Launched late–11:00 if you can imagine. Without Paula helping to carry stuff to the beach, it takes a lot longer. I decided to paddle fully geared up, so I could overnight on the island if I wanted. well, I did want to, but didn’t stay. But with 20+ kilos of extra gear on board, the kayak handled a bit better.
This is a slight oversimplification of the route I took–there were some currents in Baynes Channel as I went over (and some noticeable eddylines, etc), but nothing really serious or off-putting. The day was gorgeous.
This was about 10:00 am looking out from my launch point. The day just kept getting better too.
Discovery Island was beautiful. As I headed across Baynes Channel, there was already another kayaker headed back in from what looked like a trip around the Chain Islets.
I parked myself on the southern end of Discovery and decided that there was really no point in heading around to Rudlin Bay. The sun was out, the ground was …. well, not dry, but there was no standing water.
The day was not really warm–the puddles in Gyro Park still had ice on them when I left, and there was still frost in the shade on Discovery at 12:00, but if you were in the sun–and as warmly dressed as I was–life was good.
I lunched under the bent-over tree in the centre of the picture above and lay about in the sun reading and eventually napping. Eventually I thought I should pack up and head back to Cadboro Bay–and did.
The weather was still stunning when I left the island, and the water was even calmer.
That’s Trial Island off in the distance. I was back by 4:00, having met Paula in her inflatable–she was most of the way to Flower Island by then, and just continued on her own paddle after work.
That makes four paddles in 15 days, keeping me on track for paddling my century (100 days on the water in a year). With the weather holding (ie. not raining, not windy. other than that not much matters except fog and snowstorms), I should get one or two paddles in by Sunday, when the group paddles again.
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