Oct 28 - Cadboro Bay (#102)

I went for a quick run out to the mooring to check on it and the boat that is on it. All seemed well.

1 km, 0.5 NM YTD 989 km

October 24 - Chatham (#101)

Pete and I went for a quick paddle out to Chatham. We went and checked out the power boat that had come ashore during the night and then went over to my mooring buoy to discover that the boat had been on my buoy and had attached their chain to the top ring (a well know no no) and the ring on my buoy was broken open! :(
Now I have to track down the owner of Sea Fever IV to see if he/she will repair/replace my buoy!
Pete and I went through the yacht club were we ran into Nick who was giving a course and then made our way over to the "sluice" between Vantreight and Chatham islands to play in the current. Water and air are definitely getting colder...

10 km, 5 NM, YTD 988 km.

October 23rd - Coal and Piers Islands (#100)

For my 100th paddle of the year I joined a  SISKA paddle led by Dan. The 15 of us were going to go to Rum Island but, based on the forecast, decided to stay more in the lee and decided to go to Coal and then Piers Islands. As it turned out the wind did not get too strong until we were well off the water, but we had a great paddle in good conditions. I guess only 22 km to go for my unofficial 1000 km goal...
As I write the wind is blowing hard, gust of up to 58 kph at 10 mile point . Winds defintely picked up around 4 PM!

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17 km, 9 NM, YTD 978 km.

October 15th - Jemmy Jones Island (#99)

I got home to a beautiful fall evening and decided that I should get out for a quick paddle before I head off to Bamfield for 4 days on a field trip. Conditions were fabulous! Sunny and calm. I began by doing my rolling sequence including the brick roll (with a 8 lb brick this time) and then did a fast (looks like I was able to maintain 4 knots+ throughout the paddle) paddle out to Jemmy Jones and back. A wonderful way to make use of the last couple of hours of sunshine... my 99th paddle of the year!

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5 km, 3 NM, YTD: 961 km.

October 10th - Finnerty Cove (#98)

I led a SISKA relaxed paddle (with 15 participants) from Cadboro Bay around to Finnerty Cove and back. There was a bit of a SW wind all day so, after we had made it out to Cadboro Point, we decided to continue on north instead of back across to Cattle Point as planned. Once we rounded Cadboro point, the wind was calm and the sun came out! We had a delightful paddle along the shoreline and stopped for lunch in Telegraph Bay.

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13 km, 7 NM, YTD 956 km

Oct 8th - Chatham (#97)

George and I went out for a paddle to do some rolling in Loon Bay and then went over to Chatham to clear out some cobwebs. George was paddling his new Seaward Chinook and I the usual Tahe! I decided to do a test run of the Greenland rolling competition and I was able to complete all the rolls I can do in 7 minutes... so I should not have a problem with the 15 minute time limit! George took some video which I will try to upload...

12 km, 7 NM, YTD 943 km

Oct 5th - Loon Bay (#96)

Dan and I paddled over to Loon Bay for a rolling session. We decided to work through the Greenland Roll list and see how many points we could rack up...(http://www.qajaqusa.org/QK/rolls/rolls.html). Doing just one side as per the plan for the Seattle Greenland week (http://www.kayakacademy.com/pages/lessons/courses/greenland_week.aspx) we figured that we could rack up over 50 points. If I could pull off a brick roll (#31)(9 pts) and an elbow roll (#32)(10 pts), I could bring that up to a total of 70!

2 km, 1 nm, YTD 931 km

October 3rd - Discovery Island (#95)

Dan and I went for a nice morning paddle around Discovery. On the way we saw a few other paddlers, a group of canoe campers in Rudlin bay and we ran into the Gray whale again in Rudlin Bay. I managed to forget to turn the GPS on for the first half hour or so until we were at the top end of Chatham. As I enter month # 10 of the year, I think that my chances of reaching my goal of 100 paddles and 1000 km look pretty good - 5 paddles and 71 km! No close encounters with seal pups this time...

15 km, 8 NM, YTD 929 km.