29 March 2006

Well, out this afternoon at Telegraph Cove. Not so big swells today. We did a bit of coastal cruising....And spotted this big fellow eating something. I managed to get within about 4 or 5 metres of him without scaring him off. I would say, beak to tail, that he was at least a metre long. Big big bird.


Of course there were the obligatory cormorants. But thre were also little fellows that looked like oystercatchers. The day was really quite gorgeous.


We stopped at the shopping centre and found another half-dozen kayaks on top of cars already in the lot! Including this Cape Charles from Cheasapeake Light Craft. The very model I've been planing on building.


Nice way to spend an afternoon.

Sunday March 26--Elk Lake

Ah, Elk Lake. The most challenging paddle we ever dare to face. Or, you know, not. The morning was cold, wet, and windy. Yech. But things picked up as we got going.
Paula does like her new boat. As John and I discovered today, she is much faster with less effort than we are going all out.

The Canada Geese were fairly mellow about our presence--I think the fishermen who are on the lake all winter may have something to do with this lack of concern.
I realize that the resolution of my camera leaves a bit to be desired. This was shot between seven and ten metres away....

A Tree full of cormorants. Don't they look like they're just waiting for one of us to sink? Lake buzzards, that's what they are....
It's so rare to see John in a photo not shot by him.
He does seem happy, doesn't he?
Right up until he took this photo of himself upside down. Damn, but that water was cold.

Elk Lake

Today, we returned to Elk Lake for a cold and windy paddle. Unlike the last couple of weeks where we were taking layers off, some of us were adding layers as the paddle went on. (Pay attention to Louise's clothes as the pictures progress.)

Here's Louise, fresh in the water and ready to rock. Paula and Bernie were a little late, so Louise and I had the lake to ourselves for a while. (And Dennis and Alison didn't show at all -- the wimps!)


The lake was windy and choppy. Small squalls were blowling through.


The plan was for a paddle, then some wet exit practise. In this picture, I've just felt the temperature of the water and I'm clearly looking forward to dunking myself.


Here's Paula getting into her kayak. She was obviously having some sort of trouble. I did notice that her middle finger kept going into spasm. Everytime I pointed the camera at her, it extended.


As you can see, Louise is now bundled up like a big pink fluffy big pink something or other. Anyway, now we were ready to start our paddle!


Then my camera batteries died. :(

John's pictures are here.

19 March 2006

Sunday could not have been a more perfect spring day in Victoria. So we left Victoria and went to Sidney to paddle. Thankfully it was a pretty nice day there too.
Getting ready for launch at the park, everyone in our group removed one layer before getting into their boats—this despite having to scrape windows before driving off to Sidney. I was down to a t-shirt and PFD when I set out. Well, and pants....

Due to bad planning (the truck broke down Friday), we weren't able to take both the Pamlico and Adventure out. But on Friday, Paula had stopped by West Marine and picked up an inflatable kayak. So yes, we are now a three kayak couple. So Alison gave us a lift out to Sidney where we set up.

Paula in her inflatable "Skedaddle" (also known as a "Dragonfly")


Alison takes her turn in the new boat.
As you can see below, we shared the water with a large number of large others. Don't exactly know what they were doing, but it seemed to involve a lot of tacking back and forth in a very restricted area. Eventually they headed out to the east, but not very fast—particularly considering the size and speed of some of these boats—and they stayed pretty much clumped together.
Having a waterproof housing for my camera, I thought it might be an idea to give it a trial run. The day was so bright that when I found myself over some rocks (with the tide on the ebb, by the time we came back I couldn't have paddled over these same rocks), I could see bottom some 1 to 2 metres down. So I stuck the camera in the water and pushed the shutter.

There wasn't the plethora of wildlife sightings that we'd had in the Gorge, but Alison and I did stop to look at a half dozen harlequin ducks—so not visible in this photo.

but the most interesting sighting of the day was Dennis doing his best impersonation of Red Green. Need I say more?

Inflatable Kayaks

Dennis has always paddled an inflatable kayak. His first, while not the worst boat in the world, was far too much like the cheap inflatable boats that kids muck about in at the lake in the summer to be much good in the ocean. Although, that being said, on our first paddle together, he and I did make it over to the Chatham Islands...a feeling that we've been hard-pressed to duplicate since.

But once Dennis traded up to his Advanced Elements kayak, we've all been much more impressed with the possibilities of inflatables. The day we first inflated it—we paddled Elk Lake during the only sunny break that day offered—we knew that this was something a fair bit of thought had gone into. The bow and stern are reinforced and shaped with small aluminium inserts and it comes with a small skeg. The shape is very much that of a traditional kayak, and the shape and structure of the tubes make it quite a nice kayak overall. Dennis, I know, has a few things to say about the cockpit and a few other points, but I'll let him talk about those himself.

Someone who has really been impressed by his kayak is Paula. So this week she bought one of her own. Purchased (on sale) from West Marine, it's an Advanced Elements kayak re-branded as a West Marine one. West marine call this the Skedaddle 1 (crappy name in my opinion). Advanced calls it the Dragonfly—a much nicer name.

This kayak lacks the aluminium reinforcements front and rear, and the front end is both pointed and sweeps forward up and out of the water quite a bit. This means it spins on a dime and gives nine cents change, but it also means that there is no resistance to lateral motion while paddling. Paula resorted to tiny strokes twice as often to reduce this side to side twisting. AE has put a small skeg on the rear and attached a shallow plastic keel to the front (a keel about 30 centimetres long) to help with tracking, but the boat still tends to skitter about with each stroke. A blunter and firmer bow shape would probably have been more to the point.

But the Skedaddle/Dragonfly does pack up very small and weighs only 20 lbs.--making it possible to haul on the back of a bike or on public transit. When Paula travels to Mississauga next all, she hopes to take it with her on the GO train to Union Station and then to paddle out from there into the Toronto Islands. Size-wise, at least, this is a strong probability.

Sidney Harbour

Today we headed out to Sidney to putter around the Harbour. This was our first trip out this way, and the weather was great, easily the nicest day we've had so far this year.


Paula moves ahead in the kayak sweepstakes. Now she owns three. Her latest is this small inflatable. She wanted something that she could transport around easily on her tricycle or even the bus, and this little guy certainly foots the bill.
(But she's a little embarrassed about how much she's spent on kayak stuff recently, so don't tell her folks. It'll be our little secret.)


While Paula took a quick bathroom break before we started, Bernie took it out for a little spin. (He was a little embarrassed that he took out Paula's new kayak before she officially christened it, so don't tell her. It'll be our little secret.)


Mr. Kayakhead, Canada's only inflatable crimefighter!


So here's Paula, smiling and finally in the water in her new kayak. She's paddling in front of the world's largest block of Neapolitan ice cream. (Bernie had already gone through and had eaten all the chocolate.)


We weren't the only boats on the water!


No eagles today, but a cormorant found us slightly interesting.


Here's Bernie in Paula's second boat. He's smiling, too!


Dennis was also in a smiling mood!


Louise is smiling, too! You'd think we were all having fun or something!


Alison's smiling because she's back from vacation and isn't lending her boat to amateurs like the rest of us anymore. :)


Many readers have asked how we transport our kayaks around. (Actually, none have. But we can dream.) Anyway, here's me loading two kayaks on my van.


Dennis and Bernie are in deep discussion about something to do with length and depth perception.


John's pictures are here.

16 March 2006

Man, what a gorgeous afternoon! The sky cleared off over Victoria, and the morning drizzle had faded away into pure sunshine. I suddenly realized that I had to get out on the water, so I piled into the truck and headed out to Telegraph Cove.


Deceptively pretty, isn't it?

There was a slight breeze blowing northward, so I thought Telegraph would be perfect; facing north, it would be sheltered from any chop if the breeze was blowing stronger at the beach than inland. And it's true, it was sheltered. I wasn't the only person there; a younger fellow was getting out of his truck as I arrived, and pulled on his wetsuit and hauled a baited crab trap out of the back. He didn't bother with no stinkin' boat—he had a surfboard and he knew how to use it. After all, he wasn't going all that far off shore—a 15 or 20 metres.

Coming back in....

I unloaded and quickly made it into the water—it took longer, I think, to put my sprayskirt on than it did to unload. Finally I headed off into the cove and then out into the deeper water.

But not for bloody long! The tide was on the flood and there was a low pressure zone somewhere south of me. So there were some fairly heavy swells once I got out from the protection of the cove. A bit scary at first, but I soon spun around and headed into them, and started having a great time. Been a while since I paddled anything a half-metre high—too much bathtubbing this winter—so it took a bit to feel at all comfortable. But soon I was headed almost due west out of Telegraph Cove and then spun to take advantage of the swells to do a little surfing.

The swells weren't quite high enough to get up any real speed, so once I found myself a bit too near shore again, I turned about and headed a bit further out from shore and back to the west. As I passed back across the mouth of the cove, the swells started to pick up a bit, and as I continued out and west, they began to significantly increase in size. Now about 125 metres offshore, the swells were becoming serious; check out the pictures. They were over a metre high and the surfing was great. I swept back into the cove and turned around. Took what, two minutes?, and I was suddenly seasick. Coffee isn't a sufficient lunch, I guess.

In total, I wasn't on the water more than 40 minutes before becoming so queasy that I had to land. Damn shame, really. There was some real fun to be had—if only my stomach had co-operated!

Doubtful Sound

Getting the scale of things ...

Ferns, and a lone tree still standing
The sun actually did come out

On the left, these are trees growing almost horizontally off the slope
Milford Sound again
"I wuz 'ere" (Bowen Falls)