May 28th - Discovery Island (#36)

Lanny and I went for a Sunday morning out to the islands. I was in my Tahe and Lanny in his  black pearl, so we were both paddling Greenland style paddles and boats!
There was a pretty strong ebb running all morning as you can see from the track across Baynes. On the way out my speed reached 15 kph at times! We saw gene and a group from Nanaimo who were paddling from Victoria to Nanaimo over several days.
Plenty of seals, a few rhinoceros auklets and black oystercatchers noticed.

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16 km, YTD 320 km

May 22 - RVYC (#35)

Jack and I went out for an evening SUP session over to the yacht club and back. A glorious evening, with views all the way to Mt. Rainier. I forgot the GPS, so this is a manually created track!

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2 km, YTD 304 km

May 18th - Cadboro Bay (again) - (#34)

I went for a quick after dinner paddle with Mark and Paul so that Paul could test out different skin-on-frame kayaks. I had to come back early, but he tried out my Cape Falcon  F1 and the Disko bay.
The Disko bay is a pretty kayak! :)

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1 km, YTD 302 km

May 18th - Cadboro Bay (#33)

I went for a morning paddle on the Oarboard Adventure SUP. Conditions were nice and calm and it was fun being back on a SUP. I notice that paddling on my left side seems to track much better than on my right... not sure why. You can see the track is much more wiggly that my kayak tracks and my average speed quite a bit lower - 5.1 kph instead of 6 to 7 kph...

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5 km, YTD 301 km

May 16th - Cadboro Bay (#32)

Pete and I took a group of 7 grade 10 students to Cadboro Bay to do an intro session on sea kayaking, wet exits and rescues. We are taking this group for a 6 day trip to the Broughtons in June. They look like they should be fine!

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3 km, YTD 296 km

May 14th - Oak bay (#31)

I led the second day of the PC level 1 class and we paddled over to Willows Beach, practicing strokes and stopping every now and again to focus on skills. Again, we had good conditions, All three passed! :)

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9 km, YTD 293 km

May 13th - Cadboro Bay (#30)

Jennie and I led the first day of a Paddle Canada level 1 course for three participants (Jarek, Sybil and Glenn). Conditions were nice but we did not cover much ground as we were practicing strokes and rescues. All the students did well. I forgot to turn the GPS on for the first few minutes!

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2 km, YTD 284 km

May 8th - Discovery Island (#29)

Dan and I went for an early afternoon paddle around the islands. As you can see the currents were mostly in our favour - at least not slowing us down too much on the way out and giving a good boost on the way back. That combined with little wind made for a very pleasant paddle.

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15 km, YTD 282 km

May 7th - Trial Island (#28)

I joined 5 other SISKA instructors (Mark, Mike, Michael, Jennie and Dorothea) for a morning of sharing. We paddled around Trial Island, stopping to discuss teaching techniques and to demonstrate some tips. I think we all learned from each other! On top of that, it was a glorious day to be on the water!

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6 km, YTD 267 km

May 4th - Oak Bay Birding (#27)

I paddled over to Turkey head to join a SISKA birding paddle group (Beth, Ben, Norm and me) led by Jennie with Daniel D as resource person. Daniel is a very skilled and enthusiastic birder and was able to help me better identify  several groups I was having trouble with (cormorants and sandpipers).Conditions were very favourable and we saw many species and kinds of birds from buffleheads to Bald eagles! As a bonus we also saw the wolf! After getting to the NW corner of the islands I made my own way back in to the bay while the others headed for Oak Bay. Our small group size contributed to good viewing!

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20 km, YTD 261 km

May 3rd - Discovery Island (#26)

Dan, Dennis and I went for an afternoon paddle around the islands. As we crossed Baynes channel, we saw a group of paddlers on the north side of the Chatham group and managed to catch up with one of them - the "Wednesday group" on their way back to Oak Bay. Weather conditions were wonderful - flat calm and there was a bit of ebb current throughout, though it had slackened for our return. We saw a nice group of nine Steller sea lions at Seabird Point. We decided to make our way across the bay to Cattle point for a change as the currents did not seem to strong.

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16 km, YTD 241 km