Sea Stars, Jellyfish And A Sunken Sailboat

After a very busy weekend of painting bedrooms in the house along with garden work we left a couple of hours open to take a relaxing paddle into Tod Inlet late Sunday afternoon. We arrived at the Brentwood Bay put in location next to the BC Ferry dock and unlike our last launch here, we rigged up our yaks onto the Swagman wheels and simply rolled them down to the waterline. Waaaaay easier than manhandling them down to the waterline fully loaded!

Sun Sea Star

As expected the winds were calm and with a low tide and unbelievable clear water we saw hundreds of sea stars of all different sizes and colors. Purple, pink, white, orange, leather, sun, long thin legs, small, huge..... you name it. We have never seen such a diversity of types and were surprised to see them in the numbers that we did.

Ochre Sea Star

The Ochre Sea Star otherwise known as the Purple Sea Star has always been a favourite of mine because of the deep purple color. They probably are the most dominant sea star on the west coast.

Every time we have paddled into Tod Inlet there have been Moon Jellyfish in great numbers as well. On this paddle we came across a bloom where there were so many, the water under our kayaks literally turned white much like a white out conditon in the snow. The one time that I leave my GoPro at home... rats!!

We recently heard from a fellow kayaker (I can call you that now Kathryn) about a Purple Martin bird house that was built to look like a Star Trek ship. Sure enough as we paddled up to bird houses we spotted the Star Ship Enterprise's Shuttlecraft Galileo looking like it had a little heat shield damage. Apparently it was put up to see if the Purple Martin's preferred a typical "bird house" or if anything resembling a bird house would do. Turns out the Purple Martin's like the Galileo just as much as any of the other available nesting boxes.

Heading back to the put in location we made our way past some of the sail boats anchored in the bay and I heard Robyn say.... "there's a sail boat under me". Thinking that it was a little early for her to be sipping the after paddle wine (LOL) I turned around and sure enough there was the top of the mast about 5 feet below the surface and you could see all the way down to the deck. What an eerie sight! Again ..... where was my GoPro???? Doh!! Lesson learned??? You bought the GoPro at least take it with you. :-)

On our inbound track you can see where we stopped between the 6km and 6.86km right next to an anchored sail boat. That's where the sunken sail boat is. I must do some research on how she got there.