Destination "Government Island"

The stars finally line up in my favor.  For weeks or months I have been threatening a overnighter on the sailboat. This weekend, my son is away at a scout outing and Linda says she’ll go with me. I think it helped that my daughter and her boy friend had announced they were going on their first kayak trip (around Government Island) since becoming kayak owners a week earlier. The boat is moored on the Columbia river and already has lots of gear on board, all we needed to gather was food and beverage, sleeping bags, books, cell phones, cameras and hit the road. 

Government Island is up river from Portland about five miles and is about seven miles long overall.  There are numerous camping spots, some recognized, but many where people with boat just come ashore and make themselves a camp.  The island is uninhabited except for free ranging cattle that pretty much stay off the beaches preferring the tall sweet grass that only grows inland.  Our destination is one of the three improved areas, complete with modern docks, composting toilets, picnic tables and fire pits.

On the way to our moorage we stop at the grocery store for boxed wine, block ice, apples, bagels, cheese and a package of sausage we intend to cook over the campfire for dinner.  The Columbia River is still running very high and fast, the river is not at flood stage but many floating docks are dangerously close to their maximums. The river is full of flotsam, big logs with limbs and roots still attached are real hazards for power boaters.  Our 9.9hp outboard can barely make headway against the current; fortunately we have a pretty decent west wind blowing up river so we turn off the motor. What a great sunny day, the temps in the low 80’s we have all the time we need.  Linda is getting sunburned while reading her book; I suggest she cover up before it gets bad. I have the boat on auto pilot relieving me the chore of constant steering.  I still keep watch, I remember times when I also opened a book and had some close calls.  We get a call from our daughter, she is on the water paddling, the current is really killing them, and she says they are off a sandy point with two portable toilets on shore. I don’t know where they are, but tell her that if she’s on the Washington side of the island she should see some big aluminum docks up river and that’s where we are headed.  Pretty soon the wind dies down and we turn on the motor, after another mile we go by the sandy point with two kybos our daughter had mentioned, another half mile and we arrive at the first dock.  Christy and Patrick are on shore, we let our boat gently glide to a stop in the sandy bottom about twenty feet off shore; we’re close enough so we can talk without yelling.  The first thing she says is, “this current is really hard to paddle against” Patrick says, “we’ve only been here ten minutes” pretty nice day I respond not wanting to sympathize. The docks are almost full, I think a local powerboat and sailboat club are both holding a rendezvous outing.  I tell the kids we don’t want to spend the night here, too many boats leaving only undesirable cross current places to tie up. This is when they say, are you spending the night? We thought you were just up for the day. I couldn’t tell if we were unwanted overnighters or welcomed purveyors of fine boxed wine.  About a half mile further up river is dock two, my offer to tow the kayaks is quickly accepted.  They paddle out to the boat and climb aboard.  My first thought is their added weight will surely pin us to the sandy bottom, but the 9.9hp easily spins us around and off we go leaving all the other boaters to the nice new dock.  While underway the kids fill us in on kayaking details all the way to the next dock, the dock is deserted, not a single boat. Granted it’s an older dock and many planks are rotten and loose, but the birds seem to like it.  On shore is a single plastic porta toilet, half a dozen picnic tables and steel fire rings, one even has a pile of driftwood for the evening fire. I suggest going up river another mile to dock three, saying we can always come back if we like this place better, I’m still a little concerned we may have crowded in on the kids private party. I help carry their kayaks into the woods, Linda scrounges some more firewood. Patrick helps me move the boat to the inside of the dock, I’m hoping the dock will act as break water, the current is causing eddies and whirlpools to grab the keel tossing the boat back and forth, occasionally she lunges forward jerking the dock lines taught. Remembering a bad night at Port Townsend where we wore through a half inch nylon line while sleeping, (one of four) I double up my lines, I think I may have ended up with seven lines holding our boat. I finally get to read for a little bit before heading on shore to get the fire going. The fire ring is in a meadow only seventy five feet from the water’s edge, we are up on a slightly higher level after passing through a grove of tall trees. Patrick already has the tent up and the fire going when I arrive.  I offer both of them a glass of wine which they politely refuse, I’m a little confused, but I open my camp chair and plunk myself down with a glass of Pinot  Noir just the same.  After awhile Linda appears and somehow while I pour her wine she manages to snag my chair; I don’t say anything, but she could’ve brought her own, for me to demand it back wouldn’t look good so I sit on the picnic bench (in the smoke) Christy has some funny looking short fat gray skinned dogs on a stick cooking over the fire, so I head for the boat to retrieve our cooking forks and polish sausage. When I return Christy takes one look at our fine three foot long metal forks with wood handles and accuses me of one upping her single short telescoping fork. I said, “Look, I’ve paid my dues” I can have nice hot dog sticks, I don’t even need them you know, I have a microwave on the boat.  A massive tug and barge is going by so I change the subject to big wakes.

The next morning we treat the kids to fresh coffee from our ten cup drip coffee maker on the boat;  then they take off still padding upstream, their plan is to make it to the top of the island and then let the current carry them down the other side back to where their car is parked, all in all it will be about a fifteen mile trip around Government Island.  Linda and I read our books and visit with the few boaters that stop by the dock. After a few hours we cast off and head up river to dock three, there are a number of boats tied up that spent the night, but there’s plenty of room.   We head down the gangway to shore and quickly find out we, and everybody else are stuck on the dock, the water is so high that the last fifty feet to shore are under water, unless we want to wade through eighteen inches (we don’t) of water were not going anywhere. We can see the fire rings and picnic table all surrounded and under water.  It turns out staying the night at dock two was the best choice.  Five minutes after arriving at dock three we are casting off and heading back to our moorage, the current is whisking us along with the motor barely working. We let the auto pilot steer while I just keep watch; it only takes about an hour to get back.

This trip to Government Island was exactly what I wanted, a little relaxing time on my boat, some reading time, a cook out with friends. We were back home about thirty minutes before our son called to be picked up from his scout outing.  Later that afternoon Linda texted Christy to make sure they had made it back safely.  Happy camping.  John