2009.32.163 - Mill Bay

Today we headed to Mill Bay. This is new territory for Louise and I, but Paula and Bernie had a quick little paddle here at the beginning of the year. We put in under a sunny sky beside the handy boat ramp at the end of the aptly named Handy Road.


Usually when someone says the beach is a minefield, they're are referring to piles of dog poop. (Unless they're talking about real minefields. And just why haven't the world's major powers signed onto the Ottawa Treaty banning landmines anyway? Shame on them. But I digress.)
The launch beach was a minefield of large red jellyfish. This fellow was about 30cm across, and probably would not have liked being stepped on.
We saw a lot of jellyfish in the water after we got going, mostly clear ones, and Louise found a nice red and got all the great jellyfish shots today.


It was just Louise, Paula and I today. Paula is trying a backbone in her Advanced Elements kayak that helps stiffen it to improve performance (insert your own dirty joke here). She said she felt a little faster and also sat higher out of the water, but she wasn't necessarially sure that the cost is equal to the benefit. More testing is required.


We paddled through some of the clearest water we've seen in our local area.


I love how the trees grow out over the water, making a canopy over the beach. Look how clear that water is.


We were able to do something George Bush could never do: we found the remains of Saddam Hussein's nuclear arsenal. What it was doing here in Mill Bay is anyone's guess (although I'm sure Cheney and Rumsfled will say they knew the weapons were here the whole time).


We didn't see much in the way of wildlife today. Just the occasional seal popping up. And this guy followed us for almost our entire paddle.


Just a gorgeous day.


Of course, as soon as we turned around to head back, the winds picked up and our flat calm became a little less flat.


But we made it back to the beach.



Trip Length: 10.31 km
YTD: 269.25 km
More photos are here.
The Google Earth kmz is here.

Bernie unexpectedly lent me his video camera for this trip and it took a little while for me to get hang of it. For some reason it seems that I took a lot of footage of the inside of the camera bag. But I scraped together enough footage to make a quick little clip:


When in Mill Bay, we eat at Mill Bay 2-for-1 Pizza. Good food, good service, good price. Stop in for a slice.