June 30th - Discovery Island (#47)

I paddled out to Maynard Cove to meet up with Dan and Gordin, and we then proceeded around Chatham and Discovery Islands. The weather was superb! Sunshine and calm, but not too hot. There were also minimal currents, so no hard work! It was good to paddle again with Gordin as I have not done so in a while.We saw quite a few paddlers while out there including the Discovery Shuttle group.

click to enlarge

16 km, YTD 626 km

Cedar to Campbell river overview

Here is an overview map of my Cedar to Campbell River trip which included three of the longest days kayaking I have done!

click to enlarge

Accoding to my GPS, the max speed attained while sailing was 18.7 kph, and during the three long days, we spend 24hours and 35 mins on the water! Average speed was 6.5 kph which is not bad for a fully loaded boat. At roughly 60 strokes a minute, that could work out to be almost 90,000 paddle strokes!
Total trip: 172 km, YTD 610 km.

June 28 - Sandy Island to Campbell River (#46)

Tom split off from Alan and I and went to get picked up in Comox, while Alan and I decided to push our way to Campbell River.  Conditions were quite calm, and there was a light drizzle/rain all day. Today we actually paddled all day except for a short sail for the last km or so. We finished off at the Ken Ford boat ramp, so I guess that is were I need to start my last leg of my around the island trip (Campbell River R to Port Hardy)! We stopped at Kitty Coleman for a lunch break and were met by Monica and Chris in Campbell River at 6 PM. A shower and a pub dinner were much appreciated after three days of rainy and windy weather. However, the SE winds associated with the crummy weather  is what enabled us to cover in 3 days what we had planned for 4 and a half!

click to enlarge

49 km, YTD 610 km

June 27th - French Creek to Sandy Island (#45)

This was a serious sailing day. We made good progress with a steady SE wind behind us (Chrome Island was blowing at 22-24 knots during that time!). We ducked into Deep Bay for a break and fish and chips and then continued on in strong tailwinds to Sandy Island. Sandy is a beautiful spot and the winds died down and the rain did too! PS Denman is quite a long island!

click to enlarge

55 km, YTD 561 km

June 26th - Flat Tpos to French Creek (#44)

This was the first "real day" of our trip and it ended up being a long one. Though it was overcast and drizzly off and on all day, the wind was behind us and we made good use of our Pacific Action Sails. I think this is the most I have ever covered in a day of kayaking! French creek was a safe but not very convenient take out, since the campground was a few hundred metres from the marina. However, dinner at the pub was a bonus. Definitely a bit wet and tired this day. (oh and my air mattress had a slow leak...). You can see that our pace was pretty good all day thanks to a tail wind.

click to enlarge

56 km, YTD 506 km

June 25th - Cedar to Flat Tops (#43)

I paddled from Cedar Boat Launch out to meet up with Alan and Tom to start another leg of my around the Island in bits trips. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain when I was packing the boat at the Cedar boat launch which made for a miserable start!. By the time I had made it to Flat tops, the rain had stopped, and it became a nice evening. I had hoped to take a short cut, but the tide was too low, and I had to detour to the next gap to the south. Fortunately it was not that much of a detour! Gabriola pass had a nice flood which gave me a bit of a push.

click to enlarge

12 km, YTD 450 km

June 23rd - Oak Bay (#42)

I paddled over to Willows beach to meet up with a SISKA group led by Sheila. Dave and I were the naturalists and had a good time sharing our love and knowledge of the marine environment. I think we covered under 2 km as we paddled around looking at things just below the surface. You can see my speed to and from Oak Bay was a bit faster! In spite of it being a grey day, the rain held off, and the wind was not too strong.

click to embiggen

10 km, YTD 438 km

June 16th - Harbourfest (#41)

I went down to the harbourfest in the afternoon to do a short demonstration of Greenland rolling. I did not get any distance in and didn't use my GPS! :) There were about 50 people watching and I had fun doing some rolls I have not done for a while.I also got to throw the spear that Bill made for me!

Douglas Bain took some great shots (including some showing poor form!) which are posted here: http://bluegiraffephoto.zenfolio.com/harbour/h6e2ff07a#h6a298d5b

what is he looking at!

0 km, YTD 428 km

June 15th - Discovery Island (#40)

Dan, Paulo and I went for a morning paddle around Chatham and  Discovery islands. On our way past Flower Island we saw a dead head log poking a few inches out of the water. I called it in to Victoria Coastguard Radio as we had no marking equipment with us. It was vertical and solid - would cause significant damage to anything that hit it! We then made our way over to the bay by Heritage point to practice some rolling. I am doing a demonstration tomorrow in the harbour and needed to check that I could still do them all! After a good rolling session, we paddled on around Discovery, stopping to chat with the folks on the ORS Discovery Shuttle tour. After paddling around to boathouse bay, we met Bob, Ken and Alfonse coming in the opposite direction. We noticed at least two sets of campers in the wrong locations on Discovery Island! We made our way around the top end of Chatham Island and back over to Cadboro Bay. We checked on the dead head (14 km mark), and it was in the same location. Hopefully someone can get a marker on it sometime.

click to enlarge

15 km, YTD 428 km

June 13th - Cadboro Bay (#39)

Peter and I went for a short afternoon paddle in Cadboro Bay so that he could test drive the Tahe Greenland T. Conditions were great, and we had a nice paddle. Peter left with a nice new Tahe on his roof as well as a Northern Light Greenland paddle!

click to enlarge

4 km, YTD 413 km

June 11th - Cadboro Bay (#38)

This evening I led a group of 18 SISKA paddlers on a relaxed tour of Cadboro bay. The tide was high so we were able to poke around in lots of bays. Conditions were nice, and I had a great support crew of Mark and Gary as sweeps and Debbie as the pace setter!

click to enlarge

7 km, YTD 409 km

June 8th - Sooke Basin (#37)

Sheila, Neil and I went for a morning paddle around Sooke basin as part of the SISKA campout. There was a stiff westerly that slowed us down quite a bit on the way out, but on the way back I was able to sail at 4-5 knots for much of the way without paddling! In the afternoon I ran a sailing clinic, and we played around in the Sooke River as well as out in the basin. A nice day on the water finished with a great BBQ with club members at Sooke River Campground.

click to enlarge

17 km, YTD 402 km

June 6th - Discovery (#36)

Dan and I took Alan from PEI for a tour around out "back yard". Alan is an instructor who I met at PPS last weekend and is at UVic for a conference so things worked out well to sneak out for an evening paddle.
Conditions were good with a little bit of wind and a bit of ebb current in Baynes. We made fast progress (see track) until we rounded Seabird Point and had to paddle into a stiff breeze (15-20 knots?). We had some fun in the waves and decided to go up inside the Chathams and through the sluice. On our way to the sluice, we ran into a solo paddler, Reg, and decided that we would shepherd him across Baynes which was getting a bit bumpy in places. We were able to avoid almost all the  waves and made it back to Cadboro Bay in good time for a beer and some food at Smuggler's Cove. A great way to spend the evening after work!

click to embiggen

16 km, YTD 385 km

June 1st - Pacific Paddling Symposium (#35)

I went to Lester Pearson College for the weekend to participate in the First annual Pacific Paddling Symposium. This was a great event bringing paddlers from far and wide as well as local. I taught a Greenland paddling and strokes class on Saturday morning and then taught rolling classes for the next three sessions. The campus was magnificent, and it was great to meet so many like minds. On Saturday night we were treated to a preview of James' Grand Canyon video and Ginni Callahan gave a wonderful talk about her voyage across the pacific.

the only paddling I got to do!

2 km, YTD 369 km