April 18th - Karst creek (#41)

I went for an early morning paddle around the bay in front of the Ralph River Campground (before we left to head back to Victoria). The sun had risen but had not reached the lakeshore until the end of my paddle. I saw a few common mergansers and Canada geese. It is interesting to see the root systems of all the trees that were logged before the lake was dammed.

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7 km, YTD 418 km

April 17th - Myra Falls (#40)

Bill and I went for a nice morning paddle from Ralph River campground to Lower Myra Falls. The lake was flat calm with spectacular reflections. We saw a few common mergansers and Canada geese.

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13 km, YTD 411 km

April 15th - Cape Lazo (#39)

I went for a morning paddle with Bill from the campground around Cape Lazo. We saw lots of harbour seals, heard a California Sea lion as well as lots of red-breasted mergansers and harlequin ducks. Fabulous conditions again!

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7 km, YTD 398 km

July 13th - Buttle Lake (#50)

After spending three nights at Ralph River Campground in Buttle lake we stopped at the Buttle Lake boat launch and I went for a short paddle through the narrows. Conditions were very nice and I had fun exploring some of the islets. I could easily have spent more time, but we were on our way back home! Nice to have made it to 50 paddles in the year! I don't expect to make it to 1000 km or 100 paddles this year as I will be away travelling quite a bit!

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7 km, YTD 396 km

September 27th - Feathercraft (#95)

I went to Vancouver to try out a very lightweight Feathercraft Kayak, the Kurrent. Weighing in at 10 kg it will be very easy to take on a plane trip, not to mention carry to the beach. I found it comfortable and responsive and similar in many ways to the Wisper, which I have paddled for 10 years(I also went to get a repair done on my Wisper). You may not be surprised to know that a red Kurrent is on order. I also tried rowing their Baylee 2 and 3 rafts which could make a great tender for Natural C-lection...

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1 km, YTD 815 km