❖ COON ISLAND YACHT CLUB SIGNAL ❖

... when the coffee pot is on;

Tusler Summer Camp
Coon Island, San Juan Archipelago, WA.
This photo is a year or two after Margaret Exton's
written piece from 1944. Rich Exton comes flying in
with his 1947 Piper Super Cruiser.
Photo courtesy of their son,
Norm Exton, Orcas Island, WA.

“...In the summer of 1944, we went ashore and found Jack and Harriet Tusler, late of Carmel, living on their beach without the benefit of housing, bundling into sleeping bags at night.
      Things have changed. Now on the unbelievably sheltered beach is the Tusler-built wickiup, guaranteed to fit any form comfortably, and firmly planted in front of the open-air fireplace. Nor is this the only furniture. There are easy chairs of peeled saplings hung with vari-colored canvas, handsome, sturdy driftwood tables, and smaller driftwood chairs, all examples of Jack’s ingenuity.
      Crowning the scene is the headquarters of the Coon Island Yacht Club. There are still a few cedar shakes to be put on, but there isn’t a more picturesque building in these San Juan Islands. It’s a small, low building with spacious windows across the front, tree-framed. A neat gravel walk leads up to the door which bears that emblem of hospitality and fine living, island-style, coon couchant with coffee pot superimposed, and the lettering, 'Coon Island Yacht Club.'
      In the cedar-scented interior are moss-filled bunks, more driftwood furniture. Here one can see and admire the skill with which pieces of driftwood were fitted together to make this entirely charming room.
      Modern conveniences? Well, there's running water. Of course, it runs through a hose out of a barrel filled in Deer Harbor and brought to Coon by boat, but there is a faucet and the water runs. And there's Eleanor Beach.
      Coming up to Coon in a boat, one is likely to be greeted by signals flashed from a mirror in Harriet's hands. This of course means, 'The coffee pot is on. Come ashore.'
      After coffee, a tour of the island is indicated, if inertia can be overcome. (It sets in easily and deeply on Coon.) At this season it is impossible to walk about without stepping on wildflowers. Chocolate lilies, dogtooth violets, valerian, Indian paintbrush, flowering currant and everywhere, mingled with other blossoms anonymous at the moment, but Harriet is learning them. 
      A delight, particularly to photographers, is the Witch's Broom, a beautifully gnarled and twisted old cedar, hovering at the water's edge, silhouetted against the sky. The hovering is less perilous than it appears, for Jack is carefully preserving it with stout anchoring wires.
      The Tuslers bought Coon Island some years ago as a vacation retreat, but vacations seemed to get longer each year, and leave-takings more difficult, and now they have completely forsaken California. 
      Winter quarters for the Tuslers, their cat Erstwhile, and their boats, the Winsome, Fifinella, and Fessonia, and Joe Pascognik, blue whiskered patron saint of Coon Island Yacht Club, are in Deer Harbor. Here they are beginning to build a home, already christened Sunken Heights. But from May to September Coon Island, three acres of perfection fully utilized by its owners is home, and each fine winter day sees them there on the beach, coffee pot aboil."
Written by Orcas Islander Margaret Exton for The Orcas Islander, published 4 April 1946.