2007.24.88 - Caddy Bay Turkey Day Paddle

It's with thanks on this Thanksgiving day that the weather gods blessed us with a few hours of sunshine this morning between weather fronts, so a quick paddle at Cadboro Bay was in order.
Louise and I drove there listening to a CD I'd made of songs from various "Simpsons" episodes. It didn't go over as well as I thought it would. This really has nothing to do with the paddle, but it does set up my closing joke for this paddle report.


Here's Bernie's new boat. We haven't made fun about how pink Paula's new boat is, so it wouldn't be fair to make fun of how yellow Bernie's boat is.


Unfortunately, Bernie's new boat doesn't have any room to store gear so he has to keep it all on his deck. Ha! I'm kidding -- got ya!
Actually, it looks like he has quite a lot of room for storage using his own patented design for the hatch covers. And as Bernie says, he'd rather have a kayak that when upside down looks big, yellow and unnatural than like a piece of driftwood.


Here's Bernie boat in action.


Paula is still enjoying her new Eliza.....


...while Louise just can't wait to get going.


This was my first paddle with my new carbon shaft. (You heard right, ladies.) I picked it up at the Ocean River sale a couple of weeks ago. I love it. It's a little shorter than my usual paddle (a 240cm paddle, down from a 245cm paddle), so that took a a little getting used to. But it sure is light and strong.
It was a sunny day when we started -- here's the picture to prove it.


We made it to Flower Island and were planning to cross to Jemmy Jones Island. Louise was having contact lens trouble, one had fallen out, and so her vision was not reliable. The wind had come up and was making waves, not enough to be a real issue, but enough to combine with her lens trouble and put Louise out of her comfort zone. So while Paula and Bernie headed out to Jemmy Jones, Louise and I stayed behind at Flower.


This gave me a chance to try out my other new piece of equipment, a new Sony DSC-H9 digital camera. I've retired my film camera. I just paid $75 to develop three rolls of film, get one set of prints each and a digital scanning of each roll. So this camera will save me money, save a little piece of the environment, and it has a monster zoom lens on it to take some great pictures. Check out this heron!



We saw these gulls that we've not seen before. They looked like regular seagulls, but were gray and smaller with bright orange beaks. They also sounded like they were barking when they chirped.


Bernie came in close to check out the gulls.


We headed back to shore as the wind came up.


We headed to the beach and to the end of our quick paddle, but as you have probably guessed, by the time we got the kayaks all loaded up, the sun came out again.


Next week, we had the idea to paddle at....never mind, maybe it's more of a Shelbyville paddle idea...

My photos are here.

2007.23.87 - Thetis Lake Raw Bacon Spectacular

Well, where to start.
The idea was to have a practice session as Paula wanted to try getting in and out of her new boat, and I wanted more self-rescue practice to try a few new rescue techniques out, and to practice some new assisted rescues that Bernie had learned. We were also going to enjoy our new tradition of cooking breakfast on the beach before heading into the water.
As it turned out, it was just Louise, Paula and myself today. As for breakfast, Bernie decided to do an over-nighter on Portland Island. Why he felt he needed all three stoves for a two-day trip is something that is puzzling. One thing for sure - my breakfast of raw bacon was sure yummy.
Louise was suffering from contact lens trouble and had forgotten her paddle jacket, so she ended up not paddling.
But Paula and I were still keen to practice, so already wet from the rainy day, and hungry from no breakfast we set out.


Paula steeled herself.....


...and in she went!


Oh, yeah. We're having fun now.


We tried a couple of rescues. First, I helped Paula in an assisted rescue, then Paula did a solo paddle float rescue.


She had a wee bit of trouble figuring out how to get in...


...as her new kayak has a smaller cockpit than her old one.


But she did it! Then I took a couple of turns getting dunked and did a couple of solo paddle float rescues.


Enough playing in the water... time to get warm!


My pictures are here.

2007.22.86 - Egg Sac Hunt and Tillicum Road Portage

Last year at this time, we paddled into Portage Inlet and found these strange little sacs in the ground in the far arm of the Inlet.


We were quite puzzled by them (some sort of egg sacs were our guess), and Paula and Louise did some investigating. Eventually they ended up in contact with Dr. Kelly Sendall of the Royal British Columbia Museum (free plug: go see their Titanic exhibit!)
Dr. Sendall expressed an interest in joining us for a paddle to look for more egg sacs and today he joined us far a paddle in the Inlet.


It was, finally, a beautiful summer day. Too bad there's only 12 days left in this summer.


Paula is the proud parent of a new Eliza kayak. She likes it a lot. And I won't make any jokes about the colour.
None at all.
Nosiree.
It sure is pink, though.


As we headed out, this seagull was munching on an early Sunday brunch.


And away we go into Portage Inlet! It was Paula, Alison, Louise, Dennis and myself joining Kelly who was borrowing Bernie's boat as he skipped the science part of the paddle.


Soon we were out at the first point where we found some of those sac thingies. They were few and far between compared to the prime spot last year which was at the far end on the inlet, and the floor was also very thick with algae or muck, so they were tough to see, much less photograph.


I took about 100 pictures of people leaning over their kayaks looking down.


We headed down to the far end of the Inlet but just as we were getting near to where we found fields of these egg sacs last year, we discovered that the tide was too far out. We all grounded and couldn't proceed any further. We might have gotten out and walked, except that the bottom was really squooshy and that probably wouldn't have worked. So if you've ever had a desire to see a panorama picture of five kayaks stuck in the mud, your wish has just come true.


So with mission not quite accomplished, we headed back.



We bid goodbye to Kelly, and Bernie joined us to continue down The Gorge.


The game of musical kayaks continued as Paula and Louise swapped boats, giving Louise a chance to try Paula's new ride. Louise likes it a lot, too. Will the fleet pick up another Eliza? Stay tuned next year!




No paddle would be complete without a picture of a heron. Today's paddle was no exception.



We approached Tillicum Bridge. This would usually be the turn-around point, as most times going under the bridge is problematic due to fast currents and a large rock. You can get through easily during a slack high tide, but that's a rare moment in the tide cycle.


Today it wasn't at it's worst, but we could see there was some whitewater, so we turned around. Well, some of us turned around. Bernie and Dennis decided to run the rapids.
No pictures exist of this event, but we watched as first Bernie then Dennis went under the bridge. We heard no Crazy Bernie Laughter™ or shouts for help, so we assumed they made it okay. But we weren't totally sure as the rapids washed them out of our sight.
Paula put her feet up and relaxed -- she's had years of experience dealing with Bernie.

And they did turn up eventually. After they went through to the other side, Dennis and Bernie realized that the current was strong enough that they wouldn't be able to paddle back against it so they would have to put-in and portage back. The problem was that there isn't much in the way of pull-outs on either side. Both sides of the channel on either side of the bridge are rocky and steep. Eventually, they found a spot and then carried their boats back through a park, up the hill to the top of Tillicum Bridge, and across four lanes of traffic.
Then they realized that there was no place to put-in. They had to walk a long block to the Victoria Canoe and Kayak Club and there they re-entered the Gorge after completing our first official portage.
It was a great day for a fun, relaxing paddle. Even the seagulls were relaxing.


My pictures are here.

2007.21.85 - Sunday Caddy

It's a long weekend, so guess what? Yes, that's right -- it's cloudy. The sun is nowhere to be seen. We're getting used to cloudy weekends, and dammit, we're going kayaking anyway.


It was Patricia, Paula, Louise and myself today.


We were without a Bernie, who has become suddenly elusive. He's disappeared from sight faster than Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Tom Ridge, Scooter Libby, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz and Karl Rove combined. And have you ever noticed that you never see Bernie and Dick Cheney together in the same undisclosed underground bunker? But I digress.
Paula was in her inflatable while she awaits the arrive of her new Eliza....


...while Louise and Patricia were in their usual rides, a Delta and a Current Design respectively.


We cruised up the south side of Ten Mile Point, where we saw this heron.


He took off after a few moments.


We went up past the point and towards to Telegraph Bay. We saw a large sea lion fishing off the shore. We weren't really close enough to get a picture, and we think it's the same sea lion we saw off of Telegraph Bay a couple of years ago. We think that this is his favourite feeding area.


The tide had just turned and we caught a nice mild current on the way back.


Paula was having too much fun in her inflatable -- she may never even bother getting into her new kayak!



On the way back, we paid the heron a return visit.


That's it for this week. And actually, Bernie had a valid excuse -- he's been working on his cloning technique.


My pictures are here.