Roche Harbor

We stayed at Friday Harbor for a few days getting ourselves and the boat ready for island hopping. Then we finally set out for the other side of the island – Roche Harbor. We thought we’d try anchoring here for the first time, so that if anything went wrong – we weren’t far from help.

On our way over to Roche Harbor, we saw several tourist boats all in the same area, so we went to check it out. Good thing we did – there were orcas! We saw at least 3 swimming around! The dorsal fin definitely sets it apart from any whale I’ve ever seen. They look pretty menacing!

After circling and circling we finally dropped anchor for the first time! But once we dropped, it looked like we were too close to the other boats, so we picked up and went back to circling. We found a spot further away from the boats and dropped again. We let out 200 ft of chain, and watched closely. We were swinging differently than the other boats and I think we were in a bit of a channel that had more current. After a while of waiting, a breeze picked up and we were clearly drifting.

After seeing how much we were dragging, we definitely weren’t going to spend the night out there, so we went into the marina. $80 a night! It was super nice though, great wifi, I got a lot of work done and the island was neat to see.