Bowtie on Bainbridge: The Plan

What does it mean to put a “Bowtie on Bainbridge”? That doesn’t even make sense. Well, in our quest to circumnavigate the islands of Puget Sound, Bainbridge Island is our next big challenge. And since we still haven’t really tackled Blake Island, we’ll get that done at the same time. The map of our plan might help you to visualize what we’re talking about:

Friday: Head to Blake Island

We’ll launch from the Point Defiance Marina right after work, and paddle to Lisabuela for our traditional almost-halfway-up-Colovos break. A dear friend is getting married this evening, so we plan to land in plenty of time to join by Zoom. So it will be extra important to avoid the back-eddy at the south tip of Vashon this time so we can take advantage of the ebb current pulling us north. After the wedding, we’ll continue on to Blake Island, which will be our home base for the weekend.

Saturday: Loop Blake & Bainbridge

In the morning, we’ll catch the flood into Rich Passage and then paddle & take breaks while the tides turn. We’ll use the ebb to get through Agate Pass and then make our way around to Fay Bainbridge for a break. From there, we’ll make our way back to Blake for a second night of camping.

Sunday: Home Again, Home Again

On Sunday, we’ll head back home, taking the longer, but less predominantly north-bound route on the east side of Vashon. We’ve covered that section a lot in the last year (after never having paddled there), so it’s relatively familiar by now. We plan on our regular breaks at KVI Beach and Maury Island Marine Park.

Why this Paddle & Why this Weekend?

All-in-all, we’re basically doing a practice run of SEVENTY48: 60 nmi in a weekend. This is our last full training paddle before the races, so we thought we’d make it count. Of course, we won’t push to finish in 48 hours or less. Our focus this time is a bit more on comfort than speed this time around. It’s a good chance to practice some of the skills we’ll need for setting up and tearing down camp, and also a good chance to test our camp kitchen set-up and menu in the wild.

Finally, we thought that it would be nice if we could do a little bit more posting from the trail this year in SEVENTY48 and WA360. Our support team handled the blog posts in the past, but we thought it would be fun to try to post each day on the trail. So we’re testing that out this weekend, too. We plan on posting each day to update you on how things are going and what we accomplished… Are we on track or off track? What highlights really made our day? Did we push through any challenges? What pictures did we manage to snap? So check that out throughout the weekend, too.

We hope you enjoy following along!