Day 20: Point Monroe

Point Monroe on maps, the Sand Spit to locals. It's the northeast corner of Bainbridge Island and it forms a shallow lagoon. The lagoon warms up in the sun, and today was no exception, it was probably a nice 50F compared to the 45F of the open water.

image: beloved Fay Bainbridge logs. Kids climb and float on these for HOURS

The high point of today was riding the flooding tide into the lagoon. As I got closer I started getting pushed towards the lagoon entrance until finally the water was like a rushing river. No way to swim against this tide. It was a strong flood, and the current was probably more than 5 mph at the maximum flood.

Endless eelgrass flats again today, and a fortune of sand dollars in the lagoon. Also a surprising number of golf balls, probably 100 or so spread over the area around the sandspit.


air temp: 40F
water temp: 45F
March 10, noon, mostly sunny
wind 0-5mph from the NE
low tide, rising
visibility 0-25 feet
today's distance: 1.47 mile
total so far: 22.36 miles

today's notables:
moon snails
huge sand flats with lots of eelgrass
ghost shrimp and mud shrimp
golf balls(!)


I get in the water at Fay Bainbridge State Park, where the geoduck boats are dredging again (still). The water is murky, but I soon clear out into bright, sunny, and clear water. Ahhh!!! This looks almost tropical, but the icy fingers stabbing me all over are a very clear reminder that this ain't the tropics.

I swim across more of the beautiful Fay Bainbridge eelgrass flats, this time I head out a bit deeper since it's so clear, out to around 15 feet. There are crabs creeping, moon snails sailing, and sparkling light all around.

I cross over a few golf balls, what's this? I haven't seen a single one yet in my traverse of Bainbridge's shore. Eventually I'll pass perhaps 100 or more during the course of a mile, mostly in clusters. Is this some sort of local tradition? Golf practice hitting off the sand? Odd.

Pulling around the corner and heading west, I get a glimpse of the point that guards Agate Passage. A couple of miles ahead is the narrow passage between Bainbridge and the Kitsap Peninsula, where the currents rip on a moving tide. Also where boats whiz by close to shore in large numbers. My next big challenge.

The bottom here is very strange. It's entirely covered with woody debris. Logs, sticks, and twigs form a solid layer. There are no trees directly above, why does it collect right here? It's unique, maybe the tidal back and forth somehow delivers wood? Digging into the bottom here would find some unusual creatures, under the anoxic sediment caused by the decaying wood.

Around and around the sandspit, and then I can see the entrance to the lagoon. I've planned this swim on a flood tide rising from a substantial low. This should be good. I'm about an hour into the beginning of a 7+ foot tidal rise, and I'm heading into an 20 acre lagoon with an entrance less than 50 feet wide. That's a lot of water to move through a small opening. It must go pretty fast...we'll see. Of course I didn't bother to scout, just do it. My back of the envelope calculations say the maximum flood tide should produce several hundred cubic feet per second (CFS), which is a strong flow for a channel of this size.

A few hundred feet away from the lagoon entrance, I can quit swimming and drift. Here's a photo of the lagoon entrance at a low slack tide, before the current starts rushing in (right). I'm getting pushed towards the opening at the speed of a slow swim. The closer I get, the faster I go. Just before the entrance, I try to stand up just for fun, in about 3 feet of water, and I can't quite manage to hold myself. I'm soon pushed over and further into the lagoon. Then the channel narrows and the current really starts to rip. This is like a swift river now, no way I could swim against the tide or even stand up. Not that this is a problem, I'm getting pushed into a nice sandy/muddy little lagoon and if necessary I could get to the shore and drag myself out.

In fact, it's fun to get swooshed by the tide into the lagoon, rushing much faster than I can swim. Where the current roars, I'm bobbing over some 6 inch sand dunes on the bottom below about 2-3 feet of water, and the sand is dancing in the waves. I'd like a picture but I decided to concentrate on what's happening and the camera is safely in my fanny pack, zipped away. No chance to pull it out now.

The current keeps ripping until I'm a ways into the lagoon, looking at a sand dollar colony. And...the biggest oyster shell I've seen on this swim. About a foot long, 6 inches wide, and 2 inches deep. That was one big oyster. There are only a few here, but they seem to be doing fairly well since they're big.

The water is noticably warmer once I'm in the middle of the lagoon. Maybe 50F compared to the chilly 45F out in the Sound. I imagine on a sunny summer day after a high tide it's fairly nice to swim in here. The bottom is getting muddy further into the lagoon, and there are some very nice burrows in the sand/mud bottom. I wonder who's home? Probably the bay ghost shrimp or blue mud shrimp. I've dug these and their colleagues many times in more southerly beaches. It would be fun to find the innkeeper worm, Urechis caupo, but I don't think the stray this far north. This would be the right habitat, though. Once upon a time, I wrote a scientific paper on this most phallic of worms.

Here's a map of the sandspit and lagoon. I swam from Fay Bainbridge Park, just out of the picture on the lower right, around the outer shore of the sandspit, into the lagoon entrance at the far left, then through the lagoon to the lower right by the Park.


View Larger Map

Day 19: Fay Bainbridge State Park

Today I reach the northeast corner of Bainbridge Island, after starting Oct 12 on the southwest corner. The distance may not be quite halfway, but it feels like halfway. I'm going to make it around, and my target date for finishing is July 4, 2009. I hope to get others to join me to finish the Swim Around Bainbridge on that most American of days (and likely a warm day!).

I crossed massive sand flats today, on a very low minus tide. That's nearly 12 feet lower than the high tide Monday morning. We have some fairly big tides here, and that shapes the nearshore life.

Fay Bainbridge State Park is a popular place, and a favorite family spot. My wife played there as a girl living east of Seattle, and she took me there right after we met (before we moved here). It's a beautiful northwest beach.

Today's theme is crabs, both observing and being.


air temp: 55F
water temp: 45F
March 3, 3:30 pm, mostly sunny
wind calm
very low tide, slack
visibility 10-20 feet, occasionally near zero
today's distance: 1.46 mile
total so far: 20.89 miles

today's notables:
geoducks and piddocks
northern feather duster worms, orange tube worms
moon snails
huge sand flats with lots of eelgrass


I get in the water near Brackenwood Lane, and it's a very low tide. I can see shallow sandflats spreading far from the water's edge. Without planning, I start doing what I call a "crab crawl." Swimming a front crawl stroke but planting my fingertips on the bottom on each stroke. I'm "walking" on my fingertips like a crab, in crab heaven habitat. There are dungeness crabs everywhere.

The flats are covered with eelgrass, and I found a funny patch in the sand that caught my attention:

Oh my, it's a crab buried in the sand. Let's go closer.


It's two crabs, in a mating embrace it seems. Soon after I took these pictures, the happy couple burst out of the sand and tried to scurry away.

I pursued them just long enough to get a couple of pictures of the two crabs embracing. The first one is blurry as they're racing away, then the next two show them more clearly, as they're calming down and settling down.



Finally, one last picture as they sneak away into the darkness of deeper water and thicker eelgrass.

These crabs are amazing and fun to watch. Here's more on their mating habits.

I see more tube worms here than I've yet seen, probably because I'm below the tidal zone and into habitats that never go dry at low tide. There are orange tube worms and feather duster worms.




Another sight I wonder about, two boats that have some sort of motors running while at anchor, and tubes going over the sides. Could they be dredging geoducks? I've heard about this, the dredgers blast water into the bottom to pick up geoducks. I find clouds of murky water with near-zero visibility when I swim by the boats, but that doesn't prove they're dredging. I find similar clouds elsewhere now and then.

Here's a map of progress to date. I'm on the opposite corner of the island from where I started!


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Day 18: Rolling Bay

The saddest shoreline I've yet seen on Bainbridge has to be Rolling Bay. It's the scene of a devastating mudslide that took the lives of 4 people, a couple and their two young children, 3 months and 2 years old.

Right: photograph of the slide by Teresa Tamura,
The Seattle Times, as published in The Atlantic.

This slide is not really an ocean event, but I must bring it up. Getting in and out of the water here brought me a palpable feeling of despair. The slide is cleaned up, but there are about 6 abandoned houses below the most dangersous area and there is extensive work going on in an attempt to stabilize the slopes above nearby houses that remain occupied. According to a geologist quoted in the Atlantic piece, these slopes want to slide again and eventually they will.

The abandoned houses (condemned) feel awful, I saw a rusting child's bike and a moldy refrigerator through a broken doorway as I walked by. I felt an urge to hurry past the scary slopes; they look menacing even though the weather was dry.

Shoreline living here is so attractive that people accept the risk and occasionally pay the ultimate price. I understand the attraction to the ocean, and maybe this is an ocean event. This place is unbearably sad even now, 12 years later. I do not want to live nearby.

It's hard to get in the 44 degree water after last swimming in tropical Mexico, with water at 80 degrees. Oh well, here we go.

The water is glassy-calm and it's fun to wander the sand flats. The action here is under the surface, and I finally get a good picture of geoduck chimneys. (Oops, looks like these are piddocks, I stand corrected--see comments). Pictured here are 9 large animals living within about one square foot or a bit more. The size of the siphons says there's a lot of metabolism happening, and some of these clams could be several decades old, or more.

Mixed in are a few northern feather duster worms. Further north they show up in big clumps. I've only seen a scattered few of these so far. They have a strange almost-black color to their gills reaching out of their tubes. Brush by too close and whoop-they're gone hidden safely away inside their tubes. See photo at right for a clump of feather duster worms.


air temp: 47F
water temp: 44F
Feb 27, 2pm, mostly sunny
wind calm
low tide, rising
visibility 15-20 feet
today's distance: 1.25mile
total so far: 19.43 miles

today's notables:
geoducks and piddocks (another clam)
northern feather duster worm
sand dollars
huge sand flats


The day starts with a nice treat, I park at Brackenwood where I'll be getting out and start hoofing it to Gertie Johnson Rd where I'll get in, over a mile away on the roads. I've made it about halfway and a white minivan pulls up, asks if I need a ride. It turns out to be Randy, a guy I know from playing basketball. He's also a windsurfer and knows that a person walking in a wetsuit could use a ride. Thanks Randy!

I get in the water below the abandoned houses of Rolling Bay Walk (photo at right) and swim north. These houses are truly SQUEEZED between the water and the steep hill above. At high tide, the water level is partway up the concrete wall--it has barnacles on it. And there is no road above. When they were occupied, the access was the flat area at the top of the same concrete wall. It's barely wide enough for a car at the far end, and it was used as a driveway leading to a few garages. Wow.

This is not tropical Mexico, the water is C-O-L-D and the icy fingers and ice cream headache are not fun. But the miracle of being underwater skips right past the chill and brings me back into Puget Sound's embrace.

It's good to get back into my home waters. There's something about the familiar sights and feels that is rewarding beyond what I expect, even as I do it again and again. The glassy water and incredible Bainbridge shorelines are special. Here's a photo (left) of the fantastic glassy soft water with Mt. Baker in the distance beyond the open water that leads to Canada.

Sand flats, sand flats, sand flats, and eelgrass. The sand flats go on forever, just out of my reach as I swim since this is a fairly low tide. The current is running against me and progress is slow all day. It feels like I'm barely moving even while I'm working hard. To float is to move backwards. I'll have to pay more attention to the tidal currents as I approach and move into Agate Passage where the currents can push a slow boat backwards on a strong ebb or flood. And all of that in a narrow 800-900 foot wide funnel.

The usual suspects are here, dungeness crabs, vast beds of eelgrass, a few moon snails. No fish today. These pictures of the crab and sand dollars show the magical light that was sparkling on the bottom. By the end of the swim the water was rippling just a touch from a vaporous breeze, and there were micro sand dunes on the bottom from past wave action.

The combination produced the slightly rainbow hued sparkling waves of light visible in both pictures.

The swim is uphill all the way. I try further out, closer to shore, nothing helps. The flats are endless, here's all the sand that people want on their beaches. Nearing the north end of the swim, there are some rocky patches and boulders with huge barnacles. I get out at Brackenwood. I can probably stretch out the next swim and make Fay Bainbridge State Park (about a mile and half). That marks the northeast corner of the island, and I started on the southwest corner.

I've been expecting a 53 mile swim. According to the city, that's the amount of shoreline we have on Bainbridge Island. But my google mapping says my swim may be more like the low forties. Not sure why the difference, but if I'm right I could be approaching the halfway point.


View Larger Map
click map or link to enlarge, click blue markers for notes on beginning and end of each swim.

Swim around Akumal

Akumal is a lovely coastal town in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, south of Cancun. I spent 11 days there on vacation, and explored the area's shallow reefs.

Here's a view from above water, looking out to Half Moon Bay from the Yool Caanal condo (right).

This area has a lot of shallow coral reefs, easily accessible from shore. The reefs block most of the waves and make for very sheltered swimming inside the reefs. Outside the reefs the waves can be bigger although the area is quite safe under normal wave conditions. Yal-ku lagoon is a short walk from yool caanal, and provides completely protected conditions, very clear water, and some very easy fish watching.

The conditions were great, air temp around 75-85 most of the time and water temp around 78-80 allowing me to swim for over an hour without a wetsuit and not get the slightest bit cold (in February!). In afternoons at low tide, the shallow rocky flats near shore heated up to the high 80s (felt like a warm bath even to kids).

I swam all over Half Moon Bay, the northern part of Akumal Bay, and all of Yal-ku lagoon (see map below, click to enlarge and zoom). I spent most of my time cruising Half Moon Bay going over the sand flats, along the inner margin of the reefs, through channels to the outer reef margin and back and forth along the outer edge of the reefs. My favorite spots were the outer reefs of Half Moon Bay where the most living coral is present and where the depth dropped off to 15-20 feet. The only negative was a bit more surge.

View Larger Map

The inner part of Half Moon Bay is 2-10 feet deep. The blue markers on the map identify our condo and my 3 primary swimming areas, Half Moon Bay is the center with 3 markers. The inner flats are very easy for kids (with water shoes), they're mostly rocky flats and beginners can practice snorkeling in water where they can easily stand up if they want because of water in a mask or snorkel, or because something looks a bit scary. My kids got comfortable enough to enjoy watching a large barracuda swim with the sardines in the warm shallow water just feet from shore.

I spent hours each day in the water, and was lucky enough to see turtles and loads of fish and invertebrates. I got pictures of maybe half of the interesting things I saw, posted below. The corals are not in great shape, but there is quite a bit of living coral, especially on the outer edge of the reef zone. Also lots of new corals just sprouting.

My kids (ages 7 and 4) learned ocean snorkeling here, and got to see turtles and lots of fish on their first coral reefs. It took a bit of encouragement but the conditions were safe and it was amazing to hear their squeals of delight while underwater. They now know that the real ocean has real fish and animals, and they can go out and find sea turtles underwater. Go kids!

Here's a beach scene from the area, featuring the supremely hot Mrs. Swim Around Bainbridge (left).

Here's the number 1 boo as she's snorkeling in the ocean for the first time at age 7 and seeing coral reefs, fish, a turtle, etc (right).

Here's boo number 2 learning to snorkel at age 4 (right), and looking at what he called "inifinity fish" after swimming through vast schools of sardines (left).

I'm so impressed to see these two little boos snorkeling in the real ocean. A dive instructor from Bainbridge's Exotic Aquatics said that kids this young can learn, and these two are definitely not too young.


They did some swimming and I did some towing and we got out to look at coral reefs despite a few bouncy waves now and then, sponges that looked like they were sending creepy fingers up to grab little toes, and some big scary-looking fish like barracuda and greater amberjack.






Here's a small sample of what we saw underwater (hope the IDs are right). Click photos to enlarge.


french grunts and a doctorfish


stoplight parrotfish terminal coloration


stoplight parrotfish initial coloration


sharp-tailed eel


reef squid


hawksbill turtle


southern stingray


hound needlefish (aka houndfish, crocodile needlefish, mexican needlefish)


caribbean trumpetfish


black grouper


spotted trunkfish


sergeant majors

french angelfish


juvenile blue tang


adult blue tangs

foureye butterflyfish


horse-eye jacks


sailors choice grunts


peacock founder (note the camouflage)


and here's a sighting of the rare Mexican blogfish


Hasta la vista, Akumal.

Bainbridge underwater on TV and video

See Puget Sound like never before, and learn about the world-class ocean diving available right off the beaches of the Seattle area. And while you're having fun, learn about what makes our ocean so special.

All brought to you by Still Hope Productions with an underwater TV show, and a travelling event that will be on Bainbridge at Islandwood Feb 1, 2009 and REI in Seattle April 2, 2009, 7-9 pm. Check the Still Hope website as more events will be added.

Or if you can't make any of that, you can buy an amazing DVD, I have a copy of Return of the Plankton, it's unbelievable and I'll be buying it as a gift for friends.

Did you know that there are colorful fish and invertebrates in Puget Sound that rival tropical reefs for beauty? Get a DVD and see for yourself!

image: low-res sample from StillHopeProductions.com