Two Volcano Day!

It's so nice to have a two volcano day on the water, when both volcanoes are conveniently visible in the cloudy weather. Rainier peeked in and out of the low cloud as I was paddling away from the beach at Gyro Park, so I went out around Flower Island and edged over to Evans Rock to see if Baker was visible as well. Yup, Baker was shouldering aside clouds out its way.
Amazing to live in such a beautiful place, with wonders like this accessible in my kayak. As well as big wonders, there were small ones here too: merganser ducks and surf scoters flying, little Mama Seal nosing up to look at me before dipping down, and the astonishingly clear water.  Sadly, there are no visible starfish crawling around where I can see them right now.
It's convenient living near a few dormant volcanoes. There are others along the coast, and some emit steam and vapours from time to time, but we don't seem likely to have another big blast like Mt Saint Helens did a few years ago down in Oregon. I wouldn't mind a little eruption, though -- just enough to remind the city planners in Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle that we in big cities really gotta plan what to do when the environment shakes things up. Our padding friend Rich used to say that he figured he'd be on the water when the big earthquake comes or a volcano erupts, and he would ride the wave.

2013 Kayak for a Cure

Louise and I hit Willows Beach early this morning to join the 2013 edition of Kayak For A Cure. About 50 kayakers by my guess hit the water, some old hands at kayaking, but others were first-time newbies, and many were cancer survivors so it's a short, easy paddle to Cadboro Bay and back.

But first things first. And first I get my picture taken with Marty the Marmot, the hardest working marmot in show business.


But when our thoughts turned to kayaking, conditions were beautiful on the beach...

...but there were some big thick clouds of fog here and there offshore and down towards the south.


Soon, we were off. Herding cats is probably easier.


I wasn't expecting to see much in the way of wildlife today, the wildlife generally hides when a fleet, is in the water, but a heron kept watch as we paddled by.


We rounded Cattle Point...

...and into Cadboro Bay...

...where Paula paddled out to briefly join us.


A quick stop under wispy fog at Cadboro Bay beach...

...and then we returned to Willows Beach...

...for munchies.

Donations received from the Victoria event go towards the local InspireHealth Integrated Cancer Care centre, and today we raised over $22,000.
It's not too late to help -- you can still donate by clicking here.


In support of Bobby, Ann, and Karen.
In memory of Pauline, Jaan, and Sam.

Trip length: 6.98 km
YTD: 48.64 km
More pictures are here.

Kookaburra Kingfisher

It's been great to get on the water more, as the weather is cooling into what promises to be a nice, mild autumn. When I was a kid, we used to call this kind of weather 'Indian summer' -- short warm rain squalls, golden bright afternoons and the feeling that winter was a million miles away. It's great to go kayaking in this weather, since there are fewer people on the beach. The water is beginning to clear and that makes it interesting to noodle along the shoreline.

It was so calm and bright a couple of times this week that when I watched a heron flying out to go fishing, I lost him in the sun and had to watch his reflection instead on the sea's surface. The belted kingfishers that live along the shore in Cadboro Bay come out to scold me along -- they swoop ahead of me and once I pass them, dart back where I've been. Check out this photo I borrowed from a bird identification website, showing a female belted kingfisher! That site also has a recording of the kingfisher's distinctive call.

This photo is from the All About Birds website by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

The kingfishers remind me of photos I've seen of kookaburras in Australia. The kookaburras are larger, and their call is more like a monkey's laughter than a kingfisher's churr and chitter. So my song for this week on the water has been one we used to sing with the twins: Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree, merry merry king of the bush is he... So yeah, I had to go find a video of a zookeeper talking about kookaburras.

Under my kayak, there are so many anemones of various kinds -- white, pinkish and brownish -- that I resolve to let this be the season of anemones. Just as two years ago was the summer of ducks in which I learned to tell a teal from a merganser and a widgeon, this fall and winter I will try to learn the names of various anemones. I wonder if the orange star-shapes I saw in the shallows at low tide were another kind of anemone... more happy researching to do!

When I turned round to paddle back, there was my trail left on the calm water: a series of little bubbles, any one of which or clump of which wouldn't draw attention. But a careful look would see the dot-and-dash Morse code of where my paddle had disturbed the surface. Maybe a light film of algae or plankton makes the bubbles last longer than a few moments.

The kingfisher scolded me again, then she swooped down low enough to pass through the islets of the little rock garden, skimming the water. No trail left on the water by the bird's passage!

New Ramp at Cadboro-Gyro Park!

Great news from Cadboro-Gyro Park! The Saanich municipal work crew has installed a new wheelchair ramp down from the promenade to the beach. You can read about the new ramp here at the Saanich website. There are several wide sets of concrete stairs down from the raised promenade of pounded gravel, and the crew has poured a concrete ramp over one set of stairs. There's an article about the wheelchair ramp on the Victoria News website.

John took these photos showing the mesh part of the ramp!

At the low end of the ramp, the crew has also installed a wide strip of mesh across the dry sand, down to the waterline at high tide. The mesh is quite firm, and it's easy to see sand falling through or being brushed off, leaving a good surface for wheelchairs.

But it's not just a ramp for wheelchairs -- this ramp will be useful for families with strollers, and for people who find even a small stair to be a problem. It's possible to walk off the lower end of the mesh onto firm, damp sand. This ramp will improve waterside access for anyone who can handle a little salt & sand but finds loose sand and beach logs to be an unsteady barrier underfoot.

And as an added bonus for boat users, this new wheelchair ramp will make an excellent launch ramp! I'm not the only kayaker who has trouble reaching the beach by walking over the promenade and beach logs. With a kayak on my shoulder, I'm unsteady on my feet when a breeze comes up. Even if there are two of us carrying a kayak, I've stumbled when a driftwood log shift under my feet. When I'm launching at Cadboro Bay's Gyro Park, I walk to the boat launch at the end of the promenade. That boat ramp has a little pounded gravel at the top, so the hardest part of the launch is staggering through the soft, dry sand down to the waterline.

I've already used the new wheelchair ramp a couple of times while kayaking, and it's a real treat to come back from the water's edge without kicking my sandals full of dry sand that sticks all over my wet feet. The high water mark will move higher on the shore when winter comes, and there will be storms too. We'll just have to see how well the ramp lasts when driftwood logs roll across it in a storm. Apparently the mesh is supposed to be removed during the winter, and replaced in the spring.

A Family Affair

A sunny Tuesday. Well, it's supposed to be. But there's some fog at our launch point at Cadboro Bay.


We've got a big group on the water today. Louise and I were joined by my sister Brenda who is hosting my great-nephew Michael who is honeymooning here with his new bride Gwylan. Michael is the grandson of my sister Ann who lived back east but passed away last winter, and he and I have never met. We had a great dinner at Brenda's last night trading stories about Ann, although it was kind of weird hearing one of my sisters referred to as "Grandma."
Thanks to Paula, who also joined us on the water today, we were able to get ourselves as well as Brenda, Michael and Gwylan on the water for a nice gentle paddle from Cadboro Bay to Cattle Point. Paula used her Eliza, and lent us her Pamlico and two inflatables, setting a personal record for having four of her kayaks on the water at once.


I showed off the amazingly scenic Juan de Fuca Strait!

Okay, you'll have to trust me on that.

The fog came and went and came and went, but eventually went. The geese didn't care one way or the other.


Apart from the geese, we didn't see much in the way of wildlife at first, something we've noticed on other foggy days. Sometimes I think all the animals just sleep in on foggy days. Can't say I blame them.


Eventually we did see a few seals tanning on a rock...

...and after a quick crossing to Flower Island...

...we saw a few more.



Awesome day on the water with awesome people -- that's how you spend a Tuesday!


Trip length: 6.20 km
YTD: 41.66 km
More pictures are here.

Seal of Disapproval

There's no question that our kayaking mojo has been absent this year. We've just gone through the driest and most sunshiniest month ever recorded in these parts and we only kayaked twice. Part of the problem is we spent the earlier part of the year nursing minor aches and pains, and dealt with some energy-sapping family matters. But those are winding down now, and we're feeling relatively healthy, so we're trying to get back in to the paddling swing again. And although it was overcast when we arrived at Cadboro Bay beach, the weatherman promised that it would burnoff and the sun would out soon.
And the weatherman always keeps his promises, right?


Paula joined Louise and myself and we headed out hoping that the weatherman would indeed keep his promises. And it looked like he just might. As we paddled along the north side of the by, the thin cloud layer began to abate.


This heron was enjoying the morning almost as much as we were.


We reached Flower Island and paddled around the far side of the island where a pair of eagles were resting.

One flew off to sit in a tree....

...while one seemed quite content to sit in the sun.


While I drifted away checking out the eagles, Louise was having a close encounter of her own.

A seal had taken an interest in her and was following close behind her, diving and swimming under her boat.

Louise reported that it was swimming up to her, diving, turning upside down and looking up here. She spent a few minutes mesmerized as it swan and performed in the underwater sunlit rays.

From Flower, we crossed to Jemmy Jones Island with the intention of paddling around it, but as we closed in, we could hear seals barking and we could see young seals at both ends of the island. We decided to forgo paddling around and leave the young ones in peace.


Instead, we paddled towards the end of Ten Mile Point and played around in a cove that only exists at low tide. Normally, this would be a series of small to medium-sized channels, but not today. We spent a few minutes floating around checking out the sponges and seaweed.


After a while, a mother seal and her baby entered the channel.

They seemed calm at first, but clearly baby seal was interested in us and kept trying to get closer. Mother seal kept swimming in front of the baby and nudging it away from us.

Finally, she popped up right in front of me, and with an exasperated splash let us know that we were no longer welcome.

Even though we were in the cove first, we weren't going to argue the point and quickly moved away.
Afterwards, we discussed whether the seal was being overtly aggressive or not. We concluded that the seals must have been somewhat curious as they had clearly approached us -- made a straight line for me at one point -- but mom had obviously determined that we had overstayed in their area and gave a polite but firm warning.

So we took the hint and headed back, past Flower Island, where the eagle was still in the tree.


Trip length: 6.43 km
YTD: 35.46 km
More pictures are here.

Testing A Rowboat

Got a chance to help a friend with her first test paddle of a new boat! It wasn't a kayak, though -- it was an inflatable rowboat.
Some inflatable rowboats are simply nothing more than pool toys for little kids to play with in shallow water while being watched by attentive lifeguards. Others are darned near as tough as a Zodiac and cost nearly as much. My friend likes to find something better than a pool toy and more affordable than a Zodiac, and it looks like her newest boat has the qualities she needs.
It takes only a few minutes to unpack this rowboat and inflate it. Behold! Intex's new model, the Seahawk 2. It's a nice enough boat to deserve a proper set of oars and a big doublestroke air pump. Looks about nine feet long and big enough to hold two people. Here it is, sitting on the lawn next to my little inflatable, an older version of an Advanced Elements Lagoon.

We carried our boats down to the shore and launched. My friend does a floating launch to avoid wear-and-tear on the rubber boat, but I wasn't able to get a video of the launch technique.
What a good day for a test paddle! The sun was bright without being too hot, the beach had several people yet wasn't over-crowded, and there were just a few ruffled wavelets as the breeze picked up. Over the next hour and a half we paddled along the bay shore and drifted, relaxing and letting the boats drift.

Test subject confirms the boat is large enough to recline with either head or feet elevated!

The verdict? This model is a reasonable choice of rowboat, very affordable, and it packs up small enough to carry on a bus or tuck easily into a car's trunk. Plus, if there's only one person in it, there's plenty of room for fishing gear and maybe a cooler full of a picnic. Must make plans for the future!

Along the Shore

It's interesting to compare summer paddling with winter paddling. The biggest difference? To me, it's not the temperature, even though our mild winters are still cool enough that the few shivering people walking along the promenade or beach at Cadboro Bay's Gyro Park are staring at me in a shortie wetsuit with bare feet, tucking my sandals into my little inflatable kayak. The summer temperatures are usually mild, too, though we've had some days already which were hot enough that friends left their dry suits at home and joined me by paddling in light clothes (shorts & shirt suitable for swimming if we tipped over in sheltered water).
So, it's not the temperature or how it changes our gear. The big difference is the number of people! It's almost as if there were some kind of announcement that said "It's summer! You're supposed to go to the beach!" The beach visitors don't stay long... not all of them. Many of them look so winter-pale that this might be the first time in months that they've been outside for longer than the time it takes to walk from door to car or bus. (I will acknowledge here that I look similarly pale; it takes moving a bracelet I wear every day to show that sonufagun, I do have a tan.)
The increased shoreline population affects our kayaking in a couple of ways. The first way is the portage across a crowded beach, or a beach that seems crowded when one is trying not to slap a sunbathing stranger with the stern of my kayak. Dogwalking strangers are usually able to dodge.
The second way is the brief conversation with somebody or other at the water's edge about the kayak, gear, clothes, weather, destinations, or boats in general. If you ever feel lonely for someone to talk with, get a kayak -- because then strangers will feel inclined to stop beside your boat and say all kinds of things until you wave and paddle away for a few minutes of quiet on the water. If the strangers comment on the currents just past the end of the point, it's clear that they have actually been out here in a boat themselves, and so the conversation is more fun. But I can't really complain about kayaks attracting strangers, not when I paddle distinctive boats. All small boats are worthy of attention, but my inflatables inspire covetous comments and my sea kayak is bright pink and locally designed for smaller paddlers, so there!
The third way that the increased shoreline population affects our kayaking is the number of interactions goes way up -- and not just interactions with people, but with other living things! There are migrating birds lounging about in their summer homes, bringing out newly-fledged babies. There are thousands of little fish visible, darting in the shallows under the boat or splashing ahead and making little rings on the water. Mink and otter scrabble along the rocks or swim with their dark heads looking like the floats of bullwhip kelp. It's hard to imagine how many other living things are barely visible, like the sea stars wedging themselves into cracks, or the sea anemones ten feet down and visible only when curtains of seaweed billow aside. If the tide and sunlight are right, it's possible in some places to see red rock crabs stalking sideways across sandy bottoms where a few vent holes show that there's something living in the muck, maybe big geoduck clams or some kind of bristly marine worm.
The two biggest differences this week? That's easy. One day I saw seven humans along the rocky shoreline where nice houses tower over the water. It's a rare day when there's more than one person out in those waterfront properties. What was especially rare was that I don't think any of the seven were hired gardeners; these were actual residents and their guests enjoying these homes and yards.
And the other difference was a new boat. New to me anyway, and it also looked new. It was a Whitehall Spirit rowing scull, their Solo 14 model. It was anchored off Stein Island. The name written on the stern was The Crimson, a terrifically appropriate name, as the scull was brilliantly red. Awesome.

Kids and Dogs

Had time this morning for a quick paddle with friends. Darren came by to pick up a barbecue from Bernie, and brought his sons Jeffrey and Thomas and their dog along. This was a recipe for a good summer morning!

When they arrived, I had both my inflatable and the Mini-Tripper waiting on the lawn, with all the gear needed.  While the dog ran around and renewed its acquaintance with the landlady's dog, the boys carried the green boat to shore behind me. Cadboro Bay was calm and bright and summer-warm.

It's good to see people in the Mini-Tripper who are the right size for it! This is definitely a boat for a kid. At eleven and nine, these boys are the right size. Since we won this boat in a raffle at the Paddlefest two years ago, it's been nice to have around for kids to take out in quiet conditions.

We noodled along the shore for about half an hour, while the dogs splashed in the shallows and Bernie & Darren solved a few of the world's problems. Good times. Next time, we'll bring more boats to the shore, so both boys can paddle at the same time as their dad and me.

Hummingbird! and Heron Diva

This weekend I kept out of the way of the stand-up-paddleboard race in Cadboro Bay's Gyro Park, and took my little inflatable over by the yacht club. It was a good opportunity to check out the yachts, which apparently multiply in summer weather. I guess a number of people get their boats out of the yard, or maybe come along to this bay from other places now that it's summer.
Low tide was really low on Saturday... but hey, that's what's going to happen when the full moon comes close to the summer solstice. It was a good opportunity for me to go along the shoreline looking for stone bowls. There are plenty of bowls at a Willows Beach site, but so far I haven't found any in Cadboro Bay along the intertidal rocks.
A hummingbird did come by, though, and buzz around the wet rocks for a while. I've never seen one over the water before. There's nothing for hummingbirds to eat for several yards along the Uplands shoreline, but there are flowers in the gardens. That must be where the bird flitted away to.
Back at the beach, there was a photographer with a large-lensed camera on a tripod, carefully taking photos of a great blue heron. The bird was elegantly stalking along, hunting the little stickleback fingerling fishes that darted around in the shallows. It became apparent that the heron was well aware of the photographer, and "working" the camera with all the aplomb of a high-fashion model. Stride, stride, vogue, stride, pose. Herons don't have a good side -- they look fabulous from every angle.
Another pleasant paddle outing on an ordinary day -- with birds.

Line 'Em Up!

Got out on the water with my friend Nicole the other day. This wasn't her first time in a kayak, if you count paddling round a quiet lake (and yup, I count it!) at her family cabin. But it was her first time on salt water, and she hadn't been in a canoe or kayak for a long while, so we took out my double kayak.
Okay, it's a sit-on-top, not a sea kayak, but it's still a nice ride when I'm not sure how hard the bow paddler wants to work after the first half hour. The StraitEdge2 is a good, stable ride on flat water... and one day our paddle group will have to take it out on a day that's bumpy. Or maybe we'll take it down a Class 1 river.

This tough inflatable is holding up well, even though it is no longer new.

This day was a nice quiet day on Cadboro Bay, with barely any breeze or ripples on the water. Nicole and I carried the boat to shore, followed the beach along to the cliffs on the east shore, and began seeing a marvelous line-up of wildlife.
First were the sea anemones. There are a lot more of the white and brown sea anemones living along this rocky shore now than there were five years ago. Since the tide was out, there were several places where anemones were only five or six feet down. It was easy to find them! Nicole was charmed to get a good look at the cauliflower-shaped anemones, and even more when we found sea stars clinging to some rocks. These were ochre stars, in their purple colour phase.
As we went along the shore, past Stein Island and around Flower Island, we saw more sea stars than I've seen before along this shore. That was pretty neat for Nicole's first time kayaking in the bay. Even better was when she turned round and spotted the head of a little harbour seal bobbing behind us. Could this be Mama Seal who comes out often when I'm paddling here? I think so: slim, grey, and spotted.
With almost no breeze, it was a good day to go round Flower Island. Though we didn't spot any otters today, their little trails were visible in the brush under the trees. It was while drifting along here that we saw the biggest animal in the day's wildlife line-up. A splash just offshore in the current told us that a big seal was fishing. It came up, and looped back down again, showing an impressive length of brown flank. A sea-lion! We don't see those every day, but it was far too large to be a harbour seal. It could even have been a young elephant seal, but that was less likely than a sea-lion.

Coming back, I sent a SPOT message so that it could be forwarded to Nicole later. Herons flew past as we returned to the beach, and the day looked a little brighter than it had when we set out. All in all, good time on the water and good hot chocolate at Olive Olio's afterward.

It's Oystercatcher Season!

Well, I think it's oystercatcher season, anyway. It's spring, the air is just a little too cool for crowds, and the wind has finally dropped after a migraine-inducing weather front that blew in big gusts of wind.
One of the things I like best about my little inflatable is noodling along shorelines, coming close to the kelp-covered rocks where the oystercatchers are scrambling around. Charming birds -- black as a crow or raven, but with bright eyes, red beak, and pink legs. And as if that weren't enough, they squeak. Honest. Cutest little sound on the shoreline.
No photos today. Check out artist Anne Hansen's blog for her dynamic and striking paintings of oystercatchers and other shoreline life.

Getting Better All The Time

Got to admit, the weather is getting better for paddling comfortably. It's cool enough that there aren't swimmers everywhere, the water is still pretty clear, and wearing my wetsuit is still comfortable. I like this weather!
Plus, a beautiful fogbank blew in while I was paddling on Good Friday. As I came back to the shore at Cadboro Bay's Gyro Park beach, two people walking came up to me. Pam and Caroline both enthused about how they watched me approaching the shore, bringing the mists behind me.
Then, of course, they had to enthuse about my little inflatable kayak... several minutes were spent here praising the merits of kayaks in general, and this model or its big brothers in particular. I never even got a chance to tell them what I'd seen on this paddle outing -- three invertebrates that I rarely see, and one that along this shore isn't usually nearly this big!
Invertebrates sounds so cool... I nearly named this post after them, but thought better of it. Four sluggy creepy beasts sounds soooooo less technical and interesting than four invertebrates. But there you have it. Plain language doesn't always have the zip and pizzazz of highfaluting precise language. So here goes for descriptions of the three sluggy and one prickly friends I saw while drifting on the water. (And for those who don't speak highfalutin', invertebrate means "animal with no backbone" which includes a whole range of kinds of animal from bugs to slugs and sea stars.)

The first invertebrate I saw was a sea cucumber, which had stuffed itself between a couple of rocks on Evans Rock, right about where I saw the gray whale two summers ago. We've seen only one sea cucumber before while out paddling, and that was about half a mile away from Evans Rock in the Chain Islets. During one low tide back in 2007, a group of us paddled to the Chains and Bernie found a large orange sea cucumber, grazing on kelp, which John photographed. The little sea cucumber I saw this time was similarly orange, but short and very bright in colour, with a flare of gills showing like a frilly flower.

photo from Wikipedia

The second invertebrate -- and the prickly one -- was a sea star. Most starfish we see here along the shore of Cadboro Bay are the kind that our fellow paddler Alison Sinclair identified as ochre stars, or Pisaster ochraeous, bright orange or purple, up to the size of a big man's hand. Once a year or two a giant sunstar, pink or pale orange and about two feet across, can be seen creeping along a rock shelf on the bottom near Flower Island. This time what I saw as I paddled around Flower Island was a purple sea star that was over a foot across. Wow! It was clinging to a rock exposed at low tide, unconcerned when I came by and petted its rough back.

yup, another photo from Wiki

The third invertebrate was a sea slug, or nudibranch, about as long as my hand, clinging to the eelgrass growing in the channel between Flower Island and the point. Oh yeah! I drifted past it, spun round and went back to get another look at it, some three or four feet down. I've seen only one or two of them before -- one was a bright red slug the size of my thumbnail, in a tidal pool at Botanical Beach on the west coast. We've seen the eggs of nudibranchs while paddling in Portage Inlet, but the actual sluggy creatures have been harder to see. This one was a little different from the local land slugs and the red one I saw thirty years ago: it was not smooth-backed, but looked almost like an African pygmy hedgehog, if a hedgehog could be squoodgy like a slug. Apparently it was a type of nudibranch called an Aeolidia papillosa, based on what I read at Wikipedia.

The fourth invertebrate was actually one of several sea anemones ... I lost count at five or six. They were ten or more feet down. These were the big white anemones with fronds like heads of cauliflower, and each anemone was about a foot long, from its base to its open fronds. When I do see an anemone like this in the bay, it's six or eight feet down even at low tide, and usually alone. It was great to see the group of anemones about two feet apart, with their fronds open and waving.

So, even though it was a pleasant cool day, with coots and hooded mergansers and a merganser, a cormorant, a pair of oystercatchers and a pair of soaring eagles, the best part for me was that there was plenty to see going by under my kayak as well as flying past. It was a surprise to hear the foghorn grunting, and see the fogbank coming my way from the Chathams. It's so good to think about more living things in the bay than we've ever seen before. It looks like the waters of the bay are more suitable for more invertebrates now than even five years ago! Perhaps the water is cleaner, or perhaps the river otters are eating enough sea urchins that more kelp is growing to support the web of sea life.