April 15th - Victoria Harbour (#23)

After the guides' exchange was officially over I went for a short paddle around the upper harbour on a multi-person SUP with Olympian Simon Whitfield and several others. A 4 person, 22 ft long SUP goes quite fast (though not as fast as a good kayak!). I did not have my GPS for this one.
After that I went for a paddle in one of the ORS rental fleet a CD Prana (very nice kayak!) and made my way down to the Fort Street docks. I paddled past a boat that is on its way to Galapagos (Pacific Coaster, soon to be Cachalote Explorer) and then under the catamaran Village (soon to be Cascadia). The Cascadia catamaran has a neat "tunnel" underneath! It was also my first paddle under the new Johnson Street bridge!

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2 km, YTD 194 km

May 15 - Inner Harbour (#33)

Eight colleagues and I went down to Ocean River Sports for an afternoon of stand up paddle instruction. Gary and Mark were our instructors and did a great job. I got to try a touring style board which I really liked. Stability and tracking were good. We had a good time and learned some useful maneuvering strokes. An afternoon well spent!

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4 km, YTD 315 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 16 - Victoria Harbour Celebration (#47)

Today I was down at Ship Point where I had volunteered to do a rolling demonstration. The weather was pretty windy which made it tricky at the booths. The sand sculpture was cool and the pirate school was neat. I went over to join in the kayak race only to find that there were two of us racing - Graham Henry and me! I came second to someone 30 years my junior, but had a good warm up. I then did a rolling demo at Ship point with announcing by Deb Leach. The show seemed to go well and I had lots of questions from the audience. The day finished off sunny but still windy.

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5 km, YTD 570 km.

July 31 - Symphony Splash (#67)

I set out from James Bay Anglers to join Suzy, Simon, Lisa and Graeme as on water donation collectors for the Symphony Splash. What an event! It was great to be on the water supporting this great event. The view in front of the barge was excellent and it was fun to be part of the "sea otter raft". It was also great to see several friends and alumni. The paddle back at night was fun - my kayalu light worked very well!

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6 km, YTD 725 km

April 17th - Harbour Celebration (#25)

I launched at James Bay Anglers Ramp to paddle over to the Songhees and participate in the first (hopefully annual) Harbour Celebration. I did a bunch of demonstration Greenland Rolls and also the sea kayak race. Surprising myself, I came in as the first sea kayak in spite of using a Greenland paddle! I averaged 8.5 kph (4.6 kt) over the 2.34 km race route. The day was a bit cool and showery, so the turnout was not as good as hoped for but it was great to see many familiar faces. David Anderson spoke well.

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the race route detail

5 km, YTD 326 km

April 17th - Marina rally (#28)

Monica and I set out from the Gorge Rowing centre to participate in the rally against the Mega Marina Proposal. There was a good turnout and the size of the area proposed is huge. In spite of there being well over a hundred boats, they did not begin to fill up the area!

On the track you can see the size of the marina area as I paddled the circumference.



6 km, 3 NM, YTD 367 km

May 31 - another day rolling with Dubside (#41)

I did not put on any kms today but had a great morning and afternoon with two more clinics with Dubside. I definitely improved my rolling, learning a few new ones and refining some “old” ones. The morning was at the ORS dock and the afternoon was at Elk Lake

Yours truly doing a static brace. By the end of the day I was doing this without a norsaq or paddle!

From 2009-05-31_dubside

A video of me doing a norsaq roll

March 7th - Victoria Harbour Paddlers' Rally (#13)

I set out from Banfield Park around 2 PM to participate in the paddler’s rally against the mega marina project (which plans to drastically reduce paddlers’ access in and out of Victoria Harbour). The winds were strong (see the Vic harbour weather reports below), steady at 25 knots and gusting to 32, which meant that the rally was held on the beach by the Delta hotel instead of the proposed marina site. I went around the corner a few times and played in the waves and surf – the feathercraft wisper was catching waves nicely. Good speeches by Brian Henry and Denise Savoie. I was happy to see lots of familiar faces!

Victoria Harbour weather reports:

07-Mar-2009 16:00:00 W 25 32 270.0 99.9 1014.2
07-Mar-2009 15:00:00 W 22 31 270.0 99.9 1013.9
07-Mar-2009 14:00:00 WSW 25 32 247.5 99.9 1014.6

6km, 3 NM, YTD 131 km.