Week-long moorage in the San Juans?

[Andrew Means]

I suppose this would be best posted in the Northwest forum, but that place is kind of a ghost town, and we seem to have a lot of people from the NW here anyway, and the advice I'm looking for isn't necessarily NW specific.

So most of my friends and I are limited to about a week that we can take off work to go sailing, and one of the bummers about sailing in the San Juans is that you spend half of the time getting up there and back. So my plan is to sail up one weekend, leave the boat there over that week and drive back, then drive up the next week and sail that whole week, then repeat the process to get home.

I could conceivably just rent moorage at one of the marinas, but at $30 a night that can add up quickly. Are there places in the San Juans where you would feel comfortable anchoring for a week? Or is there any way to rent a mooring buoy somewhere? What would you suggest?

One variation of this plan would be for me to stay on the boat during that week and have a working vacation, in which case I would probably just stay at a marina so I could have WIFI to do my work on.

Thoughts?

OH, and PS - if I stay up there for the week I'll want to have a bike to ride around on the islands - where would be the best place to get a bike temporarily?

 

[toddster]

I've been wondering about that myself. If I plowed all the way up there, I'd probably want to leave the boat for several weeks. From what I recall cruising on friends boats in the 90's, most of the available mooring pins had something like a 3-day limit. There always seem to be a lot of boats anchored out around Friday Harbor and Bellingham. It seems like the sounds on Orcas island ought to be fairly sheltered.

Why not try snooping around with Google Earth to find popular mooring fields?

The next question is: where can you leave your dinghy and bicycle for a week?

re: WIFI... would like to hear about someone else's installation of "long range wifi" booster before I spring for one myself. I've heard some people connect from a couple of miles out? Not sure how common unencrypted access points are though.

 

[Loren Beach]

Nice idea, but the Islands (both US and CN) are crowded all summer. Probably even more so now that fuel prices are so high -- all those power boaters will be even more reluctant than usual to go any further than they have to.
Marinas are crowded and probably have long waiting lists for summer berths.

In olden days you could always get a slip over at Port Angeles, because it was "too remote" for most of the Sea-Tac area boaters. I have no idea if that's still the situation, though.

Good luck,
Loren

ps: if you think you have a ways to go to reach the San Juans, consider the week-long trip from my home port.