I like to write up these “Cruiser’s Reviews” when we visit fun and interesting places to A) help other people find fun and interesting places to visit by boat, and B) to help me remember our adventures! Haha. Enjoy this Watmough Bay Cruiser’s Review and find all my other ones HERE.
Watmough Bay Cruiser’s Review for the San Juan Islands
When we left the central Puget Sound in July 2020, we crossed the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Port Townsend aiming for Watmough Bay at the SE corner of Lopez Island in the San Juan Islands. We spent three nights in the anchorage there, from July 19th through 22nd.
This was our first visit to Watmough Bay and it quickly became a family favorite! There’s no dock but there are a few mooring buoys that, reportedly, are available for public use (check your own sources on this). All the moorings were being used but we found a nice spot to drop our anchor with a lovely view of the beach, the cliffs and shore, and Mount Baker to the East.
We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and we were eager to get ashore and explore. The anchorage was quite full (we’ve heard that you can often have this place all to yourself in the shoulder season) and the beach was crowded – but we weren’t going ashore just to play at the water’s edge. We decided to go for a hike.
Hiking from Watmough Bay to Point Colville
Brenden had previously done some research and found this Lopez Trails website which shows that there are multiple options for hiking trails starting from Watmough Bay. We decided that we wanted a nice walk but nothing very strenuous for our first adventure, so we chose to hike south from the bay to Point Colville.
On the map above, you can see that we hiked from the beach through an amazingly beautiful forested area toward the point overlooking the bay where our boat was sitting at anchor. Then we turned south, crossed the road, and headed into very different terrain out to the point.
Evan spotted this amazing sea cave from the trail above. When we hiked this, we traversed the loop going clockwise on the map. If coming from the other way, this cave would be easy to miss – so keep an eye out for it! The views from this hike are breathtaking.
Climbing Chadwick Hill at Watmough Bay
A couple days later, after finishing up a workday (we work remotely from our sailboat here in the Puget Sound), we donned our gear and decided to tackle what was said to be a moderately difficult hike up the 470 feet of Chadwick Hill. This turned out to be one of the most technically challenging hikes that we did all summer, but the kids did great and the views from the top were worth it.
The kids LOVED this rope swing that’s near the top of the Chadwick Hill hike. We also found out that there is a much easier way to hike to the top of this hill – we’d taken a back route and ended up having quite a scramble to reach the top. Despite my concern about the kids’ footwear, they repeated time and again that they were fine in their flip flops and sandals.
We were even able to find a spot where we could see our boat way down below in Watmough Bay.
As I said, this anchorage was really fun and became one of our favorites in the San Juan Islands during this visit in the summer or 2020. We were lucky enough to spend several months cruising the San Juans in the summer and fall of 2020 and we expect to spend more time there this coming spring and summer (2021). We’d love to visit this pristine little bay again. I would love to have it all to ourselves sometime.
Amenities note: there is car access to Watmough Bay and a well-maintained pit toilet at the parking lot.
Do you know any special anchorages that we should visit in the San Juan Islands? Let us know! Thanks for reading and I hope you’ve found this Watmough Bay Cruiser’s Review helpful! ~Rachel
