Well, they can’t all be winners, especially in wintertime. In late December, I tried to do a four-day circumnavigation of Lopez Island in the San Juans but failed due to high winds.

It was still a good trip, full of adventures and wildlife, but I was disappointed not to have completed the route. The southeast end of Lopez was the last place in the San Juans I hadn’t seen yet.

The trip started out windy and got worse. I originally planned to launch from the mainland (technically Fidalgo Island) at Washington Park, my favorite jumping-off point for the eastern San Juans. But the winds in Rosario Strait were blowing twenty-five knots when I arrived, so I decided to play it safe and cross to Lopez by ferry. I drove to Odlin County Park and set up camp.

Odlin is one of the most beautiful car-campsites I’ve ever stayed. You can drive right up to the water and camp just feet above the driftwood line. In the morning, you can just glide your boat over a short sandy beach and be on your way.

I’m sure such a beautiful place must be packed during the season, but in mid-December, I had it all to myself.

The wind picked up during the night, eventually gusting to forty knots—nearly a gale. It scattered my gear off the picnic table, ripped my tarp, and rolled my kayak off the driftwood and into the forest. Needless to say, I decided to spend yet another night at Odlin rather than face such dangerous conditions.

This was my second weather day of the trip, and I still had yet to put the kayak in the water. Time was running out if I was to complete my circumnavigation given the short days of winter. I resolved to make the attempt if the weather improved at all.

In the meantime, I drove around Lopez looking at the various natural sites, including Spencer Spit and Fisherman Bay Spit, both excellent habitat for birds. At Spencer, I encountered a flock of fifty northern pintails, one of my favorite freshwater ducks.

The third day of the trip dawned with light winds. I was finally able to get out on the water. I paddled south down the west side of Lopez, hoping to make a counter-clockwise circumnavigation. The choice of direction was a legacy of my original plan to launch from the mainland, but it seemed a good choice anyway, because the morning tide was flowing north to south on an ebb.

Winter waterfowl did not disappoint. There were the usual grebes, cormorants (all three west coast species), common loons, and sea ducks. In the alcid department, my personal favorite, the highlight was the abundant ancient murrelets. There were more than I’d ever seen before. Over the next two days, I estimate I saw at least two hundred of these winter visitors, when usually I'm lucky to see a dozen.

I camped on a BLM pebble beach on the southeastern tip of San Juan Island, under the bluffs at Cattle Point. The beaches were not official campsites, but I looked everywhere and didn’t see any “no camping” signs. Unlike in state and national parks, on BLM land, the presumption is that you can camp unless notified otherwise. (Years after this trip, however, BLM adopted a resource management plan that explicitly prohibited camping at Cattle Point.)

I spent the afternoon hiking on the high sandy bluffs above the beach. There were other people at Cattle Point, which is accessible by car, but my little campsite was hidden from them.

In order to catch good tides the next morning, I needed to start several hours before dawn. I was worried about paddling the exposed waters of Haro and Rosario Straits in darkness, especially with a wind forecast of ten to twenty knots from the southeast. In the southern San Juans, southeast winds have fetch basically to Seattle, so they can really bring the chop.

The wind was blowing fifteen when I made breakfast, and I decided not to risk the conditions in the dark. Losing a third travel day meant I no longer would have time to circumnavigate Lopez, so I prepared myself to paddle back up north to my car. Maybe I could do some local paddling the next day before I went home.

By the time I was packed up, however, the wind had dropped to ten, and I decided to go for it. Using my headlamp to avoid exposed rocks near the beach, I headed out into the straits.

This turned out to be a bad idea. Salmon Bank off the tip of San Juan Island created confused chop that I had to paddle through. I’d seen the rough waters the day before from the bluffs, but I hoped that a flood tide would produce less chop than the ebb I’d been watching. That turned out not to be the case, and I spent a scary twenty minutes fighting through waves striking the boat from all directions, unseen in the dark until they hit me.

Once I was past the bank, the flood tide I’d counted on to propel me east actually tried to suck me north through San Juan Channel. I’d hoped to make three knots headway with a favorable current, but faced with a side-moving current and a headwind, I was only making one knot or less. This was one-third the speed I was counting on, and speed was essential to my plans. I needed to round the southeast corner of Lopez and head up Rosario Strait before the flood tide ended and an ebb made northbound progress impossible.

I crawled along, pathetically hoping that once I was past San Juan Channel, the unfriendly northbound current would turn to a friendly eastbound current. That change never materialized. What did materialize shortly after sunrise was an increase in the windspeed. Now I was facing twenty-knot winds, the high end of the forecast, instead of the low-end ten-knot winds I had gambled on. The chop increased, and I was taking the wind head-on. Four hours into the paddle, I had only made five miles to the good, and my speed was down to half a knot in the worsening conditions.

By 10:30, the flood tide was ending. I was still two miles from Rosario Strait, and now I would face an adverse ebb current when I got there instead of the favorable flood current I'd hoped to encounter. I had to face the reality that I was not going to complete my circumnavigation. At this point, it was no longer possible even to return to Odlin, because the ebb current would rush against me in San Juan Channel just as surely as in Rosario Strait. I no longer had any good places to go.

I had to abort the trip. The south coast of Lopez Island is not a friendly place for small boats, and I had to fight my way along rocky cliffs for half an hour before I found a beach suitable for landing. All beaches in this area are privately owned, and this was no exception. I don’t approve of trespassing, but I’d painted myself into a corner. I scrambled up the bluff to introduce myself and explain the situation, but no one was home at the farmhouse.

I walked a mile or so down country roads to the main streets, then hitchhiked the fifteen miles back to my car at Odlin. When I returned for my boat and gear, the landowner’s hired hand had showed up to feed the sheep, and he graciously helped me get my ninety-pound (40-kg) boat up the bluff.

Exhausted by my hours-long battle with the wind and the endless trips up and down the bluff laden with gear, I spent one last night in Odlin and took the ferry home the next day.

Let me say this: The trip was not all bad. I ended up with sixty species of bird, including the wonderful pintails and ancient murrelets, plus white-winged scoters, and a northern harrier hunting over a farmer’s field. I saw harbor seals, California and Steller sea lions, harbor porpoises, and a mule deer. I had a lot of time for nature watching and science fiction reading, two of my favorite things to do on these trips, and I got to see lots of Lopez Island.

I felt a little bad missing the very southern corner of the island, but all in all, I think things turned out for the best. Winter kayakers always run the risk of meeting terrible conditions, and I’d been very lucky in past years. Finally, my luck ran out, but I would never let something like that ruin a good time.

—Alex Sidles