Calm Seas and Cool Breeze

Thankfully it has been a bit less hot, especially with the gentle sea breeze in the Desloation Sound marine park. We had perfect weather for our kayak trip last week. The sun was shining and the sea was like a mill pond.

We set off from Vancouver on Tuesday after work, collected some passengers and got a ferry across to the Sunshine Coast with the rest of the group. (The Sunshine Coast is an area of BC which is part of the mainland but only accessible by water). We camped there for the night, then set off for another ferry on Wednesday morning, reaching the kayak rental place at about 1pm.

We haven’t been kayak-camping before and it was quite a challenge fitting all of our stuff into the boat. There is plenty of space in the hollow insides, but you have to cram everything through the hatches and the boat gets pretty narrow at either end. There aren’t many fresh water sources, so we had to bring enough water for the whole trip in collapsible carriers. These were fun to fit in the kayak. (We brought 35 litres, which was more than we needed. We were left with about 10 litres at the end.) You also have to pack the kayaks whilst they are floating, to avoid scratching the bottom on the rocks and oysters.

As an aside – there were lots of oysters and they are sharp! Ollie cut his fingers by putting his hand on some, and another member of our group got a pretty big cut on her knee by swimming too close to an oyster infested rock.

Once everything was shoved in, we set off to the first campsite at Hare Point. It was an easy 2 hours of paddling and we had the place to ourselves! We arrived at 4pm, with time for an explore and our first re-hydrated dinner – the curry, which was excellent. (I forgot to take pictures of all of the food except the lentil slop.)

That evening we had a group meeting and decided to set off early the next morning to claim some camping spots on the Curme Islands, the most beautiful and popular campsites in the park. The next day was a public holiday so we correctly predicted that lots more people would turn up! We paddled for another two hours and claimed most of the South Curme Island to ourselves. We even saw a humpback whale from the Island just after we arrived. I didn’t get the camera out in time for that.

The original plan had been to move around most nights and stay in different places, but we were pretty pleased with our little island and ended up staying there for the rest of our trip. (It had nothing to do with the effort of unpacking and repacking the kayaks…) There were so many places to visit and explore on day trips that we didn’t feel the need to move on.

On Thursday we went to Black Lake, which was very warm and full of weird bugs. On Friday, we floated around watching seals for a few hours and then paddled around some smaller islands nearby. On Saturday we visited Refuge Cove where there is a small shop and services for mariners. On the way back from there, we stopped at an island with another rustic campsite on. In between we did lots of swimming and wildlife watching – highlights include many noisy oyster catchers, bald eagles, purple sea stars and what we later discovered were common nighthawks flying low at dusk.

We found a rope swing…

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Over the 5 days, we paddled about 100 km, including 20 km to get back to the rental place on Sunday. By the end everything we had with us was very salty, our clothes had crystallised and were pretty solid. We didn’t really notice how smelly we were until we got back on the ferry with the civilized people on the way back.

We had a wonderful time, so it was difficult to go back to work on Monday. Plus all of our food is much harder to cook now that we’ve run out of dehydrated meals.

Wednesday was Rosie’s 30th birthday. Ollie made her watch the football and then sulked because she beat him at Scythe (her favourite board game in the UK which she now owns in Canada too!). There is more football on Sunday apparently, so we are planning to climb a mountain on Saturday to pre-burn some calories before the pub.