Last week, as the boy and I were taking in the epic Puget Sound view from the swimming pool at the fancy Tacoma home of my new favorite "tragically too young love story with a happy ending years later" couple Ty and Rachel, the subject of personal watercraft trips to the San Juan Islands was broached. The lovely couple was dying to make the trip, but was a little intimidated by the thought of all the unknown perils between here and there. I told them I had been almost all the way up to the Islands in a boat a little smaller than theirs. Their ears perked up.

"It was a cake walk," I told them. "You guys should totally do it."

Cue dream sequence/flashback... squiggly lines fade and wash to...

We left Union Bay in the Z shaped shadows of Husky Stadium with our sights set on the Puget Sound and beyond - "the world and elsewhere." A few years previous we had managed to make the same voyage, (through the Montlake cut and under the bridge; through Portage Bay and under the Ship Canal bridge; past Gasworks Park; under the Fremont Bridge; up through Salmon Bay and under the Ballard Bridge to the Ballard Locks; and finally out into Puget Sound at Shilshole and Golden Gardens) in just under an hour. Once we hit salt water we made it all the way to Everett, before running out of our straight and obvious waterway, in less than 40 minutes.

Excited at our progress but lacking any real nautical abilities or know-how (all piss no vinegar), we called my dad on the cell phone and asked him where we were and where we should go for lunch. I think he pointed us towards Langley, just across Possession Sound, where we moored and were immediately accosted by a local bearing a can of home canned salmon and a sleeve of tasty crackers.

We had been STARVING. That little round of impromptu hoer's de-ore's was the perfect respite, saving us from  what would have ended up as an aggressively spontaneous gas station meal, and holding us over until we reached the tasty fish-n-chips joint it took another 15 minutes to happen upon.

COMPLETELY satisfied with our nautical prowess, we were back in Seattle, round trip, in about five hours. It got my head thinking.

Next time, we go big...

We were going to shoot for the San Juan Islands this time. Last time we had made it to the mouth of Saratoga Passage in under an hour. I figured if we went on the outside of Whidbey Island, we should be able to hit the San Juans in just over two hours, no sweat. As long as we left early enough in the day to compensate for any unforeseeable character building mishaps, I figured we'd be laxing in some island paradise well before dinner time.

All went as planned. We made it out to Puget Sound in the same hour as our last outing. We made it to the Edmonds Ferry about 30 minutes later, then headed northwest along the outside of Whidbey, passed Useless Bay and into the Admiralty Inlet. We continued to make great time all the way up, until just passed the Keystone Ferry landing. Lacking a GPS we sure we would be able to recognize where we were by sight.

Not that either of had ever done such a thing, but, you know, this was serious "dude time." Things ALWAYS worked out OK during "dude time."

Everything past Keystone was a gradual, and then sustained, lesson in the calm and brutal nature of the Strait of Juan De Fuca.

It was a gorgeous day. Not a cloud in the sky. A very light breeze.

Then the water conditions went from dead calm, to "gentle," six to eight-foot rollers. Our little boat motored on...

guurrrrrrrrr     SMACK!!, guurrrrrrrrr     SMACK!!

guurrrrrrrrr     SMACK!!, guurrrrrrrrr     SMACK!!

For the better part of the next three hours we throttled up the face and dropped off the back of these swells only to crash onto the base of the next. Every few swells we would land just a little askew and not straight into the oncoming swell, resulting in a violent wash of salt water whipping over one side of the bow or the other. Luckily, when the momentum from these epic deluges was only partially broken by the windshield of the boat, our head and torso's were there to pick up the slack.  After one excessively obnoxious drudging, I looked at my fair captain, and with his signature bleach blond usually shaggy coif, stringy, soaked with salt water, and hanging down to past his collar bone, it occurred to me that the similarities to a long haired cat having JUST fallen into a bath tub - including the "did that really just happen to me" look and flat smile of disgust - were striking.

We had not gotten the early start we had planned on and by the time we were a few hours into our "jump and slam hull smashing competition" - which we were on the losing end of again and again and again - the hearty part of the afternoon was upon us.

So was the low fuel tank warning light.

We had failed to concern ourselves with topping off the fuel tank at any point along the way. We could do that on the way home, was the thought. Three quarters of a tank is enough fuel to run all day on a lake or smooth protected waters. But just as I had failed to attain a respect for the open waters of the Strait of Juan De Fuca until it was beneath us (and on top of us and saturating our 100% cotton clothes, soaking us to the bone), my skipper had failed to foresee it taking three hours to go 15 nautical miles, the resulting fuel drain and a potential emergency situation.

By the time we got as far north as the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station we were in a bit of a panic. Whidbey Island is sooo long, with lots of little inlets and coves; we had given up on being able to tell what was a passage between two bodies of land and what was just a confusing and mocking little bay. We didn't know what we were looking at or where we were.

Just a bit further north and running on fumes, we happened upon a couple natives crab fishing. We approached them and, trying to keep as cool as possible, asked f they could point us towards the nearest gas station, or if there even was one.

Obviously to be the victors of the nonchalant game, they waved vaguely a bit further north and toward land.

"Deception Pass Marina is just past the bridge, first inlet on your right," they told us.

And they were gone...

On blind faith - for lack of ANYTHING else to go on - we cluelessly motored off in the direction they had waved. After a few minutes, what had looked like a solid mass of land, started to gain the depth, relation and perspective of different sides of a thin passage - and then a bridge. We had reached Deception Pass.

Going under the bridge was a daunting experience. This is the only passage from

Puget Sound into open water north of Point Wilson above Port Townsend, and the waters are not happy about the mixing. There were whirlpools zooming up and down past the boat in both directions. Piloting though these parts is more an exercise in keeping the nose pointed in your hopeful direction than actually guiding the craft to a desired destination.

We made it though and rounded the first corner into an inlet, positive the whole time we would shortly run out of fuel and be left adrift and at the hands of some of the most treacherous waters on the West Coast. But there it was, just as vaguely promised, Deception Pass Marina.

On approach the place bore a striking resemblance to being closed.

Drummer Geoff Reading - who writes a bi-weekly online column (Fridays) for the Weekly Volcano called "Holding Down the 253" in addition to his weekly Wednesday music column - has played music in tons of Northwest bands - Green Apple Quick Step, New American Shame, Top Heavy Crush and most recently Duff McKagan's LOADED - to name but a few. He's toured the world several times over, sharing stages with the likes of Slipknot, The Cult, Buckcherry, Korn, Journey, The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails and on and on. He has called Tacoma home since 2005, and lives in the North End with his wife and son.