kayakwriter
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My pictures, video and write up to follow in a bit. Gotta crazy busy week of teaching happening.
WCP Spring Campout 2025
- Thread starter Gary Jacek
- Start date
Alex, you weren't kidding that your lens made that ferry look waaaaay closer than it was. What a shot! Wow.
I'm glad that I made it out. It was a relaxing weekend with fabulous weather (and company). I have some photos to share as well, but they probably won't make it up until later today or tomorrow.
Phillip, I'm looking forward to seeing how the rolling videos turned out.
So here are some photos and a bit of a write up.
At the Tsawwassen terminal, I bumped into Phillip while waiting to purchase my walk-on ticket. It was a pleasant surprise as I was catching a mid-day ferry on the Friday and wasn’t expecting to see anyone. He was launching from Fulford Harbour, and I from Swartz Bay. We got to chat and had lunch together on the ferry over.
After a bit of faff on the dock, everything fit in the boat, and I was on my way. I paddled towards Knapp Island and rounded its Eastern shore. A friend a told me about the Shinto shrine on Knapp, and I wanted to take a look. I didn’t land but appreciated it as I bobbed by.
I wasn’t in any hurry, so I spent some time paddling amongst the rocks, and admired the sandstone formations and arbutus trees. They never get old.
Once I rounded Arbutus point, I was expecting to see a beach full of kayaks. I hopped out to snap some photos of the white shell beach. It was just me and my kayak. It was 3:00pm at this point. Where was everyone? Regardless, I unpacked my boat and set up camp.
After a bit of reading at the point, I noticed a paddler approaching. It was Phillip. He got set up and then we chatted. We spotted two kayakers in the distance, so we went down to the beach to great them. They weren’t from WCP and probably thought that we were a little crazy. Oh well.
Shortly after those two paddlers got settled in, a couple on a zodiac pulled up. Surprised that no one else from WCP had showed up yet, Philip and I started cooking our dinners.
As the sun started to set, two more paddlers pulled up onto the beach. Again, we went down to say hello… and once again they weren’t from WCP. At this point everyone on the island probably thinks Phillip and I are nuts as we talk about this group of paddlers that doesn't exist.
It was a bit buggy, and I was tired, so I retired to my tent early.
The next morning, I was surprised to see a new arrival. Alex was here! Our group of two was now three. After breakfast we discussed our plans and ended up joining forces with the first two (non WCP) paddlers that showed up. Alex, Liam, Jane and I got ready and set off to Fulford Harbour. Phillip stayed back at camp to fix a gear malfunction and rest his chaffed shoulder.
The paddle to Fulford was relaxing and it was nice to meet some new people. Liam and Jane both guide, and were great company. We got ice cream at Fulford and had our lunches at a nearby beach. On the paddle back, we made a stop to check out the historic Hawaiian homestead. It was a beautiful and peaceful place. The shutters were screwed shut and the door was locked. I would have loved to see inside.
Once we got back, I practiced some rolls and tried Phillips carbon Greenland paddle. I don’t need one, but do I ever want one.
Mick arrived as I struggled out of my drysuit. We are now four! Just in time for the potluck. We had so much food that Mick didn’t need to prepare anything, and we still had extra that we shared with Liam and Jane. It was a great evening and nice to have more company.
On our final morning, everyone was packing up. Alex and I left together and headed back for Swartz Bay. Alex’s oversized cart acted as sponsons and created a considerable amount of drag and noise.
The walk back up to the ticket booth was unpleasant, but at least we had company for the misery. We thankfully managed to catch our ferry in time, and as we waited, we got a kick out of the size difference between the carts.
Alex and I parted ways at Tsawwassen.
Thanks for the relaxing trip.
At the Tsawwassen terminal, I bumped into Phillip while waiting to purchase my walk-on ticket. It was a pleasant surprise as I was catching a mid-day ferry on the Friday and wasn’t expecting to see anyone. He was launching from Fulford Harbour, and I from Swartz Bay. We got to chat and had lunch together on the ferry over.
After a bit of faff on the dock, everything fit in the boat, and I was on my way. I paddled towards Knapp Island and rounded its Eastern shore. A friend a told me about the Shinto shrine on Knapp, and I wanted to take a look. I didn’t land but appreciated it as I bobbed by.
I wasn’t in any hurry, so I spent some time paddling amongst the rocks, and admired the sandstone formations and arbutus trees. They never get old.
Once I rounded Arbutus point, I was expecting to see a beach full of kayaks. I hopped out to snap some photos of the white shell beach. It was just me and my kayak. It was 3:00pm at this point. Where was everyone? Regardless, I unpacked my boat and set up camp.
After a bit of reading at the point, I noticed a paddler approaching. It was Phillip. He got set up and then we chatted. We spotted two kayakers in the distance, so we went down to the beach to great them. They weren’t from WCP and probably thought that we were a little crazy. Oh well.
Shortly after those two paddlers got settled in, a couple on a zodiac pulled up. Surprised that no one else from WCP had showed up yet, Philip and I started cooking our dinners.
As the sun started to set, two more paddlers pulled up onto the beach. Again, we went down to say hello… and once again they weren’t from WCP. At this point everyone on the island probably thinks Phillip and I are nuts as we talk about this group of paddlers that doesn't exist.
It was a bit buggy, and I was tired, so I retired to my tent early.
The next morning, I was surprised to see a new arrival. Alex was here! Our group of two was now three. After breakfast we discussed our plans and ended up joining forces with the first two (non WCP) paddlers that showed up. Alex, Liam, Jane and I got ready and set off to Fulford Harbour. Phillip stayed back at camp to fix a gear malfunction and rest his chaffed shoulder.
The paddle to Fulford was relaxing and it was nice to meet some new people. Liam and Jane both guide, and were great company. We got ice cream at Fulford and had our lunches at a nearby beach. On the paddle back, we made a stop to check out the historic Hawaiian homestead. It was a beautiful and peaceful place. The shutters were screwed shut and the door was locked. I would have loved to see inside.
Once we got back, I practiced some rolls and tried Phillips carbon Greenland paddle. I don’t need one, but do I ever want one.
Mick arrived as I struggled out of my drysuit. We are now four! Just in time for the potluck. We had so much food that Mick didn’t need to prepare anything, and we still had extra that we shared with Liam and Jane. It was a great evening and nice to have more company.
On our final morning, everyone was packing up. Alex and I left together and headed back for Swartz Bay. Alex’s oversized cart acted as sponsons and created a considerable amount of drag and noise.
The walk back up to the ticket booth was unpleasant, but at least we had company for the misery. We thankfully managed to catch our ferry in time, and as we waited, we got a kick out of the size difference between the carts.
Alex and I parted ways at Tsawwassen.
Thanks for the relaxing trip.
Attachments
Gary Jacek
Established Member
Glad to see you made it out Alana. You mention Knapp Island. The good people there have been claiming a church property tax exemption. However, BC Assessment Authority called them out on it last year as public access is a requirement, which in BCAA's eyes was simply not offered. Times Colonist Knapp Island article
Thanks for sharing that, Gary.
I had checked out the website for the shrine prior to the trip and it mentioned to contact them before arriving. I wasn't sure which ferry I was catching, so I didn't reach out.
I'm not religious, but I've heard that it's beautiful.
- Joined
- May 15, 2005
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Altho' I was late, it was great seeing a bunch of kayaks and Alex, Philip, and Alana there on the beach as I got out on a sunny afternoon:
And then later at Alana's table . . .
Looking north from the grassy area:
And while leaving after a day, a couple of shorebirds that I had to disturb, but not much:
So there's some enthusiasm to do this next year, so why not? Sure was perfect this time.
And then later at Alana's table . . .
Looking north from the grassy area:
And while leaving after a day, a couple of shorebirds that I had to disturb, but not much:
So there's some enthusiasm to do this next year, so why not? Sure was perfect this time.
kayakwriter
Administrator
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I had a quick look at them and they seem pretty good. PM me your email addy and I'll share them.
Message sent! Thanks again.
- Joined
- May 15, 2005
- Messages
- 3,695
oh yeah one thing to add:
1]: . . . . On the way back, I was essentially the last one on the boat . . . and it was no problem. They just held me up for a few secs and they I walked on and left the kayak at the end of the lower deck. [first time like that, usually get on first with walkers, bikes]
After arriving, then just walked off on the right hand lane as the right hand lane moved along. No issues, quick.
another 1] . . . . At shwartz bay, to get back on the terminal parking area from the road from the dock, I walked up [without kayak] and bought a ticket at the closest Vancouver booth, got the ticket operator to call the tower to open the sliding car gate beside the tower. 5min back to the tower gate, waited a bit and they opened it for me [same as when I arrived] . . . and I juuuuuuust caught the ferry!
and that other 1] . . . . . . Horrendous steep low tide transfer from the pier to the dock, must have been 45 degrees! had to unload and just barely eked the kayak up the ramp. whew. touch and go, need another technique.
1]: . . . . On the way back, I was essentially the last one on the boat . . . and it was no problem. They just held me up for a few secs and they I walked on and left the kayak at the end of the lower deck. [first time like that, usually get on first with walkers, bikes]
After arriving, then just walked off on the right hand lane as the right hand lane moved along. No issues, quick.
another 1] . . . . At shwartz bay, to get back on the terminal parking area from the road from the dock, I walked up [without kayak] and bought a ticket at the closest Vancouver booth, got the ticket operator to call the tower to open the sliding car gate beside the tower. 5min back to the tower gate, waited a bit and they opened it for me [same as when I arrived] . . . and I juuuuuuust caught the ferry!
and that other 1] . . . . . . Horrendous steep low tide transfer from the pier to the dock, must have been 45 degrees! had to unload and just barely eked the kayak up the ramp. whew. touch and go, need another technique.
kayakwriter
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(cross-posted from philiptorrens.com)
Prologue: Back in the day, all the available members of Westcoastpaddler used to have an annual meet-up on Portland Island on the last weekend of April. What with COVID and one thing and another, it had been years since this had happened. So as co-owner of WCP, I was very excited when we decided to renew the tradition this year.
April 25, 2025
I drove into the long term parking at Tsawwassen ferry terminal shortly after 9AM. It might have seemed ridiculously early for an 11AM sailing, but I like to have time in hand to deal with curveball crises. Which proved to be a good idea: as I pulled my kayak cart wheels out, I was hit by a letdown feeling: both tires were so flaccid that they’d have rolled right off the rims under the load of my kayak and the weekend’s cargo. After a frantic few moments, I remembered I had an electric pump for my car tires in the back – and fortunately the valve fitting was also right for the kayak wheels. With the tires once again fully tumescent, I heaved the boat on the cart, and the cargo into the boat.
Wheeling up to the foot passenger wicket, I spotted a beautiful skeg kayak on a much more compact cart. And soon found Alana in the line up. We brunched on burgers on the ferry and compared notes. At Swartz Bay, Alana wheeled off towards the public dock to launch; I rolled over to the ferry to Fulford Harbour.
My cunning plan was to put in at Fulford Harbour, supposedly upwind from Arbutus Point based on the forecast, raise my kayak sail and glide effortlessly down to camp. Like many cunning plans, it hit several snags. Firstly as I launched, I discovered the metal bracket guiding the rudder lift/lower line had broken off, so I couldn’t raise or lower the rudder from the cockpit. But that was rather a moot point since (secondly) as soon as I put my feet on the foot pedals, the swaged copper stopper holding the right rudder cable end popped off. So I had no steering anyway for my non-deployable rudder. Fortunately, I’d upgraded the foot pegs from the “slidey” type that were OEM for a vintage boat like mine to the gas pedal ones that stay in place even with broken cables. So I could still brace properly in the boat. But it did mean that if I were sailing, it would require a lot of nimble work with my paddle to steer, because no rudder. But that issue went away as I discovered (thirdly) that the wind was SE rather than the promised NW. No sailing for me. Reduced to paddling – the horror! The horror!
Still the sun sparkled on the bright blue sea, and I had a very pleasant crossing, threading through the shallows on the north side of Russell Island, over the white shell bottom.
With no rudder in the water, the Expedition kayak had a tendency to weathercock once I was out in the main channel. But that wasn’t entirely bad, as I needed to ferry between 30 and 40 degrees to windward to counter the downwind drift. (I was detecting and correcting for drift by using the tip of Arbutus Point and the high flat peak of Moresby Island behind it as a range.)
After a couple of happy hours, I arrived off Arbutus Point to find, as expected, Alana was already in residence. Based on previous soggy experience, I lurked offshore while the wake from a recently passed BC ferry dissipated. (Surf landings in loaded boats are rather too exciting.)
There were a few other kayaks already on the beach, but none of their owners were here for the WCP meeting – or even knew what it was! So Alana and I supped together with our respective meals, and hit our tents fairly early as it was cool and buggy.
It was while I was seated on the edge of my sleeping pad, writing up my journal, that the first foreshadowing of a restless night emerged: with a muffled twang, one of the internal battens in the pad parted. A small hillock now bulged up out of the formerly featureless plain of the pad. Oh, well, not too bad, right? Wrong. As I lay abed, there occurred a slow but relentless progressive failure as each torn batten put more load on its neighbour, leading it to tear in turn. My mat transformed itself first into a sort of half-inflated life raft—with my feet at the high end and my head on the ground, naturally—and then finally into a pneumatic log. After an indeterminate period of trying to drape myself over this squashy cylinder and being regularly bucked off just as I dozed off, I gave up, deflated the mat, and slid a spare fleece top between my body and the ground. But it wasn’t like the venerable pad owed me anything: it was more than a dozen years old, and the cozy companion of many a night.
April 26, 2025
Over my breakfast of tinned hash and fruit cocktail, I discovered a third WCPer had infiltrated Arbutus Point under cover of darkness last night, and slept commando-style beneath the stars. (Many of you will know Alex from the amazing adventures and photography he has shared over the years at Alexsidles and on Westcoast Paddler.)
Later in the morning, Alana and Alex decided to join a pair of the other paddlers (Liam and Jane, also kayak guides as it turned out) on a quest for homemade ice cream in Fulford Harbour.
I had a bit of cutting and chafing under my left arm (later determined to be caused by the very deep cockpit and high seatback of the Expedition kayak pushing my PFD higher up my body than in my other kayaks, and rubbing the lower edge of the arm hole against my armpit. I have an alternate PFD with a shorter torso I’ll use on future trips with the Expedition.) Plus, I wanted to see if I could fix the rudder lines and cable on my boat. So I puttered happily on the beach as the others paddled off.
First, I improvised a guide for the rudder raising and lowering line by running it through the tent pole repair sleeve from my repair kit and duct taping that to the V-cradle for the previous rudder on the back deck. With the tape looped right around and under the hull, it was pretty fugly. But functional.
Next, after a bit of hesitation, I dismounted the right pedal and housing from the hull, then completely disassembled it in order to rethread the cable through it. I worked as carefully as any surgeon to ensure I didn’t drop any of the nuts, bolts or screws into the concealing sand. By adjusting the loop where the cable runs around the tiller at the rudder, I freed up some slack at the foot pedal end, which I then tied into a figure 8 stopper knot to replace the missing swaged copper stopper.
I was just congratulating myself on the success of these field repairs when the Fulford Harbour Foursome hove back into view on the horizon. Per an earlier promise, I donned my drysuit and waded into the shallows with my GoPro to video Alana working through her rolls and static braces. I congratulated her on pulling off rolls better in quality and variety while in her first trimester than I ever could while non-pregnant. “Second trimester” she casually corrected me. Which of course made me feel much more adequate.
As Alana was changing into her shore wear, a lone kayaker appeared. This proved to be Mick, which was a welcome surprise as I’d originally expected him to be there on the Thursday and leaving on the Friday, so we thought we’d missed him. So now we were four WCPers.
It turned out Mick had managed to leave the bag with his intended dish for the potluck at home. And that turned out to be a good thing. Because with just my veggie pasta dish, Alana’s corn salad and Alex’s zingy tofu offering, we had so much surplus that we had to accost our neighbours Liam and Jane and foist food upon them – not just for supper, but also leftovers for their lunch the next day!
Armed with my carefully sun-dried sprayskirt as an improvised sleeping mat, I slept much more comfortably than last night.
April 27, 2025
Over breakfast and coffee, I chatted with Mick and Alex. It turns out we all three share an interest in traditional Polynesian and Micronesian methods of ocean navigation, so the conversation flowed freely.
Alex and Alana launched together about mid-morning for Swartz Bay. Mick was staying another night, so I bid him adieu as I launched shortly before noon.
I had to paddle only a few hundred metres to escape the lee of Portland Island before I was able to hoist the sail. (I was so glad to have invested the time to fix the rudder and foot peg cable!) At first I was merely ghosting along, but the wind and my speed increased as I went. Once I’d opened the mouth of Fulford Harbour, I could have sailed in a straight shot down to the public wharf and ferry dock. But I was having far Too Much Fun, so instead I zigzagged downwind in a series of ever-speedier broad reaches.
I got some good video clips, but no footage of the most exciting sailing since my hands were literally full. As the wind sped up between the contracting hills at the far end of Fulford Harbour, I had to lean to the windward side of the kayak (the paddler’s equivalent of the sailor’s hiking out). As I’ve done before in high winds, I also lay my paddle on the water on the windward side in what I call a flying brace: with the leading (forward) edge of the blade angled slightly upward, the blade is continually lifted by the forward motion of the boat as it would be during a sweep brace, so the paddle becomes a hydrofoil outrigger I can lean aggressively down on if a gust threatens to capsize me to leeward.
I stopped to furl the sail a hundred or so metres upwind of the public wharf, so I’d have had some searoom to sort things out if they’d gone sideways. But fortunately for my pride, all went smoothly.
I pulled alongside the public wharf about 1:15PM. Even with an unhurried remount of the boat onto the wheels, portaging the cargo separately up the dock ramp, then reloading the boat, I was able to stroll on the 1:50 ferry just behind the last car, as if the ferry had been my own personal transportation just waiting for me before departing.
Great to have relaunched the get-together tradition. Hoping more WCPers can join us next year.
WestCoastPaddler meet-up
Prologue: Back in the day, all the available members of Westcoastpaddler used to have an annual meet-up on Portland Island on the last weekend of April. What with COVID and one thing and another, it had been years since this had happened. So as co-owner of WCP, I was very excited when we decided to renew the tradition this year.
April 25, 2025
I drove into the long term parking at Tsawwassen ferry terminal shortly after 9AM. It might have seemed ridiculously early for an 11AM sailing, but I like to have time in hand to deal with curveball crises. Which proved to be a good idea: as I pulled my kayak cart wheels out, I was hit by a letdown feeling: both tires were so flaccid that they’d have rolled right off the rims under the load of my kayak and the weekend’s cargo. After a frantic few moments, I remembered I had an electric pump for my car tires in the back – and fortunately the valve fitting was also right for the kayak wheels. With the tires once again fully tumescent, I heaved the boat on the cart, and the cargo into the boat.
Wheeling up to the foot passenger wicket, I spotted a beautiful skeg kayak on a much more compact cart. And soon found Alana in the line up. We brunched on burgers on the ferry and compared notes. At Swartz Bay, Alana wheeled off towards the public dock to launch; I rolled over to the ferry to Fulford Harbour.
My cunning plan was to put in at Fulford Harbour, supposedly upwind from Arbutus Point based on the forecast, raise my kayak sail and glide effortlessly down to camp. Like many cunning plans, it hit several snags. Firstly as I launched, I discovered the metal bracket guiding the rudder lift/lower line had broken off, so I couldn’t raise or lower the rudder from the cockpit. But that was rather a moot point since (secondly) as soon as I put my feet on the foot pedals, the swaged copper stopper holding the right rudder cable end popped off. So I had no steering anyway for my non-deployable rudder. Fortunately, I’d upgraded the foot pegs from the “slidey” type that were OEM for a vintage boat like mine to the gas pedal ones that stay in place even with broken cables. So I could still brace properly in the boat. But it did mean that if I were sailing, it would require a lot of nimble work with my paddle to steer, because no rudder. But that issue went away as I discovered (thirdly) that the wind was SE rather than the promised NW. No sailing for me. Reduced to paddling – the horror! The horror!
Still the sun sparkled on the bright blue sea, and I had a very pleasant crossing, threading through the shallows on the north side of Russell Island, over the white shell bottom.
With no rudder in the water, the Expedition kayak had a tendency to weathercock once I was out in the main channel. But that wasn’t entirely bad, as I needed to ferry between 30 and 40 degrees to windward to counter the downwind drift. (I was detecting and correcting for drift by using the tip of Arbutus Point and the high flat peak of Moresby Island behind it as a range.)
After a couple of happy hours, I arrived off Arbutus Point to find, as expected, Alana was already in residence. Based on previous soggy experience, I lurked offshore while the wake from a recently passed BC ferry dissipated. (Surf landings in loaded boats are rather too exciting.)
There were a few other kayaks already on the beach, but none of their owners were here for the WCP meeting – or even knew what it was! So Alana and I supped together with our respective meals, and hit our tents fairly early as it was cool and buggy.
It was while I was seated on the edge of my sleeping pad, writing up my journal, that the first foreshadowing of a restless night emerged: with a muffled twang, one of the internal battens in the pad parted. A small hillock now bulged up out of the formerly featureless plain of the pad. Oh, well, not too bad, right? Wrong. As I lay abed, there occurred a slow but relentless progressive failure as each torn batten put more load on its neighbour, leading it to tear in turn. My mat transformed itself first into a sort of half-inflated life raft—with my feet at the high end and my head on the ground, naturally—and then finally into a pneumatic log. After an indeterminate period of trying to drape myself over this squashy cylinder and being regularly bucked off just as I dozed off, I gave up, deflated the mat, and slid a spare fleece top between my body and the ground. But it wasn’t like the venerable pad owed me anything: it was more than a dozen years old, and the cozy companion of many a night.
April 26, 2025
Over my breakfast of tinned hash and fruit cocktail, I discovered a third WCPer had infiltrated Arbutus Point under cover of darkness last night, and slept commando-style beneath the stars. (Many of you will know Alex from the amazing adventures and photography he has shared over the years at Alexsidles and on Westcoast Paddler.)
Later in the morning, Alana and Alex decided to join a pair of the other paddlers (Liam and Jane, also kayak guides as it turned out) on a quest for homemade ice cream in Fulford Harbour.
I had a bit of cutting and chafing under my left arm (later determined to be caused by the very deep cockpit and high seatback of the Expedition kayak pushing my PFD higher up my body than in my other kayaks, and rubbing the lower edge of the arm hole against my armpit. I have an alternate PFD with a shorter torso I’ll use on future trips with the Expedition.) Plus, I wanted to see if I could fix the rudder lines and cable on my boat. So I puttered happily on the beach as the others paddled off.
First, I improvised a guide for the rudder raising and lowering line by running it through the tent pole repair sleeve from my repair kit and duct taping that to the V-cradle for the previous rudder on the back deck. With the tape looped right around and under the hull, it was pretty fugly. But functional.
Next, after a bit of hesitation, I dismounted the right pedal and housing from the hull, then completely disassembled it in order to rethread the cable through it. I worked as carefully as any surgeon to ensure I didn’t drop any of the nuts, bolts or screws into the concealing sand. By adjusting the loop where the cable runs around the tiller at the rudder, I freed up some slack at the foot pedal end, which I then tied into a figure 8 stopper knot to replace the missing swaged copper stopper.
I was just congratulating myself on the success of these field repairs when the Fulford Harbour Foursome hove back into view on the horizon. Per an earlier promise, I donned my drysuit and waded into the shallows with my GoPro to video Alana working through her rolls and static braces. I congratulated her on pulling off rolls better in quality and variety while in her first trimester than I ever could while non-pregnant. “Second trimester” she casually corrected me. Which of course made me feel much more adequate.
As Alana was changing into her shore wear, a lone kayaker appeared. This proved to be Mick, which was a welcome surprise as I’d originally expected him to be there on the Thursday and leaving on the Friday, so we thought we’d missed him. So now we were four WCPers.
It turned out Mick had managed to leave the bag with his intended dish for the potluck at home. And that turned out to be a good thing. Because with just my veggie pasta dish, Alana’s corn salad and Alex’s zingy tofu offering, we had so much surplus that we had to accost our neighbours Liam and Jane and foist food upon them – not just for supper, but also leftovers for their lunch the next day!
Armed with my carefully sun-dried sprayskirt as an improvised sleeping mat, I slept much more comfortably than last night.
April 27, 2025
Over breakfast and coffee, I chatted with Mick and Alex. It turns out we all three share an interest in traditional Polynesian and Micronesian methods of ocean navigation, so the conversation flowed freely.
Alex and Alana launched together about mid-morning for Swartz Bay. Mick was staying another night, so I bid him adieu as I launched shortly before noon.
I had to paddle only a few hundred metres to escape the lee of Portland Island before I was able to hoist the sail. (I was so glad to have invested the time to fix the rudder and foot peg cable!) At first I was merely ghosting along, but the wind and my speed increased as I went. Once I’d opened the mouth of Fulford Harbour, I could have sailed in a straight shot down to the public wharf and ferry dock. But I was having far Too Much Fun, so instead I zigzagged downwind in a series of ever-speedier broad reaches.
I got some good video clips, but no footage of the most exciting sailing since my hands were literally full. As the wind sped up between the contracting hills at the far end of Fulford Harbour, I had to lean to the windward side of the kayak (the paddler’s equivalent of the sailor’s hiking out). As I’ve done before in high winds, I also lay my paddle on the water on the windward side in what I call a flying brace: with the leading (forward) edge of the blade angled slightly upward, the blade is continually lifted by the forward motion of the boat as it would be during a sweep brace, so the paddle becomes a hydrofoil outrigger I can lean aggressively down on if a gust threatens to capsize me to leeward.
I stopped to furl the sail a hundred or so metres upwind of the public wharf, so I’d have had some searoom to sort things out if they’d gone sideways. But fortunately for my pride, all went smoothly.
I pulled alongside the public wharf about 1:15PM. Even with an unhurried remount of the boat onto the wheels, portaging the cargo separately up the dock ramp, then reloading the boat, I was able to stroll on the 1:50 ferry just behind the last car, as if the ferry had been my own personal transportation just waiting for me before departing.
Great to have relaunched the get-together tradition. Hoping more WCPers can join us next year.
Last edited:
- Joined
- May 15, 2005
- Messages
- 3,695
we all three share an interest in traditional Polynesian and Micronesian methods of ocean navigation,
Aha! A diversion - actually, I’m more interested in the variety of craft that were used in the south pacific . . . and here’s that canoe I was talking to Philip and Alex [?]about.
It’s a cool one from Wuvulu or Aua island [used for shark fishing] came in various sizes from one paddler to about 6. Extreme shape, but for various reasons: the long bow/stern ‘spears’ were for something to hang onto while swimming with or resting from the catching/diving for prey and the bow/stern upright spears were sometimes actual spears but with tufting were also telltales of where the boat was thru the waves while separated.
Anyway, take a look:
Single paddler with good sized shark catch:
Model of large 8 person canoe: I have some text that says some came up to 18m [60ft] long
Now who of us complains about the awkwardness of kayakfishing? This monster is almost as big as the canoe hull. thank goodness for residual buoyancy:
Aha! A diversion - actually, I’m more interested in the variety of craft that were used in the south pacific . . . and here’s that canoe I was talking to Philip and Alex [?]about.
It’s a cool one from Wuvulu or Aua island [used for shark fishing] came in various sizes from one paddler to about 6. Extreme shape, but for various reasons: the long bow/stern ‘spears’ were for something to hang onto while swimming with or resting from the catching/diving for prey and the bow/stern upright spears were sometimes actual spears but with tufting were also telltales of where the boat was thru the waves while separated.
Anyway, take a look:
Single paddler with good sized shark catch:
Model of large 8 person canoe: I have some text that says some came up to 18m [60ft] long
Now who of us complains about the awkwardness of kayakfishing? This monster is almost as big as the canoe hull. thank goodness for residual buoyancy:
Gary Jacek
Established Member
Hey Kayakwriter. Very sorry I missed this WCP Campout.
>As I lay abed, there occurred a slow but relentless progressive failure as each torn batten put more load on its neighbour, leading it to tear in turn. My mat transformed itself first into a sort of half-inflated life raft—with my feet at the high end and my head on the ground, naturally—and then finally into a pneumatic log. After an indeterminate period of trying to drape myself over this squashy cylinder and being regularly bucked off just as I dozed off, I gave up, deflated the mat, and slid a spare fleece top between my body and the ground.
My Exped Downmat performed the same self destruct sequence on Night 1 of 6 this past summer at Benson Point in Nuchatlitz.
The sand under my tent offered cold comfort as I attempted to doze off on my feathered sausage.
>As I lay abed, there occurred a slow but relentless progressive failure as each torn batten put more load on its neighbour, leading it to tear in turn. My mat transformed itself first into a sort of half-inflated life raft—with my feet at the high end and my head on the ground, naturally—and then finally into a pneumatic log. After an indeterminate period of trying to drape myself over this squashy cylinder and being regularly bucked off just as I dozed off, I gave up, deflated the mat, and slid a spare fleece top between my body and the ground.
My Exped Downmat performed the same self destruct sequence on Night 1 of 6 this past summer at Benson Point in Nuchatlitz.
The sand under my tent offered cold comfort as I attempted to doze off on my feathered sausage.