❖ THE SUCIA ISLANDS ❖

Rock formations in the
Sucia Islands group,
click image to enlarge.
Top photo is known to be by a professional photographer,
J.A. McCormick, a part-time, early resident of
Friday Harbor, WA. He traveled the area to
capture trap fishers on the water and the
village and farm life on shore.
Photos from the archives of the
Saltwater People Historical Society©

Georgia Strait 
Day Fourteen of One Hundred Days in the San Juans
June Burn, 1946.

      

"We’re headed for Sucia after the perfect night at Patos Island. The tide is far out, again, going further. The rocks of the gourd-shaped Patos come out to meet us to the very edge of their shelf. The long island sits there so quietly, not a soul around except a big blue heron standing on one leg. Now he flies, flapping away, long legs dangling.
      The trees on Patos are short and wind-blunted. Winter’s southeasters must tear across this island like somebody going to a fire –– now we must leave these pastel bluffs behind and strike across another opening in Georgia Strait for Sucia. Farrar steadily rowing. The light breeze is against us but the tide still ebbs toward Sucia (we hope.)
      The San Juanderer is an easy boat to row, so heavy that when it gets up momentum it tends to keep going. By that token, I thought, a battleship might be still easier, but Farrar says you couldn’t get it started in the first place. Remember that: buy the heaviest boat you can possibly start and maybe it won’t ever stop and you’ll go on around the world in it — just like that. Provided you have no tides! This one we’re in now can’t make up its mind whether it’s going back to Patos or on to Sucia or off in some other direction altogether and Farrar’s dictum about the heavy boat is meaningless here. We’ve been just off Sucia for a half hour — for an hour. I’ve been rowing meanwhile—for two hours — I’ve been rowing some more — ahh! We get around that, too...and here is Fossil Bay after four hours of rowing a little more than four miles.

      The high cliffs of Sucia rise above us on two sides, the head of the bay a low, narrow neck of land connecting with a bay on the other side — Fox Bay.
Sucia Islands are in the northern part of the archipelago. They were named by the Spaniard, Eliza, in 1792. The name means “foul” or “dirty,” referring not to the island but to the rocks and reefs which lie everywhere around. Huge boulders, round, square, all shapes and sizes, lie in tumbles on the beach, seem to have taken root and grown into reefs just offshore. Boats skirt this island with caution. But once in these bays, there is security!
      The Sucias are 749 acres in area. There are eight islands. In the cluster with myriad bays between. A whole school of peninsulas. One of the islands seems to have no name other than “one of the fingers.” The names of others are Sucia, Little Sucia lying off the west shore, Herndon Island, a mere dot in Fossil Bay, North and South Finger Islands, lying parallel in Echo Bay, and Ewing Island, off the eastern end of the big horseshoe.
      The bays are comparatively shallow but deep enough for any of the pleasure cruisers that play around here. The bluffs are high, all but unclimbable with their tumble of boulders. The low portions are rich in growth. Madrona trees, like glossy Magnolias, are thick on all the islands. Wind-torn junipers give an ancient look to the place and the blown firs a worn-out look as if Sucia were old and weary. The wild and formidable mess of rocks completes the picture.
      As we come slowly into Fossil Bay we see the curious “guest book” on Herndon Island’s rock face. The names are of boats rather than of individuals which makes it more interesting.
      A boat comes purring out of the bay, looks at us, goes out again. A kingfisher alights on a high boulder, makes his sudden, powerful dive after a fish, goes off with it. Two bald eagles go screaming by, seagulls after them, barn swallows dipping and darting among the gleaming madronas. As we draw into shore, we see the clams spurting in the shale and when we go on shore, I hear the eternal clicking of the knitting needles as a million barnacles shut their traps.
      We take out a few lunch things, make a cup of coffee and sit on the rocks of the beach for lunch. It is 12:30. The silence sings in the treetops. The sun lies still and hot over the water and on our bare feet. It is a summer afternoon on a San Juan Island.
      But on the whole, you can have your beautiful Sucias! Their bold, steep bluffs, the madrona thickets, and the junipers, the endless shoreline full of boulders, the beaches, and the shallow bays. After Patos and Waldron and even Skipjack, this looks like the end of the world, wild, and dead, forgotten, unloved."

June Burn. Author, journalist, happy camper from San Juan and Whatcom counties was under contract with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to write columns of her sailing days through the San Juan archipelago in 1946.
      In the 1980s, this collection of published newspaper articles, One Hundred Days in the San Juans, was published in book format by editors on staff with the well-known owners of Longhouse Printcrafters, Friday Harbor, WA.