Thetis Lake Paddle Fun Day

We've had four days of cloudy and rainy days no doubt due to my having four days off. I'm sure when I go back to work on Tuesday, the sun will be shining and it will be a warm and wonderful day. But today was cloudy though the rain held off, so we're off to Thetis Lake.


Bernie make fire....and sausages....


...and Alison, Paula and Louise enjoy breakfast.


The distraction of a hot breakfast on the beach allowed me a chance to get on the water first. (I've never been distracted by food. Really.)


As we headed out, there were a lot of swimmers in the water. "It's sad," Bernie noted, "that some people just can't afford kayaks."


We found some lilies.



We had a nice quiet paddle around the lake.





Bernie thought he saw a turtle swimming underwater. I saw a glimpse of a mink or an otter. We also saw some turtles on the same log that we did last year. But this time, the turtles scrambled into the water long before we got within camera range. We also fished a few pop and beer cans out of the water, but I found the strangest item of all under the water: a purse with a rock in it. Clearly someone didn't want it found, and a trip to the local police to turn it in after our paddle was added to the agenda.


When we got back to shore, we were met by the Keetley Krew: Leslie, Darren, Thomas and Jeffrey.


Leslie decided to embark on her own personal Paddlefest. Here, she tries Louise's boat.


Meanwhile, Jeffrey found a way to get rid of his brother. And Bernie.


Later, Jeffrey got rid of his body and became just a floating head.


Then Leslie headed out in Bernie's boat....


....and then she tried Alison's boat. She tried every boat on the beach, including some that didn't belong to us. But I won't include any pictures of that -- I don't want to embarrass her.


She would have tried Paula's boat, but Paula was practicing a two-person rescue with me.


Another fun and wet day.


My photos are here.

Random Local Stuff

The Iron Matron, a local newpaper columist, goes kayaking for the first time in this article.
And here's a story about a local "Crazy Kayaker" who decided to paddle the length of the Mississippi.

Tuesday Evening

..was a lovely evening for a paddle. So Paula, Dennis , and I headed out from Cadboro Bay to Cattle Point. Not just for the joy of the paddle, but Dennis wanted to test drive his new 4 metre Advanced Elements Expedition...and I wanted a somewhat longer test paddle of my now-floating Cape Charles.
Okay, mine doesn't look like that one from the CLC Boats website, being as mine is bright yellow, among other differences, but there you go.
Once out at Cattle Point, Paula headed back to the entrance to Cadboro Bay, while Dennis and I headed out to the lighthouse between Cattle Point and Great Chain in order to try our boats in currents and in the wakes of passing ships--just to see how they handled it all. And both boats passed with flying colours. Well, colour, as both boats are yellow....
Then it was back in to meet Paula and head back to the beach. About an hour or so on a lovely quiet evening that left my butt very soar from sitting on an unpadded seat. Lessons learned? Well, Dennis discovered that he needs to be a bit more careful during setup while installing the keel bar in his Expedition (it was slightly askew, leaving his boat to pull to the right during the paddle), and I really need to work on the seating in the Cape Charles. And maybe I should paddle it with a lot of gear in it....

Kayak With a Propeller For Sale

Clearly, this is a kayak made for Vancouver Island. The ad says:

I bought a kayak off the police auction in saanich and don't have the time to do the work I'd like to do to it. It had a propellor attached so it could deliver some goods to our friends in the U.S. (True Story) It does need a bit of work to get the toggle box out of the cockpit or you can leave it in and rewire for the propellor and use it for fishing or whatever. It's about 14 ft and cockpit between 25 and 30 inches, I forget.

So if you're looking for a little help with your part-time delivery job, this could be the kayak for you.

It's Official: The Weather Sucks

We've found ourselves thinking that the weather this year has been worse for kayaking than last year. We all recall a great spring for paddling in 2006, with nary a cloudy day.
We have had some great weather this year. A week ago today was the warmest day ever recorded in Victoria, but on the other hand our planned paddle only three days previous to that was cancelled due to rainy weather. And on the gripping hand, most of the good days have seemed to have come during the week, while the weekend weather has turned bad. And weekday paddles don't work for all of us -- some of us have to work for a living.
So with our planned trip to Discovery Island this Saturday possibly threatened because of a forecast of heavy rain, I decided to check the facts. I consulted our past blog entries to see if our memories are valid. In terms of weather, was last year a better paddling year?


I returned to paddling on April 8 this year after recovering from my accident, so I compared the paddles from April 8 to July 18 in both years. As it turns out, in each year there were 20 paddles documented in the blog during this period.
The Results:

2006 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
55% - cloudy
5% - cloudy and rainy
10% - foggy
25% - sunny
5% - cancelled due to bad weather

2007 paddles (Apr 8 - July 18)
45% - cloudy
15% - cloudy and rainy
25% - sunny
15% - cancelled due to bad weather

The proportions of bad weather to sunny weather seems to be about the same; one paddle in four was under sunny skies. But even though there's been the same proportion of unsunny weather this spring, the weather would seem to be have been a little worse as we've cancelled more trips this year and gone out on more rainy days.
So the perception that this year's weather is worse seems to be accurate. Adding to this is the fact that we did have an amazing Spring last year. Out of 13 pre-April 8 trips in 2006, seven were on cloudy days and six were on sunny days, a ratio of nearly 50-50. This year is a little harder to judge as pre-April 8 trips are not as well documented in the blog. However, the three that we have photographic evidence for shows one sunny paddle, one cloudy paddle and one snowy paddle. A small sample size to be sure, but it leans towards to another checkmark in the 2007 Bad Weather column.
Further adding to the perception would be the miserable Fall last year. Prior to my accident in late November, all three of our planned November paddles were wiped out by bad weather, and November, December and January were marked by an incredible series of nearly two dozen fierce and destructive windstorms in the area, and any paddling on those days would have been suicidal. Even Bernie didn't go out. All this makes it seem like it has been a long time without a good run of sunny paddles.
What does this all mean, apart from the fact that I wasted an evening hunched over my keyboard with a Diet Coke figuring this out? Well not much, except that sunny paddles don't come along every day. They come along only one in every four paddling days apparently, so enjoy them when you get them.

Recumbent Kayak

Paula has been thinking out loud about getting herself a recumbent bicycle.
Perhaps she should consider a recumbent kayak.

MEC Victoria Paddlefest 2007

It's a nice sunny Sunday, and time to get on the water.


A local kayak store held a demo day today, so instead of the usual Sunday paddle, we enjoyed a day of paddling other people's boats.


There were mostly Seaward Kayaks to demo. Louise started off with a Cosma TX, a thermoformed plastic kayak...


...while I started out in a Tyee XT, a longer thermoformed boat. We find them slightly tippy at first but that feeling soon passed. My boat was deep and with a big cockpit, which is something I need due to my shoulder injury. Getting out of a boat can be a bit of a struggle.
Overall, we liked the boats, but we had two big issues. First, the seats suck. We hated 'em. (To be fair, I took it out again later, and was able to adjust the seat so that it was better. Not acceptable, but better.) Also we both noticed the sound of running water while we were paddling, like someone had left a tap open somewhere below the decking. It was very strange and disconcerting.


Paula tried a Silhouette and hated every second she was in it. She truly hated this boat. "Hate" might not even be a strong enough word. "Despise" only begins to broach her feelings about this boat. In fact we didn't notice a single person who liked it. One poor woman spent five minutes trying to get in it (and falling into the water) before giving up on it.


Then Paula tried the Luna which she much preferred.


Meanwhile, Bernie headed out in this Chilco which he enjoyed.


Paula and Louise tried this tandem and loved it. It has a huge storage capacity. They want to take it on an expedition sometime. They figure that it is so fast that they could beat Bernie and I to the landing site, set up the camp, and have food waiting for us by the time Bernie and I arrive. (At least, that's the way I remember hearing it.)


Paula (who tried every boat on the beach at least twice) tried this Ascenté and liked it a lot.


While Bernie was trying this Intrigue, I paddled the fiberglass version of the Tyee that I had tried earlier. What a difference! It paddled like a dream, the seat was comfy and it had great initial stabilization when compared to the thermoformed version. I talked to the Seaward rep about it and he said that he finds that thermoformed are too "slippy" in the water. Now, some slipperyness is a good thing, but he thinks that thermoformed boats go a little too far. Add to that the extra stiffness you get in a fibreglass boat, and he still thinks glass is the way to go.
I'd have to agree that at the very least the fiberglass Tyee gave a much cleaner and stable ride than the thermoformed version. But despite them both being the same model, I had a devil of a time getting out of the fiberglass version. The cockpit seemed just a little smaller, and this was enough to make it a real chore for me to get out of it.


Bernie tried the Silhouette, too. He hated it.


Time to save money! Need more boats!


John's photos are here.

Record heat!

According to the Environment Canada website, yesterday's temperature topped out at 36.3°C at the airport. That's just shy of normal body temperature. It was certainly a record for the day, and, based on a Google search, it was an all-time record, the previous record being 35.3°C (96°F) on July 23, 2004. Fool that I was, I did not go kayaking. I will know next time. The alternative is developing a taste for recreational shopping: some of the malls are air-conditioned.

Saanich Plaza Tim Horton's Paddle

Another terrific day for paddling! There was no wind or rain at all. Nothing! We were going to be able to paddle for hours under this glorious sunshine!

Today's paddle was going to be a little different. Instead of meeting up in one spot and then going for a kayaking paddle together, we decided to start in different places and end up in one spot. It was a dangerous idea that required split second timing. If we missed our rendezvous, we could could become stranded or lost entirely

Fortunately, we were well-provisioned.

It all worked out okay and we met up safe and sound.

I shared a drink with a new friend that I made. Maybe he'll come paddling next week with his family.

Saturday morning paddle, Thetis lake

Headed out to Thetis Lake in the (fairly) early morning for my first West Coast paddle in a month. Not as early as I have been, but I was still on the water by 8 am. This wasn't one of the days when the Kestrel's prow was the first force to break the water; there was the beginning of a little breeze. The sand on the beach was already churned up by multiple paw prints, and an aroma rose up from the pines on the beach, that, had I been a dog, would have been just like reading the gossip column. Or maybe Twitter.

Several swimmers were already plying the lanes in the Lower Lake as I came out of the side arm, and turned left towards the channel into the Upper lake. Progress promptly slowed as I paddled under the footbridge and discovered that being later meant that the water lilies were out.



In amongst the lilies, I saw fluttering on the water - a butterfly or moth on its side (the wiry antennae and angled wings suggests moth, according to the Audobon Field Guide to the Pacific North West). One wing was held fast by surface tension, the other flapping. Before I'd slipped a helpful paddle underneath it, its fluttering had brought it up against a leaf, and it clambered up and righted itself. The leaf was small, so having quartered it, the moth stepped off it, skittered a few steps on the water, and then toppled on its side. More fluttering brought it up against another leaf, where it climbed aboard, stepped off and fell over once more. Eventually it seemed to figure out the difference between leaf and water, or decide it needed to dry out, and I took a couple of photographs of it on its leaf. I can't see a match in the field guide for the colour and those wings, though muttering - as they drummed into us in med school - "common things are common". The top hit on Google for a simple search on "butterflies 'Vancouver Island'"is a website by Jeremy B. Tatum on Butterflies and Moths of Southern Vancouver Island. Flipping through that turned up Hemithea aestivaria (Common Emerald), a European import, though it's supposed to be seen in June.

When I eased myself away, I caught a glimpse of a point of white, which proved to be an orange and black butterfly (resting with wings spread) further on in the lily-field. I didn't get close enough for either a photo or a real appreciation , other than the strong impression of white bands, before a gust of wind launched it - which is probably just as well given the time I've spent trying to identify the first. Swallowtail or monarch is my first ignorant guess. And as I pulled in at the end of my paddle, something yellow and black (as stained glass is yellow and black) flitted past my head and into the trees.

Up to the top of the Upper Lake, where a tumble of roly-poly dogs were spilling on and off the trail into the water. Decided I'd rather not have one or more decide my kayak was the biggest damn stick they'd ever seen, and kept clear of the edge. Back along the north side of the lake. One kingfisher, seen from afar by the white flash of its wing, on one of the islets. It showed me its profile, and its blue wing, and then dive/skipped into the lake before flying off to the far side. In a spruce, the white flash winked at me. I never saw it again. Passed carefully through the waterlilies around the islet at the south-west of the lake - there's a sunken log that near-holed my kayak (or so it felt like), last time I was there. Didn't see it for paddling straight into the glitter of the sun in the water. Spotted one of the many, many little frogs that live amongst the lily pads, a dark green nub on a pad that was there only long enough for me to think 'there's one' before it vanished with a plip and some rocking lily leaves. Lots of unseen plips and rocking lily leaves.

Down into the southern arm of the Upper lake, my favourite part: many lilies, including an intriguing pink lily that I spent some time maneouvering around trying to get the exact effect I wanted, with the sun shining through the petals and giving a hard metallic sheen to the pads. The dark water, reflection of the trees behind, and the sharp reflections of the petals were bonuses. Lots of waiting for the wind to catch, giving up waiting, paddling into position, and then having the breeze pounce on me. Tethered the camera to the paddle lanyard to give me reach, and a chance of retrieving it if it fell overboard.



At the south end of the arm, there's a fallen tree whose remaining branches make distinctive reflections in the water. Today, there wasn't the perfect glassy symmetry of completely still water.

En route back, I encountered four different sets of kayakers, a family with little boy zipping around in stubby Necky, and a man and woman in inflatables, she photographing waterlilies. I was studying lilies by light and shadow in the mouth of the channel when there was a chop-chop, and a tight quartet of wet-suited swimmers emerged from under the bridge followed by a stern young man in a red kayak. On the other side of the bridge were more swimmers and two more kayakers, and in the arm up to the beach, two women in identical yellow fiberglass boats. On the beach, four more kayakers were setting up - there was an Ocean River van in the parking lot. So I went off to a little bay in the side and entertained myself trying to get a decent, close, non-blurred photograph of a dragonfly. I'd just given up in resignation and closed down the camera when I turned my head to the side I had not been watching and beheld the one hovering within touching distance. Of course it didn't let me get the camera up and focussed. But the confirmation that they would come close and they would hover made me persist. I won't say how many 'see that blur there' shots I went through to get one where the colour of the bug was half way recognizable.

With the last set of kayakers launched, and before the dogs could spread out to cover the entire beach, I headed for the sand. On-load was large-dog-free, to my relief. "He's very friendly," carol the owners, but when I'm hoisting 40 lbs of kayak overhead, it makes no difference to my unease whether it's 30 lb of friendliness or 30 lb of hostility that's charging at me! There seemed to be a certain similarity to the exchanges between dog-people meeting each other and kayak-people meeting each other: "What kind is yours?" "How old is it/how long have you had it?"

Paddling (with an accent)

During my recent trip to Montréal (note accent), I did actually plant my seat in a kayak, courtesy of H20 Adventures (dot ca), who operate beside the Atwater Market on the Lachine Canal. For $25 (plus tax,for 2 hours), they rented me a blue plastic Necky (sorry Neckyphiles, I did not note the name), kitted me out with the essentials, and launched me on the Canal. The accessible water was 3 km upsteam, 1 km downstream, with locks at either end. It was a bright, sunny day with a breeze out of the west, so I elected to go upstream first, into the breeze, and paddled determinedly up to the upper lock (photos on flickr) before turning around - with a brief flirtation with the current from the outflow channel of the lock - and drifted downstream with the breeze and the current, snapping as I went. The canal is clearly in transition between industrial and condoland, much like the inner harbor in Victoria, and a multiuse path runs alongside it, already humming with cyclists, roller-bladers, and walkers at 10 am on a Sunday morning. For a city that parties hearty, Montreal also seizes the day. There's still some natural river's edge, grasses, and bulrushes. A red-winged blackbird bounced briefly on a bulrush, bending it almost horizontal with its weight, but zipped off before I could catch a photo. Multiple bridges span the canal, from pure pedestrian, to rail-freight: there seemed to be a long freight train at least every half hour. The downstream drift passed H2O Adventures' dock, and ended in another lock. I returned to the dock with my 2 hours not quite up, so continued to mooch and take pictures until it was time to pull in.

Let's Be Careful Out There

A kayaker has drowned off the north Island.
He ventured out in conditions which were rough enough to cause all the local tour companies to cancel their kayaking trips.

Canada Day Paddle

A bright and sunny Canada Day morning greeted us as we put in at Willows Beach for a paddle out to the Chain Islands.


It was Tracy, Paula, Louise, Bernie and myself today. We enjoyed our paddle through the Chain Islands on the way to Discovery Island last week that we decided to visit the Chain Islands again and putter around all the islets.


The ladies set the pace....


...while Bernie and I lagged behind...


...and behind us, this ferry boat crossed our wake. None of us have ever heard of this ferry, the Victoria Express, and we were a bit surprised that it came this close to the shore. And look at the wake it's kicking up! Good thing that it's behind us and we don't have to cross it!


Oh wait, it's heading towards us! Bernie and I had two different reactions. He decided to try and outrun it (and maybe even surf it), while I decided to face it and ride it out. I don't think either of us had faced a wave this high before.


Here it comes!


Needless to say, we survived. In fact, my boat rode the waves so well that I didn't even get a drop of water on my deck. By the time it got to Louise, Paula and Tracy, the wake wave had become a lot less threatening. Soon we were in the Chains.




The eagles didn't seem to be around today like they were last week, and I guess the seagulls were happy about that.


But there was still the occasional eagle watching our little party exploring.



Bernie headed up a little channel and found something interesting...


... a sea cucumber.


And, too soon, it was time to head back.


John's photos are here.