f you’ve lived in the Northwest, you know how valuable a window of nice weather is as October encroaches. My kayak buddies didn’t take the bait, so I planned a solo overnight trip to Cypress Island, one of the San Juan Islands that I hadn’t visited but had heard great things about. As a bonus, I could get there easily without a ferry. One other benefit of making this a short trip was that the somewhat limited hatch space in my new Frej was easily adequate, so I could take my new boat out for it’s first overnight trip.
I left Anacortes from Kiwanis park adjacent to the Guemes Island ferry dock. It’s a great launch spot and there is overnight parking for the ferry.
Conditions were nearly ideal so the short crossing of the Guemes channel was dispatched quickly and I was soon making my way along the Guemes shore. I was slightly nervous about the longer crossing of the Bellingham Channel to Cypress because this was both my first solo saltwater trip and the first trip where I was keeping track of currents and weather (rather than just trusting my experienced friends). Both the wind and current forecasts were benign so it turned out the only issue with crossing to Cypress was the giant old Stellar Sea Lion bull that startled me when he surfaced about 30 feet away with a noisy exhaling blow. I know he was old because he was close enough that I could see how worn his teeth were!
My favorite type of paddling is to stick close to shore and watch for wildlife and interesting geology and I had all day to go a relatively small distance, so I decided to check out all the bays and harbors. It became clear right away that the birds I would see most were the Belted Kingfishers that chattered and skipped from tree to tree just ahead of me. I decided that on this trip they should be named Watch-and-Scolds.
Cypress is relatively undeveloped so I saw a lot of beautiful bluffs, trees, birds, seals, and a few sea-stars. Other highlights were a couple of Ravens, a pod of harbor porpoises, and a rock arch.
I stopped for a snack and a stretch at Cypress Head.
I reached Pelican Beach, my destination for the day, at around lunch time, and took my time eating and setting up my camp. I noticed the wild rose hips that reminded me that this was truly a late-season trip. My friends had recommended the hike to Eagle Cliff, so that was my sole objective for the afternoon.
Eagle Cliff was even better than I expected. Clearly, my friends had undersold it. The hike was a very nice trail through the forest and the clifftop provided truly spectacular views. I had the summit to myself for a while so I sat near the Geological Survey marker and just soaked it in.
After a multi-sport day of paddling and hiking I settled in with a book until dinner-time rolled around.
Here’s a link to the GPS track for my paddle on Day 1 – 09/25/25 · Ride with GPS
Even a pleasant conversation with a pair of late-arriving kayakers, over their campfire, with lots of kayak talk didn’t keep me up long. I was in my tent by 9:00. Some rain blew in around 4:30 AM and I got up to clip the fly over my tent, but it was only drizzle to start and nothing but the outside of my tent got more than slightly damp.
After oatmeal and coffee I packed up and prepared to complete my loop of Cypress.
By the forecast, neither the wind nor the currents were favorable, but the predicted South Wind was actually out of the Southwest so by hugging the shoreline I was in the lee of the island and also avoided the majority of the current. It turned out to be some of the most enjoyable paddling I’ve done in the San Juans. I didn’t capture any of it in pictures, but highlights were a huge flock with hundreds of gulls whirling and calling, cormorants arrayed facing against a cliff face while perched on tiny ledges, and a family of six river otters that I spied from a distance rolling into the water in a big ball of thrashing tails and long necks who then popped up amid the kelp and chattered at me as I drew closer and stopped paddling to watch.
I made the short crossing to do a loop around Strawberry Island but didn’t see any really promising sites to beach a kayak. Did I miss something? I know kayakers can camp there.
Before the morning was over, I made it around the south end of Cypress and completed the loop back to where I had crossed the day before. It was time for lunch so I decided to paddle into Secret Harbor and take a break. I found a great spot to land, with soft sand and a mix of sun and shade. It was a great place to hang out before leaving Cypress Island behind and beginning the last paddling leg of my trip.
I haven’t talked much about my Frej, and that’s actually a good thing. I’m much more likely to notice things that annoy me about a kayak than the things that I like. From my paddling before the trip, I knew that the Frej needs a bit of skeg to keep from unplanned course deviations, and that this is the way Bjorn Thomasson intended. I’ve come to appreciate his design choices. It only takes about 3 cm of skeg extension to make the boat feel like it goes straight as I paddle normally. But when I put the boat on an edge and take that last paddle stroke to turn, it’s very responsive. Loaded with my camping gear and an extravagant six liters of water, the boat isn’t as nimble, but its essential character stays much the same.
My trip data also back up my initial impression that the Frej is quite fast (at least in part because its waterline is close to its LOA). I don’t think my speeds were optimized by the conditions when I paddled, if anything wind and tides were more of a hindrance than a benefit, but I averaged 4.1 mph (6.6 kmh) over the two days and I wasn’t paddling at a racing pace.
The last leg of the trip from Cypress back to Anacortes was where I noticed some new, positive things about the Frej. Crossing the Bellingham Channel, the wind and waves were coming from my starboard bow. It wasn’t hairy, maybe 10 to 15 inch waves without white caps, but certainly not flat water, and bigger conditions than I’d experienced before in this boat. It took me a little experimentation to get the skeg set to the right extension, but once I did, the boat felt remarkably balanced. The Frej doesn’t have much freeboard, so waves sometimes splashed across the foredeck, but they did little to alter the boat’s heading. Similarly, gusts of wind had a smaller effect than I’ve experience in my other boats. On his website, Bjorn Thomasson’s describes various factors he considered when designing the Frej in relation to his performance goals for the boat. That section of text was the first thing that got me interested in building one myself. I’m happy to report that my experience so far suggests that my Frej performs as Bjorn intended.
The last short crossing from Guemes to Anacortes felt like paddling through molasses as the current was running against me, but I was truly happy with my first solo overnight by kayak when I reached the Kiwanis Park beach. In the manner of most enjoyable camping trips it felt like both a very short and very long time since I had left the same beach the morning before.
Here’s a link to the GPS track for my paddle on Day 2 – 09/26/25 · Ride with GPS