More Eagle Harbor day 11

I'm ready to get out of the harbor and back to the open coast. The Swim Around Bainbridge is showing me much, including better and worse than I expected. And now, I've got my first malady. It's industrial disease
of the psychic sort, caused by prolonged exposure to the dim views under the dire straits of a developed harbor.

(Industrial Disease: a disease arising out of, and in the course of employment, resulting from exposure to, the absorption of or intoxication from harmful chemical, biological or physical agents to which the general public would not normally be exposed.)

What a surprise, it's not the toxic sediments of the Superfund site, nor the E. coli hazard from swimming in someone's toilet. I'm brought down by the mundane underside of an everyday sight.

The mirror-like surface of the water hides an ugly view. Now that I've seen it, I'll never look at a harbor the same again.


air temp: 46F
water temp: 50F
Dec 11, 12:00 pm partly sunny
wind from North, 5mph
high tide, falling
visibility 10-20 feet
today's distance: 1.19 mile
total so far: 11.56 miles

today's notables:
clams, clams, clams

Today, Swim Around Bainbridge friend Rob Dryden helped with the shuttle. He contacted me via email and offered rides. Since the start and end today are in town, I wanted to avoid the typical hike. We left my car at the exit and Rob dropped me at the entry point. Thanks Rob (photo at right).

The first part of the swim was muddy, boring, and quite nice. It's not being in a harbor that's bad, I like this bit. One especially nice part is a shallow sandbar that I pull over using my hands, too shallow to swim. I'm face to face with acres of clams. It's mostly the dead shells that show, but also siphons and little water jets coming out of burrows in the sand.

But soon, I re-enter the hazardous harbor and clarify my diagnosis. I'm sure now, it's the marina that makes me feel bad swimming through the harbor.

I get out at Waterfront Park, take a quick gaze at the ferry yard coming next, and hustle off to my car to get back to work. My view of the wet underside of Bainbridge Island is modified by Eagle Harbor, and I think I understand the change.

Day 11: Eagle Harbor

Swimming in a marina sucks. That's the answer to the attitude problem in swimming Eagle Harbor. One more little bit and I'm outta here.

I started from a nice little "road end" park on Gowen Road (photo at right). It's beautiful, even with the junk tire in the foreground. Notice the fantastic clouds and reflection in the water (photo at left).
We do grey here in Seattle, more on that later.

It was a good swim at first, a bit boring over the mucky bottom and with some docks to dodge. But bursts of sunlight were nice, the glassy water is always a delight, and the cold air and water made it even better since I was staying fairly warm. Well, a few cold toes.

But when I hit the marina, I started to feel like crap again. It was pathetic, swimming past the dock and moored boats, wondering how many poop molecules were leaking around the snorkel in my mouth and imagining what I would think if I were the people walking on the dock looking at the idiot swimming by. Here's the marina, looking to the right from my exit at Waterfront Park (photo at right).

So now I get the Eagle Harbor problem, I'll just swim on out of the harbor and never look back. I long for the open coast again.

just one tiny obstacle, the ferry dock looms. And, even worse, the ferry maintenance yard is before the ferry dock. Here's the ferry maintenance yard looking left from my exit (photo at left) Should I go around or under? Or, portage? Would that be cheating?

Swim Around Bainbridge on blog, Watching our Water Ways

Swimming Around Bainbridge is a beautifully simple idea.

So says Environmental reporter Christopher Dunagan in his blog "Watching our Water Ways" where he discusses the challenges of protecting Puget Sound and all things water-related. Here's his post on my tour:

Swimming around Bainbridge Island, a little piece at a time, is a beautifully simple idea loaded with potential for suspense, excitement and exploration.



Mark Powell // Kitsap Sun photo

Island resident Mark Powell wanted to find a way to know his island better when was struck by the inspiration to swim around it, observing the variety of sea life, shoreline structures and underwater formations along the way.

As Tristan Baurick writes for the Kitsap Sun, Powell considered waiting for the right weather or the right time of year to begin, but then he realized any delay could kill the inspiration. So he took to the water on a windy Columbus Day, Oct. 13, slipping into the cold water at Fort Ward State Park. (View his blog, which includes an entry for each leg of his journey.)

Meanwhile, I’ve been following the blogs of two 16-year-old boys, each sailing separately by themselves around the world. There’s Zac Sunderland of Thousand Oaks, Calif., aboard a 36-foot Islander, who left Los Angeles June 14 (See Zac’s Web site and blog).

The other 16-year-old is Mike Perham of St. Albans (England), who left Brighton on the South Coast of England on Nov. 16 in a 50-foot custom racing yacht. (See Mike’s web site and blog).

Both boys hope to be the youngest to sail around the world solo. It is a pretty remarkable feat to contemplate — what with risky seas, boat mishaps and dangerous people lurking in various corners of the world.

So I’ll keep following the adventures of these two boys who have their separate dreams of sailing. Their blogs contain details of their travels, which aren’t much while they’re at sea, but the photos are nice.

Still, my admiration goes to Bainbridge Island’s Mark Powell, whose trip is filled with adventure of a different kind. From Mark’s blog, I am hearing things about things somewhat familiar to me and personally more interesting.

As Powell writes in the introduction to his blog:

I’ve got an itch. I’m indoors too much, and lacking adventure. So, thrashing around a bit on what to do, it came to me.

I’ll swim around Bainbridge Island, my home island.

It’s all here, 53 miles of shoreline with at least a small dose of almost everything you’ll find in the modern ocean world.

We have a Superfund site and pristine shoreline, armored banks with fancy houses, and forests that reach the water. Some good fishing, and some sadness over what’s missing.

Thanks to Mike Sato for catching a name error in the initial post

Tags: Bainbridge Island, Mark Powell, Mike Perham, Zac Sunderland

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 6:27 pm and is filed under Education, On writing, Puget Sound, Shorelines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

More Eagle Harbor day 10

My Eagle Harbor swim vexes me. What's the source of my dismay in gazing at the Harbor's underside? Is it really so sad, or am I coloring the water somehow with my attitude? Could the pollution be in me?

I did see more garbage on this leg than any other, but that's no surprise. As a sharp contrast, Blakely Harbor was fun and glorious even though it's the site of long-abandoned heavy industry.

Eagle Harbor's dismality is a new puzzle, and I don't have all the pieces yet. I want to dive in again soon to swim the north shore and try again. In the next leg or two I'll reach the ferry maintenance yard and ferry dock, and the question of what to do. Around, under, or avoid? It would be so easy to slip under the ferry dock, so long as nobody raises an alarm.


air temp: 47F
water temp: 49F
Dec 7, 2:00 pm cloudy, light rain
wind calm
medium tide, falling
visibility 10-20 feet
today's distance: 1.56 mile
total so far: 10.37 miles

today's notables:
spotted ratfish
junk
shark buoy


Today, I have a timeline, I've got a mile to swim (or so I thought) and an hour before I'm due for the promised Christmas tree hunt with my kids. A wonderful swim first (or so I thought), then a nice family afternoon. My supportive wife drops me off and plays with the kids on the beach. She probably cringes as much as I do when I drop under the first marina. Maybe more, since it's harder to watch and not know whether there's a problem.

I'm cautious of obstacles, dangling cables that could snag and trap. But the first marina and dock are clear. At least clear of debris. The water is murky brown/green and it's dark and hard to see more than about 10 feet. I kick through the worst of it with my hands in front of me in case I miss seeing a problem.

No worries, it's clear swimming. And on to the next dock. I see a few oysters on the gravel and sand bottom, and a spotted ratfish. Enough to say it's not a dead ocean under all of this use.

It gets old, ducking under docks, swimming inside of a marina boom. I swim faster than usual to get past the worst of it.

But somehow, clearing the docks doesn't clear my head. I'm out in some open water but it's not that fun. I strike on ahead hoping to cruise through the murk and find something--anything--that transforms the harbor into a delight.

I keep stopping and watching for boats, I'm in a harbor and it's possible I could miss hearing the whine of the motor. Nothing except a couple of delightful kayakers, my first on these swims. They obligingly start to paddle by until I hail them. We chat a bit, me bobbing strangely at the surface without treading water. The buoyancy of two wetsuits is fun, I can float vertically at neck level with no work. They paddled over from Wing Point, ducking under the same docks, etc. No, I'm not really a maniac.

It turns into a long swim. My google maps measurements have to be off, I know I've gone a mile and there's some distance left to swim. My family gives up waiting when I'm not done in an hour, because they have to pick up a friend for a play date. We left a car at the exit point, so I can make it home, but I end up being late.

Finally, I come around the last point and head across the flats to the car, another quarter mile or so. It's murky, the bottom is silty, and I still feel down about the whole thing.

Whatsoever posesses me to turn day 10 so negative? I don't know, at least not yet. I'll be back to these sites or nearly so on my way back out of the harbor. For better or for worse.

Day 10: Eagle Harbor

The beauty of Eagle Harbor shines in these photos (today's exit point looking left and right).



As I'm swimming through Eagle Harbor I see some big gaping jaws with nasty teeth, it's a big shark. Oh wait, it's a joke buoy, an attacking shark where you can tie up your boat.

I did meet some nice kayakers halfway through the swim, they asked if I was keeping warm (yes). I mentioned my path, and they wondered aloud in a friendly way if I'm a maniac. Naw, just an ocean guy with an itch to do this Bainbridge Island underwater tour.

The shark buoy was fun after a moments hesitation. Not so much fun in the rest of the human presence in this yucky swim. Unlike all 9 of the swims before today, this one was more of a lesson. Garbage near marinas and houses, some dark murky water, too many docks to swim under or around and bunches of boats.

You can probably see it coming in this sequence of photos of getting in the water. First, here's dad and the kids as I'm getting ready, getting in the water, and then about to disappear under the first dock. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised, but it was worse than I expected.



I'm just disappearing under the first dock in the larger photo above, that little white dot is me.

Today's swim tested my mettle, whether I'd stick it out and complete the shoreline. The water was a beautiful above. But beneath, the Heart of Darkness. This is what we do to our beautiful ocean when we love it to death.

It's not the wounded ocean of massive commerce. In some ways that would be easier to take. This is the ugly scene of you and me, looking out from our single houses and clusters of boats, and neglecting what's beneath the beauty. Below the mirrored surface of the water is where we find our true reflection in the ugly shallows of Eagle Harbor.

I feel dirty and swim fast. I want to slip through as quickly as I can. There's nothing for me here.

I see a spotted ratfish and feel sorry for the poor thing. Prehistoric and magnificently strange, and living in a junky harbor.

How many people know what's down here? What proportion of the live-aboards and live-on-the-shores have even put on a mask and looked down here? Maybe I should tell them how bad it looks. More on this later..

Wild Places

What are wild places? I used to think Wilderness...you know, WILDERNESS. The big expanses of undeveloped land in the named and lawfully set aside Wilderness areas.

But there is the wild that lives in us, the feelings that mark our experience of the wild. And the feelings are not tied to named Wilderness areas. Sometimes they come out, surprise, with the sight of a wild bird in a fairly tame forest patch.

The wet underside of Bainbridge Island is wild. I've seen enough of it to know for certain. Underwater touring has taken me through a lot of water, and I've seen a lot of ocean bottom in my 8-some miles so far. I'm savoring the find of a wild world all my own, to be reached just by plopping off the beach and moving 100 feet offshore.

Give me fifteen spare minutes and a plunge underwater, and I can have a getaway that's as wild as most Wilderness hikes. Now that's a find.

The photo above right shows the wild water of the point between Rockaway Beach and Blakely Harbor, home of the tubesnout crew (see day 8). In the far background is wild Mt. Ranier, just peeking over wooded Blake Island.


I'm reading a book called "The Wild Places" by Robert Macfarlane. It's an adventure with a question at it's heart:

Are there any genuinely wild places left in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales? That is the question that writer Robert Macfarlane poses to himself as he embarks on a series of breathtaking and beautifully described journeys through some of the archipelago's most remarkable landscapes.

I picked it up as an accompaniment to my swim, and I've found it influential.

Macrarlane talks about the various wilds that he finds in England, and he finds his picture of what's wild changing dramatically as he moves through his adventure.

It's a good companion to my adventure, and I'm lucky to have found it.

Day 9: Eagle Harbor

How about a Superfund site to spice up a swim? Or a prehistoric fish not usually seen in shallow water? Today was a fantastic sunny day with light wind and good visibility most of the way. I used two wetsuits to hold out the cold, and some new gloves, and I stayed warm. Even though I felt like I was in a full body cast. It was a nice swim with some strange spotted ratfish, and one disturbing site...

I passed the partially cleaned Superfund toxic waste site where lots of oily goop was found seeping into the ocean as recently as 2006. Nice. It's Bainbridge's worst ocean mess, except maybe lucrative strip mining of shallow sand flats to catch Geoducks. The Wyckoff creosote plant resulted in millions of pounds of creosote contaminating our ocean at this beautiful little sandy beach with a fantastic view of Seattle. Ugh.

Even with all of this ugliness, the sand flats had a wild feel when I pulled around the corner into Eagle Harbor and looked around.

photo at left: Wyckoff Superfund site and Eagle Harbor, taken from the ferry.

photo at right: Bainbridge-Seattle ferry passing Rockaway Beach and entering Eagle Harbor.


air temp: 45F
water temp: 50F
Dec 4, 11:00 am sunny
wind from the NE, 0-5 mph
medium tide, falling
visibility 10-30 feet
today's distance: 1.00 mile
total so far: 8.81 miles

today's notables:
spotted ratfish
superfund site

I got in at the north end of Rockaway Beach, after stumbling down a steep grassy hill, next to an old landslide. I'm wearing my shorty wetsuit under the cracked and torn old full wetsuit. I also bought some new, thicker gloves and I'm wearing my thickest booties.

The bottom is mixed sand and gravel, and lots of shell litter from clams and barnacles, along with a few oysters. I expect Geoducks, but don't find any. Right ahead are the steel walls of the Superfund site, they contain the contaminated soil to limit seepage into the ocean. They make for a very inhospitable shoreline, 10-15 feel of vertical steel walls, for maybe 1/4 mile along the point at the mouth of Eagle Harbor.

I look around quite a bit, I'm close to where boat traffic comes in and out of the biggest harbor on the island. The big boats stay outside the channel buoys, so I stay inside, but I want to watch for small boats. I'm in fairly shallow water and I don't think anybody would come this close to shore, but I'm keeping a watch just to be sure.

Once I'm in the harbor, the bottom shifts to sand, and I wonder how much has been placed to "cap" the toxic sediments from the creosote plant. The "cap" is supposed to keep the toxic mess in place, it's cheaper than trying to dredge the mess and dispose of it, but the whole process is a bit dodgy and prone to problems like movement of the sand that forms the "cap." It's probably the right solution, but it's far from perfect.

Did I say yet that I'm staying nice and warm today? Two wetsuits oughta do it, even though it's hard to move in this body armor. Better than getting cold, I guess.

Further around the corner, I see some strange looking fish on the bottom in about 12-15 feet of water over the sand. I can't identify them from the surface so I dive down and see what looks like a deep-sea fish. Wow. I've never seen anything like them in shallow water, only out the window of a submersible (deep-diving sub), or caught in a deep trawl net. I've been lucky enough to dive down as far as 10,000 feet in the Alvin submersible, at a hydrothermal vent and other interesting deep sea locations.

They're spotted ratfish, also known as a ghost shark or chimaera. These fish have cartilaginous skeletons like sharks and rays, and are mostly found in very deep water. There are a few shallow water species, including this one. Very nice fish, they're copper colored with bright white spots and big eyes, and they're beautiful in today's bright sun. They don't startle very easily, and I can get a really good look. There are at least 10 of them, lurking on the bottom with their heads into the slight tidal current so they look like they're in loose formation. There's a nice picture and comments here, on Elasmodiver.com.

These ancient fish are closely related to fish that lived 200 million years ago (ore older), and they have unusual mating habits, including a grasping arm that comes out of the male's forehead and grabs the female like a velcro sticker. The male has "claspers" that trasfer sperm to the female for fertilization, and the female produces just two embryonic offspring that live inside a leathery egg case that eventually gets deposited on the ocean bottom.

I can't believe my luck in finding these fantastic fish!!!! Here's a YouTube video of some spotted ratfish from a nearby location in Puget Sound.


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