Written by It’s a nice feeling to have nothing on your plate but getting up in the morning and paddling. To have the greatest worry of your day be “am I eating enough calories?” I think many people see what Doug and I are doing as dangerous but when it comes down to the daily scroll of this trip it seems far from dangerous, as our days are full of a monotanous paddle rythm, beautiful scenery, camping, sleeping, and eating. There is a lot of planning too, don’t get me wrong, because in order to have an uneventful day you must watch the tides, currents, winds, and your own fatigue to make sure everything coincides in harmony instead of backsliding into unnavigable current, feroucious head winds, and exhaustion. But bad days, for the most part, are avoidable with planning and patience both of which Doug has in abundance and I need to learn.
Monthly archives for May, 2010
Sidney to Nanaimo
The theme for the last week was rain. It was raining hard while we packed up and left Sidney, and it rained some every day on the paddle to Nanaimo. The first day in the rain was beautiful. The water was flat chrome reflecting the low clouds, and the rain and cool weather didn’t bother us at all. It took us a while to pack the boats, so we didn’t get on the water until around noon. We paddled through the islands outside Sidney up to Prevost Island.
From Prevost Island we wanted to go up to Pirates Cove, but we were low on water. The water on Prevost didn’t look good, and a group of kayakers told us the water on Wallace Island wasn’t good, so we had to go to Montague Harbor on Galiano Island to get water. When we got there, it turned out the water at the marina wasn’t good either, so we had to buy water. While we were there, we figured we might as well have lunch. By the time we got back on the water it was almost 4:00 PM. We paddled another 8 miles from there to Wallace Island to camp.
The campsite on Wallace was a beautiful spot above a cove. Lil’ bit found a squeaky ball at the Montague Harbor Marina, and got to squeak and chase the ball around until it was lost between some rocks. He was very upset at the loss. We had dinner and enjoyed the evening, but after we went to bed the rain poured down. We had over 1/2 an inch of rain in our cook pot when we got up.
We paddled from Wallace Island to Pirates Cove the next day. A large weather system followed just south of us all day, but never caught up. Every time we looked back you could see the mountains seeping into the dense clouds and rain. We weaved in and out of the islands to avoid the current and the moderate breeze.
It ended up taking most of the day to make it to Pirates Cove on the De Courcy group. The rain held off until almost dark. After we went to bed, the campsite was attacked by a platoon of raccoons. We did our best to scare them off, but they came back again and again, reaching right under the rain fly of the tent looking for the good stuff. We ended up having to move pretty much everything into the tent to keep them away. We haven’t gotten into bear territory yet, so we haven’t started hanging our food, but I guess we’ll have to do something to keep the raccoons away.
The last day was an easy paddle and some sailing to Nanaimo. We got to a campsite across from town in the early afternoon, but had to haul our gear a couple hundred yards across low tide to a campsite. When we were done we caught a ferry into town and did some laundry and pigged out on Mexican food.
We’re going to continue on today towards Powell River. It should take about a week to get there, depending on the weather.
Beer and camping outweigh sore fingers
We’re in Sydney…Canada. Man it feels good to be in civilization, that first cold beer goes down like water from the gods bestowed upon famished thirsty souls. We’ve already found it entertaining to order the biggest meals on the menu and smile while the waitstaffs’ jaws drop as we scarf it in one sitting, lick our plates clean, and order another beer.
We are all sunburnt, Zach who joined us in Anacortes, is no exception. He keeps commenting on his exceptionally tan hands and knuckles that are slightly swollen from salt water, paddling, and various other insults that are inherent on a trip such as this. Our poor hands are in the worst shape, finger tips so sore they whine for sympathy as they display bloody hangnails on every other finger and splinters burrowed and nested deep in the rest.
But I have to say it’s worth it to pull up to an island campsite at 7 at night. The island like some kind of tiny paradise so small literally 50 steps would traverse its entire expanse. But in this tiny paradise was still room for a lush grassy plain big enough to set our tents on and a forrest dense enough to hide a doe and her two tiny fauns from lil’ bit’s predetorial instincts. As the sun dropped that night it left a bright orange streak that lit the sky and reflected into the ocean pointing to our tents as if to say you were never supposed to find this.
Seattle to Sidney
Deception Pass has currents that can exceed seven knots, so you need to be there precisely at slack to avoid excitement. When we checked the weather forecast that night, they were calling for high winds the next day (35 – 55 knots), with the storm arriving around 3:00 PM. Slack water was at 1:48 PM, which would only leave us around an hour to find a campsite on the other side of the pass before the weather turned. When we got up, the ebb tide was already flowing at three knots toward the pass, so we rode the current over to Coronet Bay and asked around for campsites that would get us out of the wind. We decided go through the pass and swing into the state park on the north side. We pulled in and had our tent set up just as the rain started to come down a little after 3:00.
With the forecast for winds above 20 knots the next day as well, I called Crane, a friend of mine from Seattle who grew up in Anacortes, to see if he had ideas for how we could get the ten miles into town to finish our grocery shopping. He called his dad, and his dad was nice enough to drive out and pick us up the next day. Chuck and his wife Jan were awesome. They let us wash our clothes and take showers, then watched lil’bit while we went shopping for groceries. One of our friends from Anchorage, Zach, was flying down to paddle with us for two weeks. Once he showed up we stuffed ourselves at the pub then caught a cab back to the campsite and watched Zach put his folding kayaking together.
After we left Deception Pass with Zach, we paddled north to Strawberry Island. It was supposed to be a water trails campsite, but it was pretty hard to find, and didn’t look like it was still supported. We camped out on a bluff with a western view over the water. The madrone trees, wild flowers, rocks, seals, and sunset were much nicer than the waterfront homes and towns we had been paddling past the previous week.
The last big step of this part of the trip was to cross Haro Straight to get to Sidney, where we had to clear Canadian customs. They were forecasting winds in the afternoon, so we got an early start to cross over to Spieden Island, then to Stuart Island, and then finally across Haro Straight. When we got to the protection of the Islands off Sidney the wind started to blow and the current really started to run. As we rounded Forest Island, the current was flowing like a river. At first we tried to stay in the bay to paddle up to downtown Sidney, but the current suggested we drop back behind a line of small rock islands, which was much calmer paddling and sailing.
After we got to the customs dock we tied up the boats and headed to town to get the last of our supplies and take a day off.
A few photos
It’s been a lot harder to find connectivity and energy to post to the blog and upload photos than I thought. Eventually, there will be more routine, but now there seems to be a lot of work each day just to plan, cook, pack, paddle, eat, paddle, unpack, cook, plan, and sleep. We haven’t had a lot of energy left over to write down our thoughts or try to capture how beautiful it is. But even in the rain and wind we are having fun and somehow managing to get sun burned. Each day it seems we get the full experience of Northwest weather.
Here are a few photos from the first few days.
.jpg)
Our first “big” winds
this morning we wait for the tides so they can push us to deception pass. Listening to the VHF radio while still huddled in our sleeping bags it crackles and warns of Gail force winds building in the afternoon. Yesterday we crossed to Whidby Island in winds of 10 to 20 knots and it was fun but harrowing, only my second time sailing in these boats and maybe the third time I’d sailed anything in my entire life. In a big boat these winds would be easy but in our little kayaks it was fierce with confused seas from an outflowing tide that buried our hulls in water as we surfed down three foot waves. Lil’ bit sat tucked in my spray skirt and gave up trying to poke his head out after a wave washed over us and funnled down his neck into the cockpit soaking the once dry lap were he sat. As we approached land the wind seemed to want to test us just one last time as it picked up to 20 knots and whipped the seas into a greater confusion and taunted my already brittle nerves. Waves crashed on to my spray skirt left and right, sea water swallowing my outrigger and the nose of my kayak up to the mast. Waves running and catching me from behind lifting me unexpectedly like the cool uncles used to do when I was a kid. Stomach sunken like a rock to the bottom of my torso where it shivered. Jaw clenched as tight as my bone white knuckles that clasped the sheet raining in the sail.
Then we landed, our kayaks skidded up the sand beach, I relaxed and let the sail flap in the wind. We ate lunch and the skys cleared to a light, docile blue and the wind and water looked calm enough to swim in…
Donations to Date
Teresa at Interplast recently sent an e-mail and I am happy to say our donations are up to $550! Also over the last couple of months I have been talking with different outdoor gear companies about sponsoring a raffle for our blog and I am happy to say that so far two companies have come through! Mountain House donated a box of their delicious freeze-dried food packets (www.mountainhouse.com) and Steri-pen committed to donating one of their innovative water purifying pens that uses ultraviolet light to purify water (www.steripen.com). At the end of our trip we will draw names from a pool of everyone who has donated and award prizes! Yet more reasons to donate!
Details, details.
Well, a little more than 12 hours until we launch tomorrow morning. We spent the entire week tracking down the details that needed to be done before unplugging for almost 4 months. It was hectic, but we think we got enough done. At this point, anything that isn’t done won’t matter.
We spent one day this week with the folks from Easy Rider, the manufacturer of our kayaks. We bought our boats used, but it turns out that the owner of Easy Rider, Peter Kaupat, built the boats we are using for him and his wife to do a similar trip up the Inside Passage that they were never able to make. Peter took a personal interest in our trip, and was extremely generous. They went over the boats, repairing and replacing everything that was worn out (our boats are over 15 years old). And he spent a bunch of time going over the boats and equipment with us on the water. It was great. We had a bunch of fun sailing the empty boats around on Lake Washington in the sunshine. We don’t expect to sail a lot on our trip, but the boats sail very well both up and down wind, and what we learned will come in handy.
While staying in Seattle, my friend Mike and Katey’s brother Danny let us take over they places to store gear, sleep, eat, etc. I don’t know what we would have done without them. Because we moved out of our place at the same time we were leaving for this trip, we had lots of different piles of stuff to move, store, or ship, and not all of it ended up in the right place. We had to do a bunch of running around in Seattle, and we have needed pretty much every hour we had this week. It would have been difficult to get everything sorted and packed if we had been staying at a hotel or camping.
So now all we have to do is move the boats one more time to launch tomorrow morning. We were planning to launch at Golden Gardens Park, but there is a large sailing regatta going on this weekend out at Shilshole, so we decided to launch out of Edmonds. We’re looking forward to sitting in the boats with nothing to do but paddle!