Jetty Island - Sunset, Whales and a Friendly Harbor Seal

Sunday evening around 5pm Ben and I put the kayaks in the water at the Everett Marina and planned to circle Jetty Island before sunset. At near 60 degrees a clear sky and no wind the weather was spectacular to get out.

First we headed towards the north end of Jetty Island where the Snohomish River meets the sound. We passed through the area which is used for log storage though today there were no logs around only hundreds of lonely pilings dotting the area. Also near the mouth of the river they have grounded probably a dozen old ocean going wood barges. It was really cool to get up close to these and see the workmanship that was involved in putting the rotting hulks together. The tide was high enough that we were actually able to paddle into one of them. Some of the wood beams on these barges were massive - you would probably not be able to acquire wood this big anymore - and if you were able to find one it would likely have 40 chanting hippies chained to it as you cut it down!

After exploring the barges we headed back out into the channel towards Hat Island. Since the wind and current were almost nonexistent at that time even I had no trouble keeping a straight line. Once we got out to the channel marker roughly half way to the island we circled back around towards the south end of Jetty.

Nearly halfway back we came near a small fishing boat (I guess you'd call it that, to me it looked more like a large bathtub with an outboard motor strapped to it). The folks on board were busy dropping several crab pots. As the boat got near us the lady on board asked where we were heading from and Ben told her we came out from the marina. She then said "I can't believe you guys are out here with the whales." By the way she was talking I was thinking the crab lady may have had a few too many! Not less the 20 seconds later a gray whale surfaced a couple hundred yards just north of us it was amazing and all I could think was "WOW! - maybe she not as drunk as she sounds???" Well we worked our way around their boat (at a safe distance) and continued towards Jetty.

On the way back we stopped several times to watch the whales playing in the warm shallow waters near us. We did our best to keep our distance. There were a few minutes there where we were wondering if we were going to get to meet them on a more personal level as one, maybe two, of them appeared to be heading our direction before turning north and passing in front of us. These guys are huge they looked like Greyhound buses that could swim! In the 20-30 minutes they were out there with us I counted at least four we were able to identify individually but my guess is there were more.

After the whales moved north past us we continued around the south end of the Jetty where I was surprisingly greeted by a very curious harbor seal. Man those guys are cool - very friendly. As Ben put it "they're like a dog.....but they swim" and that's really the best way to describe him. As a matter of fact he was so friendly he followed us all the way from the end of the jetty past the waterfront restaurants through the middle of the marina and almost all the way back to the boat launch. One couple walking near the restaurant actually asked if he was ours!

Wow what an evening we planned on paddling 4 miles and ended up going closer to 9. We planned on it not being a very adventurous trip and it ended up being one if the most exciting times I've had a quite a while.

Sorry I didn't get any pictures on the whales being that it was only my second time on open water in a sea kayak I didn't want to take my chances that close to them!

Stats:

Miles Logged: 9