Occasionally, some paddles end up being exercises in frustration. Like today's, for instance. It was a sunny day, but unexpectedly breezy so we decided not to head out to Discovery and just putter around from Cadboro Bay to Cattle Point.
I stole this idea from
Paddling With a Camera. By using an upturned monopod attached to a kayak sail base at the rear of my Delta Eighteen5, I hoped to get some shots from a new angle.
And that's when the frustration started. For some reason I couldn't get the camera to work. After a few minutes of pressing buttons and the camera bleeping and blooping, I discovered that the problem was operator error.
Sigh.
So I got the camera figured out and launched. Then my GPS crapped out on me. (I'm hoping it's just the batteries.) The paddle was not off to an auspicious start.
Louise was in her Delta Seventeen, while Paula took her Advanced Element AdvancedEdge that she is testing as she wanted to try it in windy conditions.
We headed out of Cadboro Bay towards Cattle Point.
I didn't get a lot of pictures today because the winds were just blowing us around. Anytime I stopped to take a picture with my big camera, the wind would sweep me away before I could get the shot.
As we explored the rock garden along the coast, Paula moved ahead to scout out whether the tide was high enough to allow us through the small channels. She shouted back that one looked too shallow to pass, but that was exactly what I was looking for at that moment. A heron had alighted and I thought if I grounded in the shallow channel, I would be stable enough to get a few shots. I snuck up to the heron and, as Paula thought, I grounded. Louise was coming behind me, and a sudden violent gust spun her sideways and into my stern. She pushed me over the bump I was on, and we both went sideways down the little channel, Louise trying to gain control of her boat, while I had no control as I quickly tried to stash my camera.
In the end, no harm done, but the wind was rising and we were all feeling a little frustrated. Paula was holding her own in an unfamiliar kayak, but we were all feeling like there wasn't much "fun" going on.
My camera mount was also leaning over precariously, the end result being a lot of pictures that looked like this:
The suction cups were giving way and I'm not sure why. Was it behaving like a sail in the wind? Or did I just raise it too high and make it unstable? The theory of the camera mount worked, it just needs to be refined. But with it leaning off to the side, it was in danger of leaning over too far and dragging in the water and that would have no fun on a calm day, let alone a stormy day like today. My paddle partners re-attached it and we headed back.
And, naturally, as soon as we packed up our boats, the wind died off.
And so it goes.
Trip length: 4km
My pictures are
here.
The ice only looks level at a distance. For the animals and people at the edge of an island, or out on the ice, there are ever so many kinds of textures and kinds of ice. It breaks and is pushed along by currents and wind. Most of the scenes showed one or another open place in the ice, called a polynya (po-lin-yah). That's where eider ducks come, to dive down to the sea bottom for mussels and urchins to eat. This winter, I've been watching ducks again, but the local ducks are different from these eider ducks in Hudson Bay. These photos are from the website promoting the film. Click here to see the short video trailer. There are underwater and aerial images as well as candid hand-held shots and simple tripod work.
The film is a marvelous combination of scenes of the eider ducks and other scenes of the people who live in Sanikiluaq. The co-operation between science and residence works very well in this film; the community called for help when the eider ducks were dying and the scientist who came had respect for their observations. The scientist is not the narrator for the film. The story presented isn't from his point of view, it's told by the people who live in the islands. They've got a great website at www.arcticeider.com that's informative and loads quickly.
One of the things that really impressed me was the people of Sanikiluaq decided to make traditional clothes and tools for several scenes. There's even a traditional kayak featured!
