Apparently, It's Easy Being Green After All

A gloriously sunny day. Totally flat water. A (almost) new green kayak.
Louise and I put in at Albert Head Park for a paddle around Albert Head to Witty's Lagoon. Low tide so we knew we wouldn't be entering the Lagoon itself, but would be stopped by sandbars at its entrance.

This was Louise's first outing in her new to her green Delta Sixteen after trading in her old Delta Seventeen. It's clear from her comments on the water today that the Seventeen was totally the wrong boat for her. She clearly enjoys a boat with greater primary stability and the soft chine of her new boat fits her needs more than the sharp chine of the Seventeen. She's a happy kayaker now!


Just off the rocky beach at Albert Head, seals lazed about on a couple of small islets.


We paddled past more seals....

...until we reached the entrance to the lagoon.


We poked around the entrance, as well as some islands off-shore, but as I suspected we kept encountering sandbars just below the surface that blocked our further passage.
A heron watch us paddle by.


Heading back, a pair of deer looked down on us. There were three in total, a mom and two fawns.


We took a little shortcut through the end of the head that we unimaginatively call The Shortcut.


Paddle #1 with the green machine is a success! Looking forward to paddle #2!

Trip Length: 9.22 km
YTD: 93.25 km
More pictures are here.

...and In With The Slightly Used

Louise has finally traded in her Delta Seventeen kayak for a Delta Sixteen. She's had a love/hate relationship with it since she bought it, but in recent months hate has been winning, almost to the point that she barely wants to go kayaking anymore.
This week, she consummated a deal with the fine folks at Ocean River Sports and today she picked up one of their demo Sixteens. (And to the delight of Star Trek fans everywhere, it's green.)

We'd particularly like to give a shout-out to sales associate Georgina and the big kahuna himself Brian Henry for the exceptional customer service they gave us this week. The Ocean River team is the best!

Out With The Old.....

For Louise, today it's out with old....

...and the rest will have to wait until Saturday.....

Paula Rides the Red Deer River

My mother, regular blogger Paula Johanson, has long dreamed of kayaking the Red Deer River and seeing in person some of the amazing places where so many fossils have been found over the years.  Well, we helped launch her on Sunday and from the mud flats and intense heat we encountered it is no surprise why this area is fossil central!

 

Paula gathers her gear and loads the inflatable kayak onto it's wheeled cart as we prepare to launch.

I will let her be the one to post most of the details of her route and why she chose to paddle as she did, but here are the basics.  She is in her mid-size inflatable kayak, (I don't know the length but it's somewhere around 13ft).  She launched about 25km east of Red Deer and is expecting to land in Drumheller four days after starting.  Her paddle plan has her doing 6hrs on the water each day, but she has been making excellent time so far and was already more than halfway after only 24hrs.

 Inflating the kayak at our launch point, a small campground near the intersection of HWY 11 + HWY 21

So far she reports the trip has been excellent.  She managed to setup camp about 5min before a small thunderstorm and didn't even get soaked!  She has said there are tonnes of people on the river, which is good for her safety (kayaking alone, even with a Spot transponder is so dangerous!) but takes away some of the tranquil alone time she was hoping for.

 Paula loads the last of her gear.  The kayak was packed tight, but she is prepared for anything!

Setting up on a busy campground beach was pretty funny.  We answered dozens of questions of curious locals while their wet dogs shook water all over her gear.  But the instant she hit the water, she forgot all about us and just exploded away.  I have a pretty amazing video of her launch that I hope to post tomorrow, but don't get too excited - I still have photos of kayaks in Thailand I need to post from April!

With so much gear, the kayak was struggling a bit as it launched!  I was nervous, but once she hit the water she never looked back.

Looking at the river as we setup to launch, I can certainly see the appeal.  It was beyond beautiful out there, and I hope she is having the paddle of her life!  I go to meet her in Drumheller on Wednesday, and will try to bring my laptop with us to Calgary so I can post pictures of her triumphant return as well.

 If you look carefully, there is a teeny, tiny dot left of center at the curve in the river.  That is Paula only a few moments after launching.  She was more than ready to leave us, and the blisteringly hot beach, far behind!

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*I've had some requests to see more images.  Unfortunately, there are no more images of Paula on the river as she brought no cameras nor companions.  However, if you would like to see more about her trip, please click the label below for "Red Deer River," and you will see a list of all related articles.  If you are interested in seeing more of my photography, please check out www.froghaven.ca (sadly lacking in kayak pictures at the moment, but we are hoping to post some of our kayak yakkers in the coming months)!

Hanging With J-Pod Again

It's been a bit of a bittersweet day. Regular readers may recall that Louise and I booked a whale-watching trip a couple of weeks ago that got cancelled because of high winds out in the straits. We rescheduled for today, and we made our way to Five Star Whale Watching, based out of the historic Empress Hotel near the Inner Harbour.
Let's start by saying that the Five Star folk are indeed five star. Well organized, knowledgeable, and a clean and comfortable boat made for a wonderful adventure out on the water.
I've been eagerly waiting since our last whale watching tour last year to go out and try to photograph orcas again. Armed with a better lens, I was hoping to get some more good shots.
And I did. I think. Unfortunately, something went wrong when transferring the pictures from my camera to my computer and the last half of them vanished into the ether. No longer on my card, and not on my computer. I hate it when that happens.
So now you understand the bittersweetness. A great day on the water, marred by the loss of the best pictures of the whales, plus the loss of some great seal shots as we passed by The Chain Islands on the way back. And that really sucks, let me tell you.
On the other hand, all was not lost as some pictures did survive the transfer, and some will be of particular interest to kayakers. (That's what we call foreshadowing, folks.)

We pulled out of Victoria harbour under cloudy skies. Yesterday we set a new daily high temperature, but there's no worries about that happening today. The cloud cover thickened as we zipped south along the Dallas Road waterfront, passing some of the other vessels enjoying this holiday Monday.



The clouds darkened so much that I was starting to wonder if it was going to rain on us. But the rain stayed away, and only a slight mist from the boat's spray floated down on us.


Soon we were in American waters on the western side of San Juan Island, where we caught our first glimpse of orcas.

It's easy to tell where orcas are. Just look for where the crowds are gathered on shore, or where the whale-watching boats have gathered at sea.


Quickly, the naturalist determined we were looking at J-pod, one of the 3 local resident pods, which currently has 26 orcas. One of the orcas we were watching was identified as J27. The total number of local residents, which are considered endangered, is just under 90.


As we watched this small group of orcas, I spotted the blows from another small group further ahead. And ahead of them was a group of kayakers. Four identical doubles and a single, so I assume a kayaking tour was paddling down the coast when they got the surprise of their lives.



Wow. It doesn't matter that I lost half my shots because clearly I wasn't going to have the best shot of the day, was I? I hope they gave the tour guide a big tip for arranging that.

We followed the whales for a few more minutes, then we turned to head back.



How close is too close when you encounter whales?
Fisheries and Environment Canada recommend that vessels (and that includes kayaks) should stay a minimum 100 metres away from whales. Don't approach from in front or behind, only from the sides.

Test Drive

I don't do hot weather. It's not right to be breaking into a sweat just by typing a blog post. But we're knee-deep into a blast of hot air, and no, I don't mean there's a convention of politicians in town. Last year, we had a fan going in the house for only a total of three days. This year, we've had one going on and off for most of July, but this weekend with the humidex well into the mid-30s, we've had three going almost non-stop. Today looks to be a record breaker. If this is what global warming is going to be like, please count me out.
Ah, if it were only that easy.
Anyway, today Louise and I headed down to Ocean River so Louise could take out a Delta Sixteen on a test drive.
Here, Dennis from OR helps her get on her way, while an SUP lesson starts on the dock in the background.

She really loves this boat, and has done since she first sat in one.

Look at that smile -- she loves this boat! Is it her next boat? Stay tuned -- the answer may be forthcoming soon.

Up The Gorge

Louise and I didn't have a lot of time to paddle today, and a breeze was forecast to come up early in the afternoon, so we rolled the kayaks down the hill for a quickie for in our home waters in The Gorge.


We'd barely paddled a hundred meters before we passed a heron looking for some fishy breakfast.

It was a bumper day for herons. We couldn't swing a kayak paddle without hitting a heron. Not that we'd want to do that.
A few minutes later we spotted another one fishing. No, he was not fishing for ducks.
\

We paddled under the Craigflower Bridge (named this despite the fact that it's Admirals Road). Long-time readers will recall that the 80 year-old bridge was slated for demolition and replacement this summer, but the project has been delayed until next year due to environmental concerns about a native species of oyster.


Oh, yes, there was a heron.


After a few futile looks earlier in the year, we finally spotted the local nesting swans. Unfortunately, no baby swans survived this year.




And there were more herons.



Today was the first time Louise used the Columbia Sportswear Powerdrain shoes she won at the 2012 MEC Paddlefest a couple of weeks ago.

The water drains out of the shoes. Above, Louise has put her foot in the water while launching, while below she's lifted her foot out of the water and the water is draining out.

Louise says her feet seemed drier than in her neoprene boots and they were very comfortable to walk in. She liked the fact that her feet weren't wet for the duration of the paddle. And that sounds good to me -- gonna have to get my own pair!

Trip Length: 6.88 km
YTD: 84.03 km
More pictures are here.

Kayaking From California to Hawaii

Any day now, Wave Vidmar will begin an unsupported kayak trip from California to Hawaii (see the New York Times article, also the source of the above photo, here).
If all goes well, he will kayak the 5000 kilometers in 45 to 65 days.
Why would anyone want to something so seemingly impossible? Vidmar discusses this in a Huffington Post piece here. Also, kayaking from California to Hawaii unsupported is not impossible, as it's been done once before. In 1987, Ed Gillet paddled from Monterey to Maui, a somewhat shorter distance than Vidmar will attempt. His account of his trip is here, and here's a 2003 interview with him.
Below are two video clips, the first from 1987 of Ed being interviewed on The Tonight Show by Johnny Carson, and a second more recent clip from the TV show The Survivor Series.

Whale Not Watching

Yesterday's plan for Louise and myself was to go down to the Inner Harbour and from there go out on a whale watching tour, but wind warnings were up and the whale watching tour companies cancelled all their tours for the day. So we found ourselves downtown with a few hours to kill, so we played tourist for a couple of hours instead.
We took the obligatory postcard shot of the Legislature...

...checked out some First Nations' Totem Poles at Centennial Square...


...had yummy pizzas at The Joint...

...and hung out with some of the locals.


We did see some whales....

...namely these two orcas in a flower garden at the Empress Hotel. I love how the little one is blowing!
We rebooked for August -- hopefully we'll have better weather luck then.