Handyman and Property Care on Decatur Island

Decatur is four separate communities on one island, each with its own dock and its own rules about what comes ashore where. I come over by skiff and I plan around that.

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How I get to Decatur, and where I land

Decatur sits between Lopez and Blakely, on the far side of Upright Channel and Thatcher Pass from me. Straight-line it is about eight nautical miles from Friday Harbor; the way you actually drive it, around the bottom of Shaw and through the pass, it is closer to twelve. In workable water that is a run of roughly forty-five minutes each way. In February it is sometimes not a run at all, and I will tell you that the day before rather than the morning of.

Where I tie up depends on which part of the island you are on. Decatur Shores on the south end has a deep-water dock. Decatur Northwest has its own 175-foot deep-water dock. The Decatur Head Beach Association has a community dock used for unloading gear and launching skiffs. There is also the county boat ramp and barge landing on Davis Beach Road at Davis Bay, which is the one piece of genuinely public landing infrastructure on the island. Tell me which community you are in and which dock your association lets a contractor use, and that decides my morning.

Almost nobody on Decatur travels the way a visitor would. Residents run small boats to the county dock at Hunter Bay on Lopez and leave a car there, or use the Anacortes water taxis, which get across in about twenty-five minutes. Freight and vehicles come in on a landing craft to Davis Bay. None of that changes what I charge — the boat day rate is one all-in number — but it does explain why the material question matters more here than the labor question.

Rocky San Juan Islands shoreline at low tide with madrona trees and driftwood

What the housing stock is like, and what actually breaks

Decatur is not one kind of house. Decatur Shores is a 500-acre development at the south end wrapped around a 2,500-foot grass airstrip, so a fair number of homes there sit at the edge of a mown field with big firs behind them. Decatur Northwest was laid out as ninety-odd view homesites inside about 600 acres of shared common land, which means bluff-top houses with a lot of glass pointed at the water. Decatur Head is a cooperative of around forty families with a cluster of old waterfront cabins on the spit. Whitecliff Farm is a handful of two-acre homesites above the longest continuous beach on the island.

Those four situations fail in four different ways. Bluff houses with big west and north elevations take weather straight off the channel: fasteners weep rust down the siding, exterior door hardware seizes, deck boards on the exposed corner cup and check years before the sheltered side does. Cabins near the beach on the Head take salt spray at close range, which is hard on window hardware, hinges, screens, and any painted trim that has gone a couple of seasons past due. Houses back in the firs by the airstrip barely see salt but fill their gutters with needles twice a year, and the north-facing roof slope grows moss whether anyone is watching or not.

The other pattern I see on islands like this: the deferred item is almost never the expensive one at first. A gutter that overflowed all winter is a $200 problem in October and a fascia and soffit repair in April. The gutter and moss work is the least glamorous thing I do out here and probably the highest-value.

Most of Decatur is empty most of the year

The San Juan County comprehensive plan appendix counted 188 dwelling units on Decatur against 33 occupied year-round, with an island population around 78. Those are planning figures — the occupancy count is from the 2000 census and the unit count from 2005 — and they are the most recent per-island numbers the county publishes. Treat them as a ratio rather than a headcount: roughly five out of six houses on Decatur are not lived in most of the year.

That ratio is the whole reason I built this page. There is no resident handyman on Decatur to call, no hardware store, no lumber yard, and no one who happens to walk past your house in January. What owners here actually need is not a repair service. It is someone who shows up on a schedule, walks the property, and catches things while they are still small.

That is what property care and home watch is. On a boat-access island it is worth more than it is on San Juan, because the alternative is a crossing you have to organize from Seattle in a bad week. If I am already coming to Decatur once a month, the visit that finds the mouse entry, the failed gutter joint, and the door that no longer latches costs a fraction of the boat day it would take to fix all three after a winter.

What I can bring, and what needs a barge

My boat is a 16-foot skiff. It carries me, my tools, and small materials, and 20 feet is the honest ceiling on board length. For Decatur that covers most of what I get asked for: trim, hardware, fasteners, a few boards, paint, screen stock, a replacement door slab, tools for a full day of punch-list work. What it does not cover is a decking load, sheet goods in quantity, cabinets, appliances, windows and doors in bulk, or hauling out a pile of demolition debris.

Decatur is actually the easiest outer island to solve that problem on, because the county ramp at Davis Bay is a working barge landing and the landing-craft operators out of Anacortes go there regularly. So the honest answer is: if your job needs freight, we book freight, land it at Davis Bay, and I work off the pile. I will help you coordinate that and I will not pretend my skiff is a barge in order to keep the job.

Questions I get about Decatur

Which Decatur dock do you use?

Whichever one your community allows. Decatur Shores, Decatur Northwest, and Decatur Head each have their own dock, and the county ramp at Davis Bay is the public option. Tell me your association and I will confirm the landing before the trip.

Can you take lumber over for a deck rebuild?

Not a full decking load. My skiff tops out around 20-foot board length and small quantities. For a real deck package we barge it into the Davis Bay landing and I work off the delivered pile.