern Coast Salish tribes wiped out a seasonal Lummi camp at the head of West Sound. The resulting namesakes for the bay and several small islands (including Victim Island) entomb in our memories the bloody event. We escaped the heat by exploring the shoreline by kayak and resting ourselves under the shade of the “African Queen” canopy.
As the sun set, we enjoyed dinner, drink, and the warmth of a late July San Juan evening. It was a perfect night and perfectly still. I spent a long hour late in the night sitting on deck wrapped in a warmth of eerie stillness and bathed in the light of a nearly full moon pondering the ghosts of Massacre Bay. Tomorrow would be a new day and a new adventure as we now had a destination and a quest to find the work of Sean Roberts at Orcas Island Pottery.
Sabbatikos 
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