We woke up to some gorgeous light at Port Ludlow this morning.
We headed north toward Port Townsend and decided to stop at Mystery Bay (on Marrowstone Island, just across the way from Port Townsend). Mystery Bay has a state park dock, and guess what they also have? A public beach open for oyster (and clam) harvesting. And hey, it's almost low tide! In we went. Map for reference:
Avoiding the naval ammunitions restricted area:
Docked at Mystery Bay:
Oysters at low tide:
I gathered good-looking oysters and brought them over to Kevin for shucking. The rules are that you have to shuck the oysters on the beach and leave the shells, so we came armed with an oyster knife, a couple of bowls, and a ziplock bag. Kevin found a little "table" spot on the piling under the pier to use for shucking:
After shucking and rinsing and counting and tupperwaring our 36 oysters (18 each), we chatted for a few minutes with a woman digging for clams, and another guy shucking oysters. It's a pretty rich spot for shellfish, open only in the off season (October 1 through April 30) and honestly, there were only four people there on a Sunday low tide.
Moody sky:
Next we headed back out of the channel and over to Port Townsend.
Passing Fort Flagler State Park (I spy an Airstream!) This campground has such a killer view of Mt. Baker:
We stopped at the Boat Haven Marina and moored for 30 minutes or so on the guest dock so we could walk over to Safeway to get more Japanese bread crumbs and a few others things (1/2 mile walk). There's really no grocery store near the Point Hudson Marina (our destination today) so this was a worthwhile stop.
The cruise in front of town from Boat Haven to Point Hudson is beautiful when the weather is this lovely:
Afternoon sail:
We picked a nice slip with a view at Point Hudson for a couple days. Check out our fuzzy slip buddy:
We're having oysters for dinner (again) with a salad. We'll probably be sick of 'em soon and stop all the Talk About Oysters, but it's still pretty fun! The shellfish licenses are combo shellfish/seaweed harvesting licenses, so I think I need to learn about seaweeds! (Kelp pickles, anyone?)
This was our sunset view from the back of Airship tonight:
Laura, my wife (who is from California) and I are following you and really enjoy your insights and photography. We have boated for years and are about to move to a NT37 on the east coast for a few years then we’ll move it to Portland to be near the grandkids. Thanks so much for the great blog.
Thanks so much for your note, and we’re really glad you guys like the blog. We’re sure having a blast doing stuff to write about. Keep in touch!
My wife says the otters look like river otters, but she never knew that they went in salt water or an estuary. Pretty cool.
Yep, they are river otters. Apparently, sea otters are occasionally seen along the Strait of Juan de Fuca as far as Port Angeles, but don’t come in much further than that. (I looked it up yesterday because I was curious as well about the whole salt water/river otter thing.) 🙂