Long weekends = long paddles in British Columbia! We hopped on a ferry right in our awesome hometown of Anacortes and wandered over to Sidney, on Vancouver Island. From there we drove north to Campbell River, took a ferry to Quadra Island, and paddled north up Hoskyn Channel to Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park. The weather was warm, the wind was minimal, the water was almost gin-clear (nothing really compares to Antarctic water), and the tides were typically with us most of the way. Paddling gets no sweeter.
Only about five minutes into paddling north, we hit a thick patch of moon jellies (
Aurelia sp.). Jay thought he was looking at the bottom at first until he realized the bottom was 100 ft. down and that his "bottom" was moving! I didn't get any amazing shots, this is the best one, but you can still get the idea of how dense this population was. It is fairly well known in the scientific world that jellyfish populations are on the rise with overfishing as one of the primary reasons. Have you downloaded your Monterey Bay Seafood Watch
List or
app lately to make sure you are a wise seafood consumer? Otherwise expect more of this in the future!
Octopus Islands Marine Provincial Park is accessible from three inlets and all these entrances have marine rapids. What the heck does that mean? The entrance/exit point for this body of water is surrounded by narrow and shallow inlets and when the tide changes the massive amount of water flowing through the inlet creates "rapids". The word "rapid" is something to avoid if you are not wearing a kayaking drysuit or helmet...so we had to make sure we hit the tides at slack when there were no rapids. We arrived at Surge Narrows Provincial Park just in time for the slack tide and we paddled through without so much as a ripple on the water. Heading northwest, we passed through gorgeous kelp forests that seemed suspended in the air because the water was so clear. Jay and I were identifying fishes, urchins, kelps, and other algae throughout our paddle. The water was so clear that I kept forgetting to look up at the landscape! When I finally did look above the water I saw a beautiful body of water that looked like mercury because of lack of wind and saw a few harbor porpoises coming up here and there around our boats. Sweet little animals! You can hear them before you see them because of the little "poof" sound they make when they surface to breathe. And what would a paddle be without lots of harbor seals making tons of farting noises and snorting sounds at one another on the rocks? Kayaking not only gets you close to the water, but it gets you very close to the sounds of nature that you can't hear from a motorized vessel.
We found the sweetest spot to camp in the world! This little dot of an island had perfect rocks for cooking and lazing about - as well as a relatively flat spot for a tent. If you look carefully (or click on the photo to enlarge it) you can see our tent and me, lounging on the rocks planning our next big vacation to Madagascar this November! In the evening, Jay and I watched
quillback rockfish wander around the kelp forest while we sat on the rocks and enjoyed the sunshine. For dinner we had a fantastic
pinot noir with homemade nettle pesto & fresh tomato on pasta. For good reasons, we toasted my cousin Troy's wife, Lisa.... she deserved a toast on a night like this! That evening, the
bioluminescence on the water was unreal. We walked down to the water's edge and watched the diatoms flicker as the current disturbed them, making them produce their greenish light all around the edge of this little island. Stars in the water and stars above in the clear black sky. Gorgeous.
We woke in the morning to fog burning off from the sun's attempts to reach through to the water. Jay snoozed while I took photograph after photograph of the changing moods of the fog. This is a color photo, but I love it because it looks like it is black and white.
We wanted to spend one more night on our perfect little island, but the ferry schedule on Monday and the slack tide timing for Surge Narrows did not line up. Sadly, we packed up and paddled off to explore the Octopus Islands and then head through Surge Narrows at slack in the late afternoon. I love paddling through narrow passages that get shallow....that is exactly what we are about to do in this photo above.
We stopped for lunch on a really tiny island where we could hear the rapids running from one of the other inlets to the north. Jay is checking out the urchin barren below us in the water - this means that there were a TON of sea urchins who chowed on all the algae leaving nothing behind but bare rock and a few sea stars.
We fought against the wind and paddled hard to make it to Surge Narrows in time for the slack tide - making it there just in time for an easy crossing. We camped on Peck Island right by the rapids....but our kayaks were stored in a strategic spot where we could launch from the island even with the rapids running and completely avoid them. It was fun to watch the tide go down at night and listen to the rapids run throughout the night.
In the morning we woke to a super low tide that gave Jay a chance to drool over all the massive clones of anemones (his favorite organism) in the intertidal. I love this photograph because it reminds me of fireworks, except these anemones are far more gorgeous. We had to leave the low tide early and push off to start our long paddle back to Quadra Island. We had a ferry to catch back to the mainland of Vancouver Island....
Our paddle back was great - tide with us and wind at our back! No complaints there! The only problem was that we didn't make the 1pm ferry from Quadra to Campbell River....everyone apparently wanted off Quadra at the same time. We made it onto the 2pm ferry and spent a lot of time biting our nails because we had to be back in Sidney at 5pm to make the last ferry back to Anacortes. It is a solid three hour drive back to Sidney from Campbell River. Eke. Let's just say that this was the most stressful part of the trip! We drove a wee-bit fast, with kayaks on top of our car, and managed to be the LAST car on the ferry back to Washington. Thank goodness Canadians are more aggressive drivers than Washingtonians, had this been WA we never would have made the ferry! Back in Washington, safe at home with fluffy kitties, we unloaded lots of soggy gear and slept very well in our own bed. Trips don't get any better than this. What a life we lead!
More photos here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/September2013?authkey=Gv1sRgCI6V-viG8OuUCg
This kayaking trip was taken over the long weekend to celebrate our wedding anniversary. What a party! As you can see, Jay and Julie retain their individual styles, even at their own wedding. Julie = goofy (and wrapped in a sari thanks to pal Mike) while Jay pulls off the tie-on-head breakdancing moves. Yeow!
Happy four years (or 10.5 if you count the years we "bunked" together as my grandma called it).
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