Return to The Little Group

The ground hog did say six WEEKS, right? Not six MONTHS? The Spring That Never Came grinds on, with day-time highs well below normal and forecast to remain that way at least until the middle of May. The furnace is still coming on at night, for #$%#'s sake!

But today seemed more like a sunny summer day as Louise and I met Paula in Sidney to kayak out to The Little Group, a small clump of rocky islands and rocks that we haven't visited in quite some time.

We put in at the beach at the beach at the of Ardwell Road. As we left Roberts Bay, something very big broke the surface beside Paula a couple of times. We guessed it was a sea lion.
As we arrived at our first stop at Ker Island, we saw an eagle dive-bombing some geese. I thought it was a bit odd, as I wouldn't think an eagle go after something that big. Then again, we've seen an eagle after it brought down a raccoon on a previous paddle. The eagle flew off across the channel and we lost track of it for a moment. Suddenly, all the geese in the area took off and flew squawking and honking towards a small pocket beach where the eagle had landed. It had caught something, we weren't sure what. But whatever was going on, the geese were in a commotion. Finally, the eagle had had enough, and took off.

It obviously has something, was it a fish or a gosling? We didn't see any goslings around.

Maybe the eagle had got a small duck....

...but these harlequin ducks didn't seem too perturbed.

From there we headed to a couple of islets where we played a bit in the currents. We stopped in front of a rock outcropping that we call The Sphinx.

From there we carried on to Dock Island, where we found a few eagles relaxing.




We headed back and passed a rock near Ker Island that was covered in seals.


We gave them a wide clearance as its probably birthing season right now.

As we went by Ker Island on our return, right at the point that the eagle was hunting earlier, we finally saw some goslings...

....which confirmed for us that that's what the eagle had caught earlier.


And all too soon our paddle was over.


Trip Length: 9.31 km
YTD: 60.23 km
More pictures are here.

Coal Island Again

Today, Louise and I returned for a another paddle around Coal Island, this time bringing Paula who missed our first paddle there.


Do you think that I have enough gear on my deck?


We decided to follow the same route that we took last time, and explore some of the islands before crossing to Coal.


We didn't see a lot in the way of wildlife today, although I did mange to annoy this heron....



...and Paula kept watch on a seal. Or was it the other way around?


The winds were coming up and the tides were ebbing, and we discovered that the currents between the islands were running a little too much for our liking. There were a few whorls and eddies, some standing waves, and even a few small standing breakers. We decided to change our route and stick to the first channel near the mainland and cross the more open water of Swartz Bay to go to Coal Island.


This left us a little more exposed to ferry traffic, but we knew when to expect them and I figured we would pass one as we passed Coal Island. As we approached Coal, we could see one coming the other way. We ducked into the lee of the island to wait for it to pass.


Paula was further out than I was and she let a out a big "Whoop!" as it passed us.


In fact, she paddled out very close to it.


Well, no, not really. The foreshortening of the zoom lens makes it look as if she was closer than she was.


The winds were not subsiding, and as we went around the point of Coal Island and began to head back, we were into some chop. And then I heard the Coast Guard on my radio announcing that a gale warning had just been posted, just at the half-way point of out paddle. This paddle might turn very interesting indeed!


We continued around Coal -- what else could we do? In the end, we did fine. We avoided the nastiest looking currents, and easily handled most of the chop. Only on the last crossing of the paddle when the winds came up again and the waves were a little choppier and coming across us sideways were some of our stomachs starting to feel it. No one felt nauseous or anything, but some of us agreed that a long paddle in such waves could have been a real adventure, especially once the puking started.
But today's paddle had no such issues, and was great fun!



John's pictures are here.

Coal Island

Yes, the rumours are true - finally we got some sunny weather here on the coast. And on the weekend, no less. (I even sun-burned my nose.)
So on this sunny day, Louise, Alison, Richard and myself headed out to do something that none of us had ever done: circumnavigate Coal Island. As Richard noted, it was the blind leading the blind....


As you can see, the tide was really low, which made for a slog in the mud to get to the water and get going, but once we headed out, the water was flat and calm and the weather gods continued to smile on us. We moved out of the bay, and crossed the entrance to the harbour north of where we launched. After that we faced two small channels to cross before getting to Coal Island, and we decided to explore the first channel instead of making a direct crossing. This was a good choice as we paddled around some beautiful islands and shoreline before crossing over to Coal.


Everyone was enjoying the lovely weather - even this seagull on the pole....


...and these seals on a rock. We also saw what we think was an otter or a beaver climb up onto the island from the water.
We figured that we should have been facing a flooding current -- that's what the current charts indicated -- but here it was on the ebb. In fact, the currents always seemed to be going in a direction we weren't expecting them to. It was not such an issue on a calm like today, but something to remember if we're here on days that are a little rougher.


We made it to the far tip of Coal Island when something came across in front of us. Suddenly Richard's kayak didn't seem so big anymore.
Since the big ferries from Vancouver travel along the north side Coal Island on their approach to the Swartz Bay Terminal, we knew that we had about an hour to make our way across that side of the island without having to worry about the next one.


The north side of Coal was beautiful, the water was clear. We saw some eagles fly by here, but no pictures, alas.



As we rounded the next point and started back, we spotted an eagle landing in a tree. I paddled in for a closer look and saw that it was perched in a nest. There were actually two eagles in there (I could only ever got one in a shot), and it sounded like some baby eagles were in the nest, too.


Then we saw a number of strange rock formations. It looked like someone had either built rock walls extending in to the ocean, or someone had dug back from the shore to expose these walls. It could very well have been a natural formation, but the "walls" and the "cuts" just seemed a bit too regular to be natural. This particular wall has had a bite taken out of it.


We decided to take the scenic route back and visit The Little Group....


...where the seals were hanging out.

What a great paddle!


Trip length: 10.6 km.
My GPS ran out of batteries....here's Richard's GPS track.
John's pictures are here.
Richard's pictures are here.
Richard's blog report is here.

The Little Group

Unlike yesterday when the weather played out almost exactly as the weatherman predicted, today the weatherman's prognostications were less than stellar. It was supposed to be mostly clear this morning, sunny in fact. But as we arrived at our launch point in Roberts Bay in Sidney, it was lightly raining and clearly not, er, clear.

But we kayakers are hardy souls, so we headed out with a wary eye on the uncertain weather. It was Richard, Alison, Paula, Louise and myself today.

We passed by this marker that was festooned with cormorants. One provided a little comedy relief as he must have thought that I was venturing too close. He jumped off the marker and landed in the water to escape, but he was paying so much attention to me that he didn't notice that he had in landed in the water dead center in the middle of five kayaks. After a moment he suddenly realized that he had indeed jumped from the frying pan and into the fire, and he took off quickly!

We headed out towards what we call amongst ourselves the Sidney Islands, but are really called The Little Group. It's a small archipelago that can be used as a stepping stone to the islands that are further out. We had been thinking about going around Coal Island -- the currents weren't particularly strong today -- but we really weren't too sure about the weather, so we thought it best to save that for another day.

These two guys didn't mind the weather...

...but it was sure concerning us. It didn't seem to be getting any worse, but it wasn't getting any better, either. We were getting some light squalls and dark clouds passing us. At least we didn't get much in the way of wind.

After we explored The Little Group a bit, we decided to cross to Coal Island. The weather was clearing a bit now, but there was some *ahem* spirited discussion before we made the crossing. You can see that it's not terribly warm out. There's snow in them thar hills.

The crossing to Coal went well and we paddled along the shore for a bit, past this old boathouse.

We crossed back to the mainland and checked out a harbour.

A heron posed for me....

...and a goose, too.

These homes are on pilings. They may survive the rise of the oceans due to climate change, but I sure wouldn't want to be around them when the Big Earthquake hits.

A blustery but fun day on the water.

Trip length: 10.7 km
John's photo's are here.
Richard's photo's are here.
Richard's blog report is here.
Post #300 on this blog. Woo hoo!