What day does that happen? Answer, Canadian Thanksgiving and we are at Pedder Bay RV Resort with Dave and Kelly Reaville for the 4 day long weekend to celebrate except ...... it isn't Thanksgiving! In a nutshell we got our 2013 holiday dates all mixed up last year when we booked our sites for this weekend and only figured it out about a month ago. With no hope of getting the our preferred sites for next weekend we decided to go camping anyway. Besides, it gives us another long weekend next week for another kayak adventure.
So maybe we picked the right weekend to camp anyway after the south coast just emerged from the first wind and rain storm during the past week. With the forecast looking pretty good Robyn and I went for a paddle on Friday morning towards Bentinck Island to play in some currents using our P&H Delphins.
One of the things about paddling from the sheltered marina in Pedder Bay is that you really don't know what conditions you might get once outside of the bay. Although the marine forecast (SE 5-15) and current predictions (+3.2 kts) give you a rough idea of what might be happening in the area, the rest was up to us to assess the actual conditions to determine where our paddle might take us.
Approaching Edye Point the 10 kt SE against the flood was producing a 2 foot chop that we would have to keep an eye on as we headed into Eemdyck Passage. As I expected, the entrance to the passage had a bit of a rip which we played in before heading over to Bentinck Island riding the back eddies towards George Point.
Although we have seen turkey vultures before in the area, today there were a couple hundred riding the thermals above Bentinck Island which was really neat to see. We never knew that there were that many around here and even though they are considered to be one of the ugliest looking birds they are very graceful in flight.
We had planned to circumnavigate Bentinck but there was a very big rip from the opposing wind against current on the south side of the island which we decided not to tackle by ourselves. Instead we just let the flood carry us back through the passage past all the seals on the many rocky islets.
Heading back into Pedder Bay we played in the rock gardens before crossing over towards Weir Point and into the little protected bay that we visit frequently to practice rolling.
After last weekend's paddle, I have started to feel really comfortable using my Greenland paddle in the Delphin and so I committed to use it again for this paddle in more challenging conditions. One thing for sure is that I really like it for rolling and look forward to learning more of the Greenland rolling techniques.
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| Putting in at the marina with the local seal in the background |
So maybe we picked the right weekend to camp anyway after the south coast just emerged from the first wind and rain storm during the past week. With the forecast looking pretty good Robyn and I went for a paddle on Friday morning towards Bentinck Island to play in some currents using our P&H Delphins.
 |
| Robyn paddling past the marina towards The Lester B. Pearson United World College of the Pacific |
One of the things about paddling from the sheltered marina in Pedder Bay is that you really don't know what conditions you might get once outside of the bay. Although the marine forecast (SE 5-15) and current predictions (+3.2 kts) give you a rough idea of what might be happening in the area, the rest was up to us to assess the actual conditions to determine where our paddle might take us.
Approaching Edye Point the 10 kt SE against the flood was producing a 2 foot chop that we would have to keep an eye on as we headed into Eemdyck Passage. As I expected, the entrance to the passage had a bit of a rip which we played in before heading over to Bentinck Island riding the back eddies towards George Point.
 |
| Race Rocks Lighthouse from George Point |
Although we have seen turkey vultures before in the area, today there were a couple hundred riding the thermals above Bentinck Island which was really neat to see. We never knew that there were that many around here and even though they are considered to be one of the ugliest looking birds they are very graceful in flight.
We had planned to circumnavigate Bentinck but there was a very big rip from the opposing wind against current on the south side of the island which we decided not to tackle by ourselves. Instead we just let the flood carry us back through the passage past all the seals on the many rocky islets.
After last weekend's paddle, I have started to feel really comfortable using my Greenland paddle in the Delphin and so I committed to use it again for this paddle in more challenging conditions. One thing for sure is that I really like it for rolling and look forward to learning more of the Greenland rolling techniques.
One thing that most kayakers will agree upon is diversity of wildlife that can be seen from the water. Thinking back to what we saw right from our put in I think this is our list. Seals, female Common Merganser, 2 baby Raccoons, Mink, Turkey Vultures (hundreds), Eagles, Falcons, Oystercatchers, Blue Herons, Kingfishers, Canada Geese, and of course Heermann's Seagulls.
We also explored some more of the features on our Fuji XP50 cameras using the continuous picture mode of 12 pictures in 1.5 seconds. In particular I wanted to see what would happen shooting under water and the results were exactly what I was looking for. Now only if a seal would swim by. :-)
2013 Paddle #61 Turkey Run
Distance: 6.66 nm ( 12.34 km)
YTD: 340.19 nm ( 648.45 km)
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