Among my arduous regular tasks is visiting local marinas, state parks,
and anchorages. Usually by boat, but it seems that about this time each
spring I have to write a column or two in which there is no mention of
actually arriving by boat. :-)
For those folks unfortunate enough to live elsewhere, these notes from
this week's tough assignment may provide a foggy view of one of our
regional locales:



Renegade Rose


The five star resort at Semi-ah-moo

The Marina at Semi-ah-moo, in Blaine, Washington offers a wide variety
of attractions and diversions. Every member of most boating families
will be well entertained during a visit to the highly regarded resort
complex, public park, and scenic beach. By paying a "per diem"
charge at the hotel desk, Marina guests have access to a heated
swimming pool, steam room, sauna, exercise equipment, racquet ball
courts, a pool table, tennis courts, horseshoe pits, massage parlor,
and more. Two of the most highly regarded public golf courses in
Washington State (Loomis Trail Golf Club and Semiahmoo Golf and Country
Club) are immediately adjacent to the marina and resort complex, with
complimentary transportation available. What spectacular potential for
a pampered interlude in the middle of a more rustic summer cruise! When
we last explored Semi-ah-moo in April of 2005, we also discovered some
less highly organized activities likely to appeal to those of us who
don't exactly flourish in a typical resort environment.

The approach to Drayton Harbor is reasonably straightforward, but first
time arrivals could find themselves aground off of Semi-ah-moo Spit
unless consulting a proper chart and respecting the navigation markers.
A shoal on the north side of the spit extends about one half mile into
the bay. An assumption that being a few hundred yards from shore would
provide adequate depth could prove embarrassing or worse: the shoal
dries all the way to the beacon pilings on many tides. Charted depths
are 5-7 feet in the properly marked channel, and the marina entrance is
near 48.59.37N, 122.46.07W. Immediately east of the Semi-ah-moo Marina
is the Port of Bellingham's Drayton Harbor Marina at Blaine, (a very
fine facility previously featured in this column).

The transient moorage rate in 2005 is 80-cents/foot/night. 30-amp
shorepower is an additional $3/night, with 50-amp power available for
$5. Boats up to 60-feet in length can be accommodated in slips, with
larger moorages available at the ends of the docks. The marina accepts
reservations, and encourages yacht clubs. A large, clean
shower/restroom/laundry building is conveniently situated near the head
of the gangway.
Internet junkies will appreciate the wireless access provided by
Broadband Xpress. The marina fuel dock provides both gasoline and
diesel. (For reservations, please call 360-371-0440 or email
). At one time moorage at the marina included
access to most of the hotel amenities, but the current fee schedule
does not.

Blaine Marine Services operates a marine supply store and boatyard at
Semi-ah-moo.
Parts and pieces for do-it-yourself maintenance or expert and
professional service for more complex repairs are available just beyond
the marina office.

Visiting boaters with reservations (recommended) at one of the
Semi-ah-moo golf courses will not be allowed on the course unless
dressed in traditional golf attire. "Men's shirts must have a
collar and sleeves. Shorts must be of moderate length, and hemmed.
Cut-offs, athletic shorts, or running shorts are not allowed. Tank
tops, halter-tops, tube tops, or cropped tops are not allowed." (And
don't even consider showing up in anything made of denim). Serious
golfers will appreciate the Arnold Palmer designed Semi-ah-moo golf
course, or the Loomis Trail facility famous for water hazards on
virtually every hole. PGA tournament player Jeff Coston is the resident
golf pro at Semi-ah-moo, and can be engaged for lessons.

The golf courses are open to the public, as are the fine dining
restaurants in the Inn at Semi-ah-moo. Not everyone will be excited
about golf, tennis, racquetball, or billiards. Some boaters will spend
little or no time in the beauty salon, the exercise room, or the
massage parlor. For those less structured souls, there is a spectacular
experience at Semi-ah-moo that requires only a bit of imagination and
no hotel per-diem to enjoy.

The last resort at Semi-ah-moo

Travel an eye-blink back in time to the middle of the 19th Century.
Stop in the decade of the 1850's. California has been admitted as a
state, the population of New York City has surpassed the 1,000,000
mark, and Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas are contesting to see
who will become the US Senator from Illinois. The spit at Semi-ah-moo
was a popular destination even then, but as a preferred campground for
Native Americans. There were no permanent settlers of European ancestry
here until the late 1850's, and even then only a handful.

Walking along the shoreline at Semi-ah-moo today, it is easy to
appreciate some of the advantages the native people enjoyed here. The
muddy shoals on both sides of the spit would have provided a seemingly
inexhaustible supply of shellfish. Women in cedar bark robes and broad
brimmed hats would fill their woven baskets with clams and mussels, or
gather roots and herbs from the nearby forests. The men would catch
fish and hunt whales in the superabundant waters of Boundary Bay or the
Strait of Georgia. Fresh water springs well up from the spit and drain
into Drayton Harbor. Marauding enemy tribes would find an encampment
strategically placed on the spit difficult to approach without
detection.

The American and European settlers arrived. In 1857, a company of about
100 US soldiers billeted at Blaine to occupy the area near the 49th
parallel and strengthen the US claims in a border dispute with Great
Britain. A troop of British soldiers camped just across the line, where
White Rock, BC stands today. Soldiers' appetites are easily
predicted, and a settler named Lear opened a store and saloon on
Semi-ah-moo spit, along with an outpost for the world's oldest
profession that military officials charitably considered a "hotel".
In 1858, the Fraser River Gold Rush brought additional trade to
Lear's enterprises, and by the time the US Army departed in 1859
there was sufficient additional commerce in the area to support the
saloon, the store, and the so-called hotel. Native people began relying
more upon trade with the store and less on hunting, foraging, and
fishing for sustenance. One chapter had closed and another opened on
Semi-ah-moo Spit.

The border town of Blaine endured after the Boundary Commission
finished surveying the US/Canadian border, and early residents would
row across to the store on Semi-ah-moo Spit to buy supplies and collect
the mail.

Nothing remains of those relatively recent times when the Native and
European cultures swirled together here, except the spit itself. A walk
along the beach is much the same as it would have been 10,000 years
ago. There is the rich smell of drying seaweed, a scent that combines a
haystack and a salt mine. The same pebbles crunch underfoot today that
were kicked aside by infantry boots in the 1850's and ignored by
rugged native feet eons before. April crows fly down to the driftwood
and gather greedy beakfuls of wide, dry sea grasses to build or repair
their nests in the hillside woodlands. One can contemplate mysteries
such as the intervals between the larger waves, or why gulls so often
cry in the same series of five identical notes.

By the 1890's, the Tarte family had established a salmon cannery at
Semi-ah-moo. The business expanded to become the Alaska Packers
Association and one of the world's largest suppliers of canned
salmon. Chinese laborers were imported to clean and process the fish,
and the native population continued to decline.

Some of the old cannery buildings, as well as a water tower from the
industrial era, still stand at Semi-ah-moo. A meandering explorer will
discover them near the head of the spit, warped siding cracked and
split with age and gray from lack of paint. The doors and windows are
boarded up, and signs warn off the unwary. The pilings supporting the
derelict structures are in various states of distress and decay.
Do times and peoples rise and fall like the tides in Semi-ah-moo Bay?
Just alongside one of the abandoned buildings on cannery row, the bones
of a small fishboat are bleaching in the sun. The hulk rests at a
crazy, unnatural angle on its port beam, planks sprung akimbo, and its
time is clearly past. Laying alongside are several traditional figures
newly carved and painted by native artists- (a horned owl is clearly
recognizable as well as some human beings in broad brimmed hats). It
appears that the carvings are ready to be installed somewhere on the
grounds of the Inn at Semi-ah-moo.

The tottering gray cannery buildings will collapse soon enough, surely
before many more decades pass, and cannery row will be gone from
Semi-ah-moo. The bones of the fishboat and the softened, baked plank
factories will be swallowed up into the enduring and windswept spit.
For how many lifetimes will the Inn, the marina, and the upstart condos
endure? While strolling the length of the spit, one considers what the
industry of man and the patient erosion of nature have allowed to
remain here. The vegetation has been humbled by the wind, consisting
primarily of stunted grasses and spongy succulents. There were but
three exceptions to the ground level theme of the native vegetation:
two towering, gale-ravaged snags that defiantly refuse to topple, and
(inexplicably), a single, renegade rose.