Kayaking day 4

The little light went on in my head today, I hadn’t included a map of the area we covered so this location is a mystery to you. Well better late than never. We actually started off in Port Hardy with a water taxi ride to Hurst island where we staged to kayaks and on to our trip.

We were told yesterday this would be our longest day on the water, somewhere around 12 nautical miles, almost 13 statute miles. Kara kept track of the details for us and it turned out it took us between 4 and 4.5 hours to cover that distance. It certainly helped having the current and wind going with us for a change!

The day started out and stayed mostly clear. During the morning there was wispy fog blowing through the trees. This was neat to see because we don’t have much fog in the desert. Once we got around to the Northeast side of the Nigei island we had the wind and current to our backs. One really needs to pay attention to what is going on when exposed to the open sea. We had 3’ swells which were going in our direction. It felt a little like the kiddie roller coaster where you are up high on the swell for a few seconds see all around you, then down to the bottom where all you can see are the swells immediately around you. Kind of like a Disney ‘C’ ticket ride. (For those of you folks that remember such things) Terry kept directing us when to stay close to shore away from the fast currents and when to go out because of the rocks just under the surface. I just kept in his tracks, or tried to since I was in command of the rudder on this day. While we are still quite far from any towns this side of Nigei island faces the Queen Charlotte Strait one of the main channels for the cruise ships going to and from Alaska and the BC ferries going from city to city.

We stopped in a little inlet to stretch our legs and lunch; fruit, Greek salad and dessert. The tide was going out by this time so we had to walk our kayaks out past shallow rocks to deeper spots in order to paddle off. At this point we stayed in the quieter water between the smaller islands for much calmer water.

We came to Bob’s Landing on Balaklava island to camp for the night. There was a very small island between the camp site and us which formed a funnel for the water, you could actually see rapids from the velocity of the water flowing through the channel! Bob’s Landing was a former logging site so we had a large area of open grass to pitch our tents. Bob’s Landing is the first site we had to share with other kayakers. Up to this point we only ran into a total of 10 or so people the entire trip. After setting up I wandered up one of the trails to an area logged sometime ago. There were lots of tree stumps still lying around but also lots of small seedling coming up. Several others got back to their hot game of Uno. I don’t know who was winning but there was a lot of Uno trash talking the next day. By the time evening came it was windy and very cool. We all put on our wind/rain gear and the heavier fleece clothing because of the wind. I managed to stay up late enough to join the Bioluminescence Club. In order to join you have to stay up late enough for it to get dark enough to see the sea animals and plankton light up when being disturbed by throwing rocks into the water or stirring the water with a stick. Sorry no photos. During the middle of the night I pulled a couple extra layers on top of my sleeping bag because of the cool and damp.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark