December 29th - Discovery Island, the Wolf and 1000 km (87)

I paddled out to Cadboro Point to join Olivier for a morning paddle out to the islands. As it tuned out it was an auspicious paddle for me - I made my 1000 km goal for the year and I saw the wolf on Discovery Island!
Olivier had seen the wolf quite close up on the 27th, so we kept an eye out as we paddled the shores of Chatham and Discovery Islands. It was raining off and on and a bit cool, though not too much wind. The current was ebbing, but not very strongly. About half way across Rudlin Bay, I spotted an object moving out on Commodore Point, which quickly turned out to be the wolf that has been on the islands for many months now (Vancouver Sun Article). The wolf more or less stayed close to us, giving us great views, all around Commodore point for almost a kilometre of paddling! (see track segment below)

Wolf watching segment by Commodore point (click to enlarge)

Olivier managed to get some great shots of the wolf, including one with me in the foreground!

the wolf and me (click to enlarge)

Wolf on the west side of the point (click to enlarge)

Wolf on the west side again (click to enlarge)

today's track (click to enlarge)

18 km, YTD 1001 km.

December 20th - Cadboro Bay (#86)

I decided to go for a quick paddle around the bay this afternoon (it will be the last one for a week as we are off to Oyama for Christmas). I decided to go paddling around 3 PM and was on the water by 3:30 and home by about 4:45 after a nice evening paddle. It was getting a bit dark by the time I made it home. The Cape Falcon F1 is a great boat for the quick on the spur of the moment solo paddle. At about 30 lbs it is light enough to carry easily on a shoulder or arm and handles the local waters well. The high tide had floated most of the logs off the beach so the bay was strewn with logs. Two nights ago there was a pretty good SE blow which brought a couple of boats ashore at the south end of the beach. They were still there this evening...

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It looks like I should be able to just make my 1000 km goal by the end of the year as I only have 17 km to go and 3 or 4 days after we come back from Oyama.

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8 km, YTD 983 km

December 18th - Cadboro Bay (#85

I decided to go for a quick after lunch paddle around the bay. The F1 is so quick and easy to pick up and go! The sun was mostly out and the wind was less than 10 knots and there was not much current action. I accidentally crept up on an otter eating a fish on shore. Looked like a small halibut!

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8 km, YTD 975 km

December 15th - Thetis Lake (#84)

Bill, Monica and I went for a short paddle on Thetis Lake before the SISKA Christmas Party at six mile. The proposed cub paddle in Esquimalt harbour was cancelled due to the wind forecast, but we decided to go for a protected paddle anyway.  It was neat to explore Thetis lake again. The water level was quite high. After the paddle we went to 6 mile pub and had a great lunch with almost 70 other SISKA members.

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6 km, YTD 967 km

December 14th - Cadboro Bay (#83)

I went for a short afternoon solo paddle around the Bay. Pretty much ran the perimeter of the bay, so it was kind of like a Cadboro Bay patrol! Conditions were clear and a bit sunny as well as a calm, so I had a nice one. Ran into one other paddler near Jemmy Jones as well as several seals.

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7 km, YTD 961 km

December 9th - Baynes Channel (#82)

I paddled out to Cadboro Point to meet Ben and Olivier for an afternoon play in Baynes Channel. The current was running nicely in the channel creating 3-5 foot waves. It was tough to surf them, but it was great fun riding the "Baynes bronco"! I got tired pretty quickly and had to head back home after an hour or so.

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8 km, YTD 954 km

Storm Surge update

Thanks to Ben, who pointed me to a couple of good sites showing that today's high waters were partly a result of about a 0.6 m  surge:
One useful site is the CHS water levels site:
http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/science/charts-cartes/obs-app/observed-eng.aspx?StationID=07120

from which I generated this image of the anomaly for the last 60 days. You can see the last few days have been pretty high.
Ben also sent me a link to the NOOA storm surge site for Friday Harbor.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/etsurge/index.php?page=stn&region=wc&type=both&stn=wafrid

Thanks Ben!

December 2nd - Discovery Island (#81)

George and I set out from the end of Killarney to paddle out to Smugglers' cove where we met Olivier and Peter. A nice ebb was setting up, but no wind and a very high tide so we decided to poke around Chatham a bit and go through places one normally can't go. The tide prediction programme I use (wxtide indicated only 8.6 feet, but the water was washing at the steps going down to the beach. We have a 10+ foot tide predicted for the 12th - another 18 inches higher than today! Are sea levels rising???
We stopped off in boat house bay for a snack and then went into cactus islet inlet to check out the prickly pear cacti which were right at water level. The patch of cactus would be fully immersed if the tide was higher...
We had sun, rain, some breeze and some calm - a great variety!

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18 km, YTD 946 km