We found the town of East Sound years ago on our first charter boat cruise of the San Juan islands.  It isn’t visited much because it’s located all the way at the end of the east sound narrow bit of water in the middle of Orcas Island.  In a fast boat, that’s not a problem, but for our slow boat it’s an hour drive from the entrance to the end and if the wind is blowing up that inlet it’s pretty miserable indeed! Luckily after our wind storm from a few days ago, the weather promised to be pretty nice so we went for it!  The town has added quite a few mooring balls from the last time we were up so it’s a little more friendly for boaters.  We’re too long to use a mooring ball, so we backed up into 50′ of water, dropped the anchor, and headed to shore!

East Sound is a tiny waterfront community full of cafes, all natural food stores, and shops selling locally made artisan products.  I may have gone on a bit of a shopping spree.. but we saved so much money not staying at a marina every night that I didn’t feel bad about it.  I can *always* use a new beanie hat! …and a few soft t-shirts… etc… They also have the best gelato I’ve ever tasted in my entire life. Seriously.

After a few hours of sitting on the boat and relaxing I noticed that the water looked odd outside.  The surface was coated with a film of something and that was causing the light from the setting sun to reflect off of it.  It was a neat effect that I hadn’t seen before.  Also, the water right now is full of baby jellyfish.  No scuba diving for me!