Allport Marine SurveyTony Allport, SAMSŪ AMSŪPrincipal Marine Surveyor Steilacoom, Washington, USA Serving the Puget Sound Region Including Olympia, Tacoma, & Gig Harbor |
Muddy Feet in Mats Mats Bay
|
By Tony Allport, AMS The dwindling ebb tide petered out and began to flood us as we worked our way up Oak Bay, with the light and variable breeze our progress was effectively hobbled for the remaining daylight hours. Two days out from our home on Anderson Island in southern Puget Sound we had hoped to reach Port Townsend that afternoon to stock up where prices were still reasonable before venturing into the San Juan Islands. Some boats can muscle their way through the short canal between the mainland and Indian Island in spite of the strong currents; you can often see them at the fuel dock. But Pleiades, with her small auxiliary engine and disposition toward sailing, is not one of them. I considered our options, while trying to remind myself that we weren't in any hurry. Fighting the tide in Puget Sound is a humbling and costly endeavor. There are notorious salt water rapids scattered throughout the region that reverse direction with every change of the tide. These are only the most prominent reminders of the forces at play. We try to schedule each leg of our journey to make the most of the marvelously predictable flow of the tide. We treat it like public transit, so much so that we refer to the next favorable tide as the train, and decide whether or not to be on it. If the train doesn't take us all the way to our destination, our plan may change, sometimes for the better. The next daylight ebb was early the following day. It would take us into Port Townsend by midmorning and allow plenty of time to shop for provisions before heading further north. But what to do in the mean time? Waiting for the tide to change is like watching water boil, it happens when you forget about it. We altered our course for nearby Mats Mats Bay, a favorite fallback refuge in this situation. I love Mats Mats bay. But for all its charm, it is often bypassed by our ambitious itineraries. There is nothing there in the way of commerce or human interaction. But it is fun to negotiate the dramatic entrance and it has a delightfully snug and secretive harbor that I find very satisfying. We scanned the rugged shoreline for the buoy marking Klas rock, the first hazard to avoid when attempting to enter this secluded haven. We swung wide around it before spotting an improbable looking cleft in the rocky shore. I turned Pleiades toward it. From the perspective of anyone observing from afar, we vanished into the face of a cliff. Proceeding cautiously along a narrow fissure between two walls of stone with an over hanging canopy of trees, I narrowly avoided rocks both awash and submerged by keeping the two range markers at the far end of the channel perfectly aligned. When we were almost on top of the first range marker the apparent blind alley opened to another passage on our left. A sharp turn at the last minute averted disaster and we were in a slightly wider channel with low grassy banks. A pair of otters scrambled out of sight among the weeds, no doubt startled by our sudden appearance. I continued slowly with one eye on the depth sounder and the other gauging the slope of the beach on either side, assuming that the deeper water favored the steeper beach. The bottom is muddy here, and the flooding tide was now my ace in the hole. A placid harbor unfolded before us, sparsely populated, sheltered, and invisible to the outside world. Without our cruising guide to Puget Sound we would never have discovered it, and although we were now out of sync with the tide in the Port Townsend canal, the conditions were perfect for entering Mats Mats. The quiet cove to the left revealed a rusty derrick, a mute testament to the dormant industry of an abandoned quarry. What tale could it tell, I wondered, imagining the thunder of pneumatic drills and swirling clouds of rock dust in sharp contrast to the stillness of its unbroken reflection. A commercial fishing boat lay tied to a private pier, safe for the moment from the harsh demands of its trade. I savored the unlikely triumph of a commercial fisherman owning the protected waterfront home that he returned to. Across the bay a pair of schooners stirred enchantment in my heart; pearls nestled in the protective shell of this sanctuary. We anchored and piled in to our dinghy. The only public access point is a sleepy boat ramp and dock on the south end of the bay. Our kids, Claire and Alden, were eager to explore and burn off some energy. An earlier flood tide had left a line of trash and debris high on the beach, above the glistening gray mud flats. I grimaced at the thought of bringing muddy kids back to the boat, so in an effort to distract them I led the way to the deserted parking lot where, in the rich dappled light, the ground was littered with small round pine cones. "Hey, anyone want to play baseball?" I said, picking up a stick and whacking a pine cone across several parking spaces. It was just crazy enough to intrigue them for a while. The pine cones were perfect for rapid fire pitching and batting at close range, nature's own Wiffle balls. I gathered a pile and fired them across home plate as the kids swung wildly and vociferously condemned my pitching. We jeered and bantered, making up rules on the fly. It was fun while it lasted, but the lure of the beach was strong and the kids eventually gravitated toward it. Ann and I cringed as they outdid each other miring themselves in the mud, delighting in the rude sucking sound that they made with their feet, and probing all the ooziest places. We cajoled and scolded from the safety of the dock. "Stay away from that mud. Don't pick that crap up, it's trash, leave it alone. Come back here!" Eventually they returned spattered and panting, each wearing a thick pair of mud socks. Alden carried a cheap dime store toy he had found, a plastic basketball about the size of a tangerine. "We don't need anymore junk like that on the boat," I said sternly. "I like it," he pleaded. "Give it to me," I commanded, "you're not getting back on the boat until all that mud is washed off." I rolled the detested trinket in my finger tips, peeved by their disregard. It was made of two hard plastic shells that appeared to snap together like a plastic Easter egg. I poked gently at the seam. The two halves popped apart and a damp wad of green paper tumbled out. To everyone's astonishment I carefully unfolded a soggy five dollar bill. Alden kept the basketball. To this day the five dollar bill serves as a book mark in our cruising guide to Puget Sound, marking the page for Mats Mats Bay and reminding me to chill out. It still surprises me every time I find it there. |
Go to main page.
Copyright © 2006/2012 Allport Marine Survey, Steilacoom, Washington, USA" - allport4boats@yahoo.com
Installed August 15, 2006 - Last updated February 15, 2012 - Hosted & Maintained by Don Robertson