Switching to Glide

Today was a rare mid-week paddle as Louise, Paula and I met at Cadboro Bay Beach to kayak out to Chatham Island.


Although somewhat overcast and rainfall warnings out for various spots along the coast, we had totally calm conditions. A higher than normal tide had come in and was going to be hanging around for most of the day.
And oddly, even though it was cloudy and hazy, the conditions allowed us the rare treat of seeing all three mainland mountain ranges (The Cascades, The Olympics, and the Coast Range), and two volcanoes. Mount Baker was plainly visible as it often is...

...but towards the south-east we could barely make out the cone of Mount Rainier about 200 km away.
We paddled out along Ten Mile Point...

...and out towards Jemmy Jones Island...

...where this eagle watched over our journey.


As we crossed from Jemmy Jones to Chatham, a couple of Navy ships crossed our path, first the HMCS Cougar...

...followed a few minutes later by the HMCS Moose.

These are Orca-class patrol vessels generally used for training and support surveillance. (Destroy these pictures right away, just in case Homeland Security comes knocking.)

At Chatham, we cruised down a channel and quickly discovered where all the seals were hiding.

Even if there isn't much current out in the open water like today, there's always some between the islands that make up the Chatham/Discovery group. We just pulled out our paddles and glided by the seals resting on the small rock outcroppings.




After puttering around Chatham...

...we crossed to the Chain Islands....

...where we found more seals...


...then reluctantly headed back to shore.


Trip Length: 12.45 km
YTD: 220.08 km
More pictures are here.

The Kind of Day We Live For

Yesterday was the kind of day we live for.
We had spring in winter, then winter for the first part of spring. But now it looks like summer might finally be approaching as we had a paddling day under clear warm skies for the first time since I don't know when.


Before we began, Louise and Paula compared toe-nail colours. Louise was in teal and Paula in silver. My toe-nails were going commando.


Tracy joined us as well (she declined to mention what colour her toe-nails were), and the four of us put in at Cadboro Bay for a paddle out to Chatham and Discovery Islands. We were facing a mild flood tide that wasn't really going to amount to anything, a perfect day to explore this small off shore island group.


At Chatham, we noodled around and explored. We thought we saw Richard paddling ahead of us. He was supposed to join us for today's paddle, but by the time we were ready to launch there was no sign of him. (Were his toe-nails still wet? If that was the case, they must have dried eventually because he did make it out after us.)




Whoever it was, we never caught up to him.
We paddled between Chatham and Discovery, then decided to do what we call the Grand Tour and cross over to the Chain Islands.

Here, we saw a few seals. We gave them a wide clearance as it's seal birthing season.



From there we returned to Cadboro Bay for a happy landing...

...and a big cup of coffee.




Trip length: 12.73 km
YTD: 61.46
More pictures are here.
The Google Earth kmz is here.

Who was that zooming paddler?

Augh, technology sometimes hiccups. And yesterday this note got posted with just a title and the text deleted.
As it turns out, the person who commented was, in fact, the zooming paddler, Mike Jackson.
Y'see, Wednesday 9:00 am saw me out on the water with Richard, both of us setting a nice modest pace on the very gradual swells. There was a breeze as we set out from Cadboro Bay's Gyro Park towards Willows Beach, but it didn't pick up while we were out.
The swells did pick up a bit around Cattle Point, but that's always a place where the water moves in funny ways. It evened out on Oak Bay, and roughed up a little on the outside of Mary Tod Island, but still nothing much. That's where we saw half a dozen paddlers setting out towards the Chain Islets.
On our way back across Oak Bay is when Rich noticed the kayaker heading out from Cadboro Bay at a good speed. Gotta say, nice cadence, nice form, and though he didn't look like he was sprinting he kept up a speed more like MY sprinting speed than what I was doing then... Who was that zooming paddler? Rich kept looking for the hidden motor.
We figured it might be Mike Jackson, and sure enough, it was. Later that evening I checked Mike's blog (one of many listed over on the right hand column of our blog) and it turns out that was him. His GPS tracking says he was doing only about 5 km/hr between the Uplands and the Chains, but I think it was more like 7.
But that was later. Rich and I kept up our leisurely pace, enjoying the swells, and talked our way through solving several of the world's problems. Back on shore, we went for coffee with Bernie, talked about family and the Christmas season. Then it was time for the library.
Gotta say, this was a good winter day. Hope the new year holds many good days for all!

There and Back. Again.

We've had a bit of a small heatwave over the last few days, but it looks to finally break today. Although still warm and humid, thin clouds rolled in overnight, a foreshadowing of the rain and cooler temperatures to come over the next few days before the sun and hot summer weather returns later in the week.


Louise, Paula and I put in at Cadboro Bay under those thin clouds to kayak out to Chatham Island.


We weren't the only folks hitting the water this morning. Down the beach we saw Mike Jackson and a couple of friends launching. Mike's heading out in a new Tahe Greenland that he's been raving about on his blog.


There wasn't much wildlife out as we kayaked down Ten Mile Point except for lots of geese and they really weren't doing anything particularly interesting, although we occasionally saw quick glimpses of stealthy otters.
The water was dead flat at the start of our paddle, just perfect conditions for the crossing to Chatham.


There wasn't much wildlife at Chatham either. Only a small ᐃᓄᒃᓱᒃ (inukshuk), silently staring out to sea.


From Chatham, we decided to go for the grand tour and crossed over to the Chain Islands, keeping our eyes out for seals. As we approached, we saw that the rocks and islets were bereft of seals, with one exception. For some reason a large group were congregating on this rock. From our angle of approach, these were the only seals we could see and we were quite baffled as to why they would all be crowded here.


We soon found others, of course, and most were lazily enjoying their Sunday morning.



The current carried us towards a rock with a couple of baby seals on it. We paddled wide to give them plenty of clearance, but as we drifted by I took out my camera to try to get a shot. I wasn't getting a good angle for a picture, so I lowered my camera for a moment. Suddenly a seal's head popped up right behind Louise. I quickly turned to take a picture but only got the "plop" of the water as he went back under.

I turned back to the baby seals, and that's when Louise's seal popped up again, this time right in front of me as I pressed the shutter! What a ham!




Trip length: 11.53 km
YTD: 158.89
My pictures are here.
The Google Earth kmz is here.

Smooth Paddlin'

It's fair to say that summer's here. (Yeah, you're right -- I've probably jinxed the weather now.) A beautiful and balmy Sunday morning greeted Louise and myself as we arrived at Cadboro Bay. It was just going to be the two of us today as Richard was up at Tofino, and Bernie and Paula had made other plans.
We had planned for a relatively short and simple plan of just kayaking around Cadboro Bay with our cameras and taking pictures. But as noted over at frogma last week, plans can change because it's a "pretty nice day out there, y'know?"


The picture-taking paddle plan didn't start off so well, as somehow I'd left my main camera at home. That would be my waterproof Pentax Optio W60 that I keep in my PFD pocket. Fortunately I often take three cameras with me, the number two camera being a bigger but non-waterproof Sony DSC-H9 that I keep in a dry bag under my skirt. (Camera number three is an Optio W10 that I usually mount somewhere on the kayak and set for interval shooting.) But things turned out okay; the water was so flat and calm today that I was able to get my Sony out with little concern about it getting wet.
We started our paddle as we often do by paying our respects to the Buddha. Someone has placed a happy Buddha on the rocky shore smiling out over the bay, and we often stop and greet it as we head out from the beach.

And here's a picture taken by me of Louise taking a picture of me taking a picture of me taking a picture of the Buddha. (And you think you're confused....)


We spent the first part of the paddle meandering through the rocks along Ten Mile Point.


Gosh, that's a fine looking Delta 17 Sport. (Now can we get some Delta hats, Mark?)


It wasn't long until we spotted a literal gaggle of geese. If these were the same babies we spotted a couple of weeks ago, they sure have grown quickly.

I counted eight adults, so I presume that this is four different families of goslings having a vegetarian breakfast. There were many geese families around today. After we watched this group, the next little cove revealed another group of three families swimming together.


We reached the end of Ten Mile Point which was going to be our limit today, but it was just too nice out there to stop. So we pressed on past Flower and Jemmy Jones Islands, and crossed over to Chatham Island. As we paddled across, others were enjoying the great conditions, too.



The crossing to Chatham was about the easiest we've ever made. There was no current to speak of and despite all the sailboats that were out, there was hardly any wind. It really was just perfect.


At Chatham we found, yes, more geese. But interestingly, no goslings. We found a small piece of shore where a lot of these baby-less geese were hanging out. I started to wonder if this spot was like a "geese singles's bar" and these were the last stragglers who were commiserating with each other just before closing time that they didn't get lucky.


I don't think this oystercatcher was buying into my idea about the geese at all.


It was so nice that we didn't want to head back, so we opted for The Grand Tour and so we left Chatham....

...and crossed over to the Chain Islands.



Normally this little archipelago is covered in seals but not today, although there were a few scattered throughout the rocks. These seals were totally mesmerized by this seagull's moves. It's not everyday you get to watch a seagull play charades. (The answer is "The Karate Kid".)


However we did see a lot of -- you guessed it -- baby geese.


As we headed back, we could see that the bay was filled with boats of all kinds. Ocean River Sports had a group of Kayakers out at Sheep Cove, and another big group was launching from the beach. And the bay was filled with sailboats.


And we followed the geese home. Just another magical day on the water!




Trip length: 11.84
YTD: 107.96
More pictures are here.
The Google Earth kmz is here.