April 30th - Discovery Island (#34)

Dan, Rob and I went for a morning paddle around the islands. Conditions were excellent with a light ebb current, sunshine and little wind. On our way back we saw the HMCS Oriole doing maneuvers in preparation for the RVYC sail past this afternoon. A third of the year in, I am on track for 100+ paddles and 1000+ km if I can maintain this regular paddling schedule!

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15 km, YTD 365 km

April 28th - Ten Mile Point (#33)

I took Rob, who was visiting Maeve from Australia for an evening paddle around Ten Mile Point. there was a bit of a breeze (10-15 kt)  and some current, but Rob handled the F1 nicely. I had hoped to see more birds, but pretty much all we saw were Canada geese! We did see a couple of seals and a hummingbird. We stopped by the Pacific Grace which was anchored in the bay and chatted with the skipper. Turns out one of my old students was skippering the Swift a bit further out in the bay and I had a visit with him too!

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9 km, YTD 350 km

April 27th - Discovery Island (#32)

Dan and I went for a nice early morning paddle. We left the beach at 8:15 and were back by 10:25. Conditions were sunny and calm and the currents were not unfavourable, so we made good progress. We ran into the "Wednesday group" on their way out as we were passing  Staines Islet on our return.

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15 km, YTD 341 km

April 25th - Cadboro Bay Towing clinic (#31)

I ran a small evening clinic on kayak towing in Cadboro bay for SISKA. We all had fun and learned that towing is easier in theory than in practice, but also that practice makes better!

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2km, YTD 326 km

April 19th - Cadboro Bay (#30)

I joined Beth-Anne to help a group of grade 10s develop some paddling skills for their June out trip to the Broughtons.  Nice sunny day with a northerly wind. we had them do wet exits and rescues...

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2 km, YTD 324 km

April 17th - Discovery (#29)

Rob, Dennis, Dan and I went for a Sunday morning paddle around the islands. There was a bit of a northerly wind blowing (20-25 kph at RVYC) which made for some interesting lumpy water around the north side of Chatham. Going down the east side of Chatham, I managed to catch a few small waves which was fun! We saw more people out there today than just about all year so far! A couple of groups camped in Rudlin Bay, some folks on the beach at heritage point and some other on the west side of Discovery. Also a couple of kayakers around Flower Island. A great way to spend the morning!

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16 km, YTD 322 km

April 16th - Ten mile Point (#28)

Monica and I went for an afternoon paddle out around ten Mile Point. Monica got to paddle her new Whisky 16, which worked well! Nice conditions and a nice afternoon paddle. e stopped by Flower Island to chat with David W about his new house.

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7 km. YTD 306 km

April 13th - Discovery Island (27)

Dan and I went for a morning paddle out to the islands. It was a bit windy with 10-15 kt SE winds which made for some nicely lumpy water of Cadboro and seabird points as well as a bit of interesting clapotis off the east side of Discovery. We saw California Sea lions off Seabird point - they seem to have been hanging around there recently. No sign of the wolf today, though we did not search for him. You can see that the wind affected our progress, slowing us down on the outward journey and speeding us up for the return - in spit of a reasonable ebb current! We found, collected and disposed of some old helium birthday balloons.

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15 km, YTD 299 km

April 11th - Cadboro Bay (#26)

I led a small group in a short evening  Greenland paddling clinic where I went over several tips on how to effectively use a GP for paddling (not rolling!). All the participants were paddling nicely by the end and seemed very comfortable with a GP. We saw and heard river otters as well as a good variety of seabirds.

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3 km, YTD 284 km

April 10th - Oak bay (#25)

I paddled over to Willows Beach to help lead a SISKA intertidal paddle with Dave G and Jo R. We had a good session again this year! On my way out I was happy to see Maple Leaf and Swell anchored in Cadboro bay for the crew training, so I paddled out to say "hi" on my way to Oak Bay. You can see our progress around Mary Tod Islet was slow as we poked around looking for fun things. I was happy to see a large gumboot chiton. Another very fine paddle!

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10 km, YTD 281 km

April 9th - Trial Island (#24)

I joined Michael, Mark, Jennie, Dorothea and Jo for a day of SISKA instructor sharing as we paddled around Trial. It was very foggy to begin with!  The tide was low so we had lots of inter tidal critters to investigate. We also saw quite a few ochre stars which is encouraging - perhaps they are recovering from wasting syndrome...

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6 km, YTD 271 km

April 7th - Discovery Island (#23)

Dan and I went for a morning paddle around discovery. We had wind and current in our favour on the way out, so we made pretty good progress until Commodore Point. There were some California sea lions and lots of seabirds around, but no sign of the wolf today.  The tide was very low! We encountered some lumpy water on the way out, but by the time we were coming back, the wind and current had dropped.

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15 km, YTD 265 km

April 3rd - Discovery Island (#22)

Rob, Dan and I went for a morning paddle around my favourite islands. Conditions were beautiful, little wind and little current and we had some good chats. It was nice to be back on the water after our 3 week trip through the States.We saw some Steller sea lions near Seabird point and some California ones in Baynes on the way back. The Whisky 16 is a very nice boat (Monica's new boat!). We ran into Cheryl out looking for and filming the wolf. We did not see the wolf ourselves today but she had already had two "visits" with it.

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15 km, YTD 250 km