PART 3 - Heriot Bay to Port Hardy
June 10th - Day 12
I slept heavily last night, and never heard a clatter of drunken partying, chanting or thumping from the karaoke down at the bar.
In just eight days of paddling, I’ve covered nearly half the distance from Seattle to the northern tip of Vancouver Island, about two hundred and fifty miles so far, but there are still sixteen days until my encounter with the Skils Sea Kayaking group on St Josef Bay. Therefore, I concluded that I was ahead of schedule, and even with a few spare days to account for bad weather, I would be on time.
And so, I took a rest day.
Two days prior I was contacted by a fellow kayaker living in Heriot Bay who invited me for a drink. We met at a café next to the local supermarket up the road and he told me his story over some morning coffee. Michael works for his father-in-law during the summer months taking care of his property, and this was his first time in a month to sneak out for a break.
“Man, I work all day at that place. I cut grass, nail in floorboards, and paint the walls; I suppose I am a kind of indentured servant to my father-in-law.” He said, joking.
“Well, I sure hope she was worth all, right?”
“Oh, she is definitely worth all the work. Though she doesn’t always act like it.” He laughed.
He asked me if I could give him any kayaking advice from my previous long journeys.
“Any tips and tricks you’ve picked up on the way?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I’ve never considered myself an authority on the sport.
“You know I did this thing with my bilge pump and water bottles where I wrapped them in waterproof velcro. I put the other half of the velcro on the floor of the cockpit, and now I don’t need bungies to keep the pump and the bottles in place. Works quite well even when I roll the boat.
“Oh that’s brilliant you’ll have to show me when we walk back.”
In the afternoon a couple that had been paddling the Johnstone Strait the past week arrived at the Heriot Bay Inn. I struck up a conversation with George and Marla who were very excited to tell me about their adventure over dinner.
“Yes, we saw one bear. It happened on Sonora Island just north of Quadra. He was right on the campsite we were planning to stay for the night. He ran into the bush when we arrived, but I sure didn’t want to camp there and find out if he was planning to come back. We kept going to Francisco Island; that’s a neat place to camp, you’re right on the mouth of the Hole in the Wall and you see these huge dancing whirlpools from the current. Speaking of that, do you have a good way to know the tides in this area? You’re going to need it.”
“Well, I usually look at the tide table on my phone for the closest station. There is one here on Heriot Bay.” I answered.
Marla gazed at me with a look that spoke of disapproval.
“Yeah, that probably works on the West Coast of Vancouver, but here in the sounds, that’s going to get you into trouble. The turn of the tide doesn’t always coincide with the high or the low tide. Yes, it might be the celestial high or low tide, but the narrow passageways between the sounds can really goof up everything. You might get to one passage thinking it’s slack tide, and you’ll be waiting there for an additional hour before the current is weak enough to cross, or worse, that your time to cross has already passed.”
She reached into her purse and pulled out a few sheets of letter sized paper that she had carefully folded into two Ziplock bags.
“Let me give you something that will be useful to you.” She whispered.
She unfolded the paper and showed it to me. It was the printout of a long spreadsheet table.
“These are the current tables for all the passageways in the Discovery Islands. It gives you the time and speed of the peak flood and ebb currents, and the time of the turns. There are only a few passageways for which there is raw data on the Canadian Hydrogeologic Service website, so for a few of the others, I extrapolated the times and speeds based on the distances from the closest gauges. It’s worked remarkably well for us during the past week. The tables go until June 15th which will cover you, there you see here you have the times for the Surge Narrows, and the Okisollo Passage where you’ll be going through.”
“Thank you so much for this. I wish there was a way I could repay this kind of generosity.”
“Oh, no worries. Put us in the story of your great adventure if you wish. We will follow you along the link you gave us “www.aroundonmykayak.com.” I guess I can remember that. Not many people have circumnavigated Vancouver Island, it’s a small group you’ll be joining. But be careful on the west coast. It can get very rough on the ocean side. I certainly wouldn’t paddle there by myself. Oh, and by the way, if you decide to go to Sonora Island, don’t bother stopping at the Sonora Resort. The place has nothing but rich assholes paying over a thousand dollars a night or more. The staff wouldn’t even let us land to stretch our legs.”
June 11th - Day 13
I have noticed that there are a lot of place names here in the Pacific Northwest that have Spanish origin. Cortez island, Juan de Fuca Strait, San Juan Islands, Laredo Sound, Port Angeles, and many others. I asked Rebecca, the front desk lady, if she knew why.
“Well, you know, the Spanish were the first Europeans to sail through here in the fifteen hundreds. So, it would make sense they put their names on a few islands and capes, that’s what everyone did at the time. Then later came the British and they were always feuding with the Spanish over who was going to own what, so they put their names on top of the Spanish names, but sometimes the Spanish name just stuck. In fact, Quadra Island as you might have guessed is named after a Spanish Captain. His full name was Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, quite the mouthful. He was a friend of George Vancouver, yes, that Vancouver.”
“Oh really, and how do you know that?"
“Well, funny, no one’s asked me that. I actually learned it from a statue on the harbor in Victoria next to the Parliament Building. It says they had a chance encounter in Nootka on the west coast, which was a Spanish settlement, and because they didn’t immediately kill each other, which was the custom back then between the Spanish and the British, one of them said to the other, “hey, since we are friends, why don’t we name the whole island after ourselves. Let’s call it Quadra and Vancouver’s Island.
“But then of course, the British eventually kicked the Spanish out, and it became Vancouver and Quadra’s Island, because yeah, your guy’s name goes first, and because that was too long it became just Vancouver Island.”
“Haha, I guess that Vancouver must have spoken from the grave, “Hey, he was a friend of mine. Can he at least get a consolation prize? And so, that’s how he got Quadra Island named after him?”
“Ha, that would make sense, eh. He didn’t come out too badly, there’s a Bodega Point, a Francisco Island, and Sonora Island is named after one of his ships. Juan de Fuca, however, is a different Juan but I don’t know which one, there are too many different Juans.”
We talked for another half hour including what I should buy at the supermarket. “You like Chef Boyardee? Yeah, they have that there but it’s so gross! Who eats pasta from a can? Then again, you are paddling around the whole island, I guess you know what works better than me.”
I asked if I could stay one more day. She checked the availability, and said the room was free for one more night but I had to be gone the next day because a group of Chinese tourists on a tour had the entire hotel booked.
North of Heriot Bay the tides have some quirks. Up until now the flooding tide came from the south, barreling down the Juan the Fuca Strait before turning north and meandering through the San Juan islands and filling up the Strait of Georgia like a giant bathtub. But north of Heriot bay the reverse happens. The flooding tide starts from the north wrapping around Cape Scott, down through the Johnstone Strait and then into the northern sounds like an artery pushing blood through the circulatory system.
The water is also surprisingly warm here, especially around Heriot Bay. I made some rolls in the marina, and my first reaction was, “hmmm, I don’t feel the ice cream brain chills.” I took my gloves off, dipped my hands in the water, and it did not feel cold at all. Surely, it wasn’t the jacuzzi-like conditions of the seas around Miami that I am accustomed to, but warm enough that on a sunny day, I wouldn’t have minded going for a swim. I think that the reason the water is so much warmer here is because the tide probably doesn’t ebb for long enough to get mixed with the Pacific Ocean. The water just slushes back and forth in the strait, and with the long days of the summer, it steadily accumulates heat. The winters must also consequently be much colder here than anywhere else in British Columbia.
There are two pathways north from Heriot Bay The main path runs between Quadra and Vancouver Island and is called the Discovery Passage (named after the Discovery which was the ship captained by George Vancouver), and it begins on the southern tip of Quadra Island in a place called Cape Mudge where a lighthouse marks the entrance to the passage. From there Quadra Island progressively hugs ever closer to the Vancouver mainland, and the channel becomes ever narrower over a stretch of about thirteen miles. From my work as an engineer, I know that fact speeds up the water because of the venturi effect (there is a flow meter called the venturi meter which calculates the flow by measuring the drop in pressure in the pipe before and after an induced constriction). Water is an incompressible liquid and so the only way to pass the same amount of fluid through an increasingly narrower opening is for the flow velocity to increase. The throat of the passage, called the Seymour Narrows lies just north of Campbell River. My friend Lee told me harrowing stories about this place.
“At peak flow, the Seymour Narrows are like a horizontal waterfall. You’ll see white foam everywhere, the ferries get tossed around like rubber ducks in a bathtub, and the whirlpools swirl like galaxies. I think that something like a hundred ships have sunk there over the years until the Ripple Rock Explosion.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s a famous event here in Canada. Ripple Rock was a shallow underwater rock right on the mouth of the Seymour Narrows; it created the biggest standing wave in the world. When the current was ebbing half the channel was a mini–Niagara Fall, and when it was flooding it made a gigantic upwell. You could only sail up or down the passage at slack tide. Boat traffic piled up on either side waiting for the brief ten-minute window twice a day.
Anyone too impatient risked getting smashed on the rocks.”
“And so, they blew up the rock?”
“Yes, that’s right. In 1958 the Canadian government decided they would get rid of the rock by blowing it up. They had to drill an underwater tunnel to get under the dome of Ripple Rock, filled up the tunnel with a ton of explosives like the Coyote and the Roadrunner, and then blew it all up. You ask anyone here in BC, and they will tell you it’s the biggest non-nuclear explosion in the world, ever.”
“So, can you paddle through there now?”
“I’ve heard of people paddling through the passage. It’s still very treacherous, and you have to wait for the slack tide at Maud Island on the mouth of the narrows; a big powerful motorboat can handle the current, but I certainly wouldn’t do it on a kayak loaded with gear; especially with all the boat traffic.”
I ruled out paddling through the Seymour Narrows.
The other path north is through the Surge Narrows and the Okisollo Channel which run along the opposite side of Quadra Island and is a finger of the Johnstone Strait and the Discovery Passage. The current there is not quite as ominous as the Seymour Narrows, but peak flow easily gets above ten knots, and any kayaker will have a very tough time making it through the throat of the narrows.
I had been to the Surge Narrows once before. In November the previous year, Lee ran a five-day kayak surfing course, which I attended to hone my skills. At the mouth of the narrows are three small islands and countless islets that spread into a maze of channels, standing waves and eddies.
During the course I paddled a P&H Delphin 150 which is a surf sea kayak made for sharp turns and quick edge responses. Still, I cannot say that I showed particularly great handling skills in this type of condition. Somewhat counterintuitively, when you’re a standing wave, you know you’re doing everything right when you don’t have to do anything; you stay exactly in place, “falling down the wave,” at the same rate it rises underneath you. That sweet spot, however, is like holding your balance at the point of a knife and any small disturbance unless quickly counterted will be quickly amplified and you will be thrown off the waves like a cowboy riding a bull.
My current kayak, the Taran, is three feet longer than the Delphin and three inches narrower. It is made for surfing the ocean swells and definitely won’t turn on a dime, especially in the fast-changing water. Because of that I decided it would be prudent to make a day trip to the Narrows and get a feel for the conditions.
I dressed in my dry suit, put the boat on the water and began paddling ten miles north to the mouth of the narrows.
I immediately was surprised by how much faster and responsive the boat became without all the weight of the gear.
“Holy moly! I must be He-Man! I have the Power! Look how fast I can make this thing go!” I said out loud to the fish.
I paddled past the Discovery Lodge where Lee and I had stayed during our previous visit and arrived at the Surge Narrows close to the peak of the flooding tide (flowing from north to south). I hugged the shore near Quadra Island taking advantage of the back eddies to help me along, and eventually reached the mouth of the Narrows where a set of rapids separate Peck and Quadra Island. Several islets punctuate the rapids and create many back eddies where you can park your kayak and watch the current tumble down like a roll of toilet paper unfurling.
The largest of these islets is right next to Peck Island and the shadow of the islet makes a large back eddy with a pathway almost all the way up to the top of the narrows. If you are a super strong paddler, and can release a powerful burst of energy like a cycling sprinter in the Tour de France, maybe you can overcome the current and make it past the tipping point break free from the current, and delight yourself at the sudden calmness upstream of the rapids (if you are a hydraulic engineer you will know this is the critical point where the flow changes from subcritical to supercritical). If you don’t have the muscle, the current will carry you down and the smooth face of the water until it suddenly changes into a thrashing washing machine (there’s a technical term for this condition too, it’s called a hydraulic jump and is where flow changes back from supercritical to subcritical. You can see a hydraulic jump in all kinds of places. When you open the faucet sink and the water splashes like a disk, or when the smoke from a burning cigarette rises up in a smooth silky thread before decaying into a messy tangle. My university hydraulics professor noted that demonstration of a hydraulic jump was the only valid excuse to smoke in class, which he promptly did. Anyways, let’s not get sidetracked, back to the story.)
I paddled up the back eddy next to Peck Island. At the end of the eddy, I took a five-minute break and observed the current rushing by. It must have been about eight knots. I took three back strokes to position myself with a little bit of runway to accelerate, pointed the kayak at about seventy degrees to the direction of the flow, and then pressed ahead with all the vigor I could muster.
I did not pause to appreciate the sudden rush the kayak experiences when it enters the current and the water speed decelerates from maximum to almost zero and I continued putting in the strokes as furiously as I could like an Energizer Bunny. After about five seconds, I dropped into the trough of the standing wave into the sweet spot where the kayak is in freefall. I stopped paddling and admired the kayak being perfectly still as the clear water rushed by on either side, and the rocks just below twinkled like stars.
Sadly I must have lasted little more than five seconds. I put in a few corrective strokes but eventually overcorrected to the left and soon lost control of the waves and was carried downstream.
“Not too bad for an 18-foot-long boat.” I thought. “Let’s try again.”
I attempted five more times, but none went quite as well as the first, most likely because I was starting to run out of steam. On my last try the current grabbed tossed sideways into the hydraulic jump and flipped over. Thankfully, I was wearing nose plugs and decided to lay upside-down for a while until the thrashing had calmed down before rolling back up. I was surprised to see that I had drifted more than a hundred feet downstream of the rapids. That was enough standing wave surfing practice for one day. Instead I practiced zigzagging on the current by jumping in and out of the eddies while ferrying from one side of the channel to the other; this was a little more relaxing.
I paddled to the east of the Surge Narrows past the channels between Peck Island, Sturt Island and Goepel Island. East of Goepel Island is Maurelle Island, and the widest part of the Surge Narrows. The water is flat, and the current is a little slower. I hugged along the shore of Maurelle island to get upstream of the narrows to a place I remembered had a large waterfall that tumbled into the sea. You could paddle underneath the falls and get a freshwater soak. I found the waterfall, it was rushing down like a firehose, but the tide wasn’t high enough to paddle all the way in.
By now it was close to midafternoon. I pulled out the tide and current tables that Marla had given me the day before, and checked when the turn would be. “two and a half more hours,” which I noted was about thirty minutes after the official peak high tide (slack high tide). After the turn I’d be paddling back against the flow, and so decided to start heading back to Heriot Bay.
But from my current location I had to continue paddling up the channel against the current hugging the shore along Maurelle Island until I would be directly upstream of the narrows between Peck and Quadra Island and could ride the current through the narrows. Unfortunately I turned south a bit too early which resulted in the most strenuous ferry crossing I have ever done.
Ferrying across a channel or river with strong currents is a delicate exercise in vector addition, how much of your energy do you devote towards fighting the current, versus crossing the gap. If you go straight across you will cross more quickly but at the expense of drifting down with the current perhaps so far that you never make it to the destination. If you point straight at the current you might be able to hold your position, but you will never make it across.
In my current predicament, nearly all my effort went into fighting the current with only a miniscule portion towards actually crossing the thousand foot wide channel. About three quarters of the way I noticed a back eddie closer to the opposite shore and allowed myself to drift with the current in exchange finishing the crossing. At the pace I was paddling I wasn’t going to last much longer.
Once I made it across, the eddy carried me along the backside of Peck island, and once I plunged into the current of the Surge Narrows, I could then ride effortlessly with the flow. Nonetheless, I still had to paddle another nine miles back to Heriot Bay, and the weather was promising a rough downpour. At least I had no gear to carry with me.
June 12th - Day 14
Last night I noticed that my two gear bags had ripped. That really bothered me. I had purchased them for the journey around Florida two years ago and they had been an essential part of my expedition. Whenever I land somewhere and unpack, it’s extremely convenient to have a large bag or two where you can throw in all your smaller bags and gear stored in the hatches. I had one for the bow hatch and another for the day and stern hatches. The bags are the difference between having to make three trips to and from the kayak, instead of ten trips. And sometimes it’s a long walk for each trip.
After arriving from my day at the Surge Narrows, I went to wash my clothes at the hotel laundry room and noticed a huge blue Ikea bag on top of one of the washing machines. There were no clothes in the washer, and none of the dryers were running. It seemed as if it had been left behind or forgotten. I looked at the bag. It was made of a sturdy fabric, and the handles straps had a double stitch sewn around the bag rim and would support a lot of weight. The zipper was a little damaged, but that didn’t matter to me. “Darn, I could really use this bag,” I thought.
A voice in my head was clearly telling me to take it. “Who is going to know? There’s no one here. The owner clearly forgot it and is never coming back for it. Take it. You need it more than anyone. This is a gift from heaven. How many times in life does it happen that you really need something, and then that thing magically appears in front of you. Clearly the Gods have shown you favor and want you to succeed on your journey. Do not scorn a gift from the gods.”
I listened to the voice and considered its advice. It sure was a magical thing that this bag should be right here and now, but then another voice whispered in my ear; “You remember that time at work you forgot your i-phone in the public bathroom on the second floor of Colonnade Hotel? You left it on top of the paper box after watching some video on YouTube. You pulled up your pants and forgot to put it back in your pocket. You went back to the office, sat back at your desk, and immediately realized it wasn’t there with you. You ran right back, but it was already gone. It hadn’t been five minutes. It hurt, didn’t it? What did you say you would do if you found the guy who stole your phone? Oh yeah, you told me you would stab the son of a bitch in the face. Do you want to be the son of a bitch you would stab in the face? Remember that passage in the book Mythos you were reading before the journey? You do because I’m the one telling it to you. It said, “Don’t trust the gods. Don’t anger the gods. Don’t barter with the gods. Don’t compete with the gods. Leave the gods alone. Treat all blessings as curse, and all promises as a trap. And above all, do not insult the gods.” It’s pretty clear to me here what the trap is. You are going to feel like a thief for stealing this thing.”
“Oh nonsense! Who is giving you this bad advice? To scorn a gift, is to insult the giver. You’ll never have it this good again, ever.”
I told both the voices that I had a solomonic compromise to split the baby down the middle. I took the bag and placed it in the drawer under the washing sink and left the drawer door open. In the morning I would come by and check if it was still there. If it was, then that would mean that it was left behind and forgotten, and I would get to keep it. If it was gone, then that would mean that the owner had come back and clearly went through the effort to look for it.
In the morning I went back to look for the bag, and lo and behold, it was gone! I felt a bit disappointed. I would have liked to have both the bag and dignity. Alas, I only kept one thing that couldn’t be bought.
I had a very late start from Heriot Bay because the tide would be flooding for most of the day at the Surge Narrows, and slack current wouldn’t be until 4:00pm. I made a rest stop at the Discovery Lodge to kill some time and then arrived at the Surge Narrows Precisely at 3:55pm. I tipped my hat to Marla and her careful calculation of the timing for the slack current. She was spot on. For a brief 10-minute window the water was calm like a pond, and the foaming rapids and standing waves were nowhere to be seen or even hint at their existence. Soon all that would begin to change, and very quickly the water would begin rushing in the opposite direction and carry me northwards.
I got as far as a place called the Octopus Islands 6 miles north of the Surge Narrows. I battled the head wind all day, and now with the gear back on the boat, I felt considerably less strong and powerful.
I’m not sure how these islands got their strange name. Perhaps there are octopuses living here underwater and in the tidal pools, but I did not see any. The labyrinth of islands, however, was a very good shelter from the wind, no matter which direction it was blowing.
I saw one slightly larger island with a few tents already pitched. The owners must have arrived on a dinghy from the only other vessel anchored on one of the nearby bays.
“Would there be room for one more in your island kingdom?” I asked jokingly.
“I’m sure we can find you a plot of land for you to call your own, provided of course that you pony up the royal fifth to her majesty the Queen, eh.” One of them answered with a smirk.
“I hope she better be ready to accept payment in the form of the sound of the money in my wallet. Or have a working credit card terminal in this wilderness.” I responded.
They were four college kids from Toronto on their summer break. One of them had a captain’s license, rented a 30-foot Catalina sailboat called The BC Princess in Vancouver, and took his mates for a one-month adventure up the BC coast.
“I don’t know much about Toronto,” I said, “except that you guys once had a very funny mayor. Wasn’t he the guy who was accused of offering oral sex to one of his employees, and his deadpan response to the crowd of reporters was, “they said I wanted to eat her pussy. I never said that in my life. I am happily married, and I have more than enough to eat at home. Thank you very much.” I remember the story being the talk of every late-night comedy show on TV for a week.”
“Yup! That’s Rob Ford. And that was just one of the many crazy things he said. He also admitted on TV that he’d smoked crack cocaine, or at least he thought he did because he could not recall the details of the event, because he was in a drunken stupor. Yeah, he made Toronto famous. And can you believe that his brother is just as sleazy, and he is the governor of Ontario? But on the not so dark side, at least he knows how to run the province. It’s better to have politicians who dabble in bad acting, than bad actors who think they can be politicians, like Donald Trump.”
“I’d agree, but not all actors turn into bad politicians. Zelensky was a comedian, he played the president on a movie, and now he is the president., Like if was Harrison Ford after Airforce One had gone on to become president Oh, you might not know that movie, if you are in college right now. It came out in 1997.”
June 13th - Day 15
A few miles North of the Octopus Islands are the Okisollo Rapids where the northern shore of Quadra Island pushes up against Sonora Island, and the channel makes a sharp west turn before merging with the Johnstone Strait. My guidebook did not mince words about this treacherous stretch of water, and I felt the author was wagging his finger at me, lest I should underestimate what lay ahead. “Exercise extreme caution when crossing the rapids. You may run into violent rips, foaming overfalls, and gigantic whirlpools. Be aware of the tides and the winds and be especially careful with the Hole in the Wall gap between Maurealle and Sonora Island.”
He put the fear of Poseidon in me, and if I had a horse to sacrifice to the Earthshaker in exchange for a safe passage I would have done it.
I unfolded the Marla’s tide tables and looked up the table for the Okisollo Channel. The tide would start ebbing in the morning, reaching peak flow at 11:00am. The Hole in the Wall had a similar timetable, but she had added a note that drew my attention. It said, “The tide floods to the Northeast, and ebbs to the Southwest.” This was good, as there would be no risk of being sucked into the maelstrom with the ebbing tide.
When my engineer brain read the note and I was reminded of the Hardy-Cross problem from hydraulics class in university. My professor loved using the Hardy-Cross to assess who paid attention in class and who was asleep, and the midterm exam was one single Hardy-Cross evaluation. The problem set up is a a pipe network where the nodes have certain flow inputs or outputs, and the pipe segments have different lengths, diameters, and friction factors. The goal of the problem is to solve the flow magnitude and direction through all the pipe segments in the network. It is extremely difficult to solve by hand. The problem requires an initial guess for the flows through the network, which then must be iteratively adjusted with several calculation cycles to eventually converge on the answer. You know you are solving the problem correctly when the formula requires smaller adjustments with every cycle, but it is very common to make a mistake like a typo on your calculator, and the numbers never converge. “Think of it as a magic trick you do at the bar to impress the girls,” my professor would joke in class. “When you do the magic trick flawlessly you get laid. If you solve a Hardy-Cross on your job interview, you’ll get the job.”
Anyways, the reason why the note reminded me of the Hardy-Cross, was because I looked at the map of the channels around Quadra Island, and the maze of interconnecting channels looked to me like a pipe network; every channel has a different length and unique cross section, and every point where two or more channels meet is like a node in the network. When the tide moves the water through the labyrinth, the same family of hydraulic formulas can be used to solve the flow through the system. Of course, however, you would need to be a hydraulic savant to work it all by hand, but a sufficiently powerful computational fluid dynamics model would certainly do it.
I checked the time while I lay inside my warm sleeping bag. It was 5:30 am. “I better get moving or I’ll be crossing the rapids in the peak of the current,” I thought.
After a quick breakfast of canned tuna and a few spoon scoops of Nutella (not on the same scoop), I packed up camp and pushed off into the water to continue northward. There was no goodbye from my Toronto island mates ; judging from the loud snoring in one of their tents, they were all sleeping like rocks.
The ebbing tide quickly carried me, and I soon reached the head of the Okisollo Rapids. At first everything seemed calm, the water was flat, and there was no sound from the churning rapids. Even so I glanced at my GPS, and it indicated that I was moving at seven miles per hour, without paddling.
“No way, this thing has to be malfunctioning,” I thought.
I decided to run a test. I turned around and began paddling against the current. Soon enough the speed began dropping the harder I paddled, but never below three three miles per hour.
The rapids did not disappoint. Beyond the entrance to the Hole in the Wall the channel formed the largest whirlpool I have ever seen. The width was at least twice the length of my kayak, the eye dropped more than two feet, and it made ominous gurgling sounds like a drunkard at a bar chugging down a pint of beer. Fortunately, I saw it far enough ahead to avoid it. Like the drunkard in a bar, it’s best to observe this curiosity from a safe distance, and not provoke it into a fight with you.
Beyond the whirlpool the conditions were not so treacherous. The current hadn’t yet sped up enough to steepen the standing waves to the point of breaking, and I rolled over them like a water slide. In another half hour, however, things could be very different, and I would not want to be testing my surfing skills in a boat laden with gear.
The Okisollo Channel emptied into the Discovery Passage which as it flows north of the Seymour Narrows becomes the Johnstone Strait. The wider width of the channel in this area meant the current lessened considerably, and I had an easy paddle to a lighthouse called Chatham Point when the channel makes a sharp bend west.
I stopped to look around, walked up a steep boardwalk from the mooring pier and eventually arrived in a grassy field with three white houses with bright red roofs and a helicopter pad. Someone was living here full time. One of the houses had a manicured flower bed of lupins in full bloom which must be the pride of the gardener who tended to it. Beyond the houses the grass field gave way to a gravel road where a red dodge ram pickup truck was parked. The truck engine was humming, but mysteriously I never saw anyone. I wanted to continue walking up the road to see if it led to some viewpoint of the channel, but I hesitated. The current on a concrete piling just off the cliff showed that the tide had turned, and I had not pulled my boat very far off the water to afford the time to explore.
I began walking my way back, and only made a stop at the lighthouse foghorn which had a sign that caught my eye. It said, “Stay at least 50 feet away. Risk of hearing loss.” Ironically, the sign wasn’t very big, and you might need to be closer than 50 feet to read it. Fortunately, visibility today was as far as the mountains would let you see, and I doubt the foghorn would be going off anytime soon.
Once the tide starts rising, it can really sneak up on you quickly. I was only gone for maybe 20 minutes, but when I had returned to the kayak, the water had already fishtailed. Another five minutes, and I would have been swimming after it.
As I continued paddling west against the now flooding tide the headwind picked up. I began to notice that although I was putting considerable effort, I seemed to be stuck on a treadmill. I edged closer to the north shore where there was a chain of islands and the eddies allowed me to hop along in a slow but steady progress. Once I reached the last island on the chain, however, there was nowhere else to go. I pulled out my phone and looked to see where the closest place to camp might be.
June 14th - Day 16
Last night I must have done something to garner Poseidon’s wrath.
“Where’s that sacrificial horse I’m supposed to get in exchange for the fair weather and calm seas I’ve been giving you? You haven’t even tossed me a single meat ball of Chef Boyardee so far this trip. I’m going to teach you a lesson tonight you won’t soon forget.”
My campsite was located just beyond the last island on the Walkem group. The area had a pebbled beach on the foot of a small escarpment with overgrown bushes. The beach was narrow, but a line of seaweed marking the extent of the previous high tide seemed to leave enough room for the tent with a few feet to spare. “Well, I hope it doesn’t climb much higher than this.” I thought. I looked at my phone to confirm when the next high tide would be. The table indicated it was to be around 1:00 am.
Unfortunately, I should have looked at the table a bit more carefully and checked how high the next high tide would be as well. The answer was right there; 4 feet higher than the previous afternoon high but I didn’t notice it. Being from Florida, I had never contemplated that two subsequent back-to-back high or low tides could be so different. I knew that the full and new moons make bigger tides than the waxing and waning moons because in those conditions the sun and the moon pull together in the same direction, but the transition happens slowly, and the next tide is only a little higher or lower than the previous. However, in the mid latitudes between about forty five and sixty degrees, the tilt of the Earth, the orbital plane of the moon, and the moon phase create conditions where four different types of tides can occur in a single day. They could colloquially be called the Sort of Low, Sort of High, Very Low, and Very High tides.
Unbeknown to me the last high tide had been the “Sort of High” high tide.
Like a mouse checking out a mouse trap, I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right. The foot of the escarpment had huge piles of the driftwood, but I attributed them to having gotten there with a storm, which wasn’t in the forecast. Nonetheless, I placed four large boulders between the previous high tide mark and my tent. “Sometime at night I’ll check on the tide and if it’s past these rocks, I’ll move the tent farther up the beach.” I thought. However, I didn’t think it would be necessary, the falling tide was now incredibly far away. The narrow beach I had landed on had grown to nearly 100 feet wide. If anything, I’d be carrying the kayak to the edge of the water the next morning.
At 11:00pm, some 3 hours before the high tide peak, I peeked out of the tent with my headlamp and saw that the water line was already past the rocks.
“Oh, I better get up and move things up the beach.” I thought.
I dragged the tent with everything inside up the beach to the base edge of the escarpment next to the kayak and the driftwood.
“That should be fine now. How much higher could it get?”
Much higher still it seemed. After thirty minutes, I peeked out again, and the water was even closer than before. The situation was starting to look worrisome. There was still plenty of time for the tide to continue rising and rather than insist on denial in the face of overwhelming evidence I decided to assume that the worse might well happen. The beach wasn’t going to be around for much longer.
The water kept rising. I started tossing all the gear into the bushes above the escarpment in the embankment and eventually I tossed the tent up there as well. I would have tossed the kayak too, but it was far too heavy. The best I could do was put it on top of the driftwood logs.
And still, the water kept rising.
I got dressed into my dry suit and booties. “I don’t want to get my feet in the cold water.”
About fifteen minutes later, I was in permanent ankle-deep water, the waves started breaking over the driftwood I’d put the kayak on top of, and it was twitching with every bang.
And still, the water kept rising.
“It won’t be long before the driftwood floats away with the kayak.” I thought. “I’d better get this thing down and hold on to it.”
By this time, the water was waist deep. As I was in the middle of getting the kayak when a bigger wave set came through and the whole thing came loose. I lost my footing, plunged into the water, the kayak slid upside down and the cockpit filled with water. “Oh, it can’t get worse, can it?”
I grabbed the boat before it could float away, lifted the bow to empty the water, andshone the headlamp onto the bushes above the escarpment to locate where I had tossed the paddles and the spray skirt. “Better I wait this thing out sitting in the kayak than in the water.”
Having found them, I realized that I would have to let go of the kayak to reach them, so I waited for a lull in the waves. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back in a second or two.” I told the kayak.
I quickly grabbed the paddle and the spray skirt and got into the kayak. When the skirt was clipped around the comb, I felt I could take a deep breath and relax a little as while looking at the full moon rising above the mountains across the Johnstone Strait. The night had suddenly become illuminated in a silvery gray, and there was no need to keep the headlamp turned on. All I had to do now was float in place for another hour and wait for the tide to fall.
“This isn’t so bad.”
While waiting, I noticed a strange piece of driftwood on the water bumping against the side of the kayak. I took a closer look and realized it was one of my dolly wheels. “Oh, I hope nothing else fell off the bush into the water, because I’m definitely never going to find it.”
Only when the tide finally receded and there was enough land to set foot on, did I realize how I felt exhausted from all the effort in the previous night. At around 3:00 am, I sat in my folding chair and tried to snuggle into a comfortable position to get a few hours of sleep.
“I’ll figure out where I tossed everything in the bush when there’s daylight.”
I don’t think I slept for more than half an hour, before I felt chilled by the wind picking up with the sunrise. “I might as well get an early start on the water. I’m definitely not spending another night here.”
The mountains that line both sides of the Johnstone Strait are a wind tunnel. If the regional forecast calls for 5 to 10 mph, in the channel it will 15 to 20mph, and did not take long for me to realize that even though I had the tide helping me along, I wasn’t making much progress. I hugged the southern edge of West Thurlow Island along the northshore of the channel, as far as I could go. After that I had to decide if I should stay on the north side and hop to the next island or attempt to cross the channel and paddle along Vancouver Island until Kelsey Bay where I hoped the small village would have an inn with a comfortable bed. After last night I very much would pay top dollar for it.
I rested for a while on a back eddy while I waited for two cruise ships bound for Alaska to pass by before deciding if I should cross the strait.
I hesitated a bit, based on a warning on the guidebook. “Do not attempt to cross the Johnstone Strait when the wind is blowing against the current. It can be very rough and very dangerous.” The exact conditions right now.
“Oh seriously, it doesn’t look so bad.” I told the author as though he could hear me. “It’s only about a mile wide here, I can clearly see the trees on the opposite shore, and the water isn’t all that rough. I’m sure you must mean at peak current and with a lot more wind than today. I’ll be fine.”
I pointed the kayak to the southwest and after checking to make sure there wasn’t a third cruise ship on the way, powered on with the wing paddle at my full strength.
Up to about three quarters of the way, things were not bad; the part the author tried to warn me about. Somewhere on the channel bottom there must have been a large shallow formation like the Ripple Rock at the Seymour Narrows. and I realized that I was about to cross through several rows of chirping whirlpools.
I contemplated if I should change my mind and go back, but the window for a decision was already behind me. The best thing to do would be to ride with the flow along the edge of the whirlpools and hop from one spinning wheel of water to another.
This, of course, is easier said than done. As each whirlpool is separated by a ridge of water that always flows counter to your direction. I entered the first whirlpool in the flow towards the west, and immediately picked up a good amount of tangential speed. As I followed the flowline, I found myself paddling towards west along with the wind which momentarily felt completely stagnant; this was the moment to put in as much power as possible into every stroke and slingshot myself over the water ridge and into the next whirlpool. I knew I had succeeded when the boat suddenly stopped pulling to the left and I had to do a sharp low brace turn to the right the headwind to stay upright as the current suddenly inverted in the subsequent whirlpool. I repeated this technique two more times from one whirlpool to another, until I was close enough to the Vancouver Island shore to overpower the current.
I continued up the Johnstone Strait, the waters became progressively smoother, and the ebbing tide aiding my progress against the wind began losing strength.
“Already?” I thought with some disappointment. “Now I have to paddle T against the wind with only my own strength. Kelsey Bay was still five miles away. I landed on the corner of the boat ramp in the harbor and started to unload. As I gathered my gear, I was greeted by the marina master who walked down to see what I was doing there.
“So, what are you, eh? Where'd you come from? Oh, sorry, but I must tell you. This is a private maria. So, you can’t just land here, eh.”
“Oh I am so sorry. I’m coming all the way from Seattle. Well, not today of course, it’s been about two weeks. I was hoping to stop here and then walk into town and maybe stay at the campsite. I’m happy to pay the boat landing fee for the ramp, if there is one.”
“From Seattle, eh? So, you’re on the Race to Alaska, eh? T’was a pretty bad day not too long ago, eh?
The Race to Alaska (R2AK for short) is an adventure competition that takes place every summer where sailboats and kayaks race from Port Townsend in Washington to Ketchikan in Alaska. It’s a grueling 750 mile endeavor . There are only two checkpoints. One in Victoria, which is the prequalification stage that must be completed in a day and a half, and another in a town called Bella Bella roughly halfway. The rest of the route is up to the racers. There are no vessel categories. Kayaks and sailboats compete against each other, which might seem unfair, until you remember that the wind isn’t always blowing, and the kayak can take shortcuts through the sounds that might be too tight or shallow for a larger sailboat. That said, however, I don’t believe a kayak has won the competition since the first edition of the challenge in 2015.
“No. I’m paddling around Vancouver Island. What happened?”
“Oh, t’was on the TV, eh. Big storm rolled in through the Juan de Fuca Strait. Caught some folks by surprise. Seven boats sank. The American and Canadian coast guards were working overtime to fetch everybody out of the water, eh. Some of the guys were shivering like pins in a bowling alley, eh.”
I thought back about when the incident might have happened and concluded it must have been on the day I had crossed from Lund to Heriot Bay. That had been the roughest day so far.
“So, you think you think you’re walking to town with your boat, eh? It’s a bit far, eh. Why not stay here, eh? We own the marina RV park, but there’s a motel as well. There's a room. It’s $40 [Canadian] but you have to pay cash. Go talk to my wife Irene. She’s at the mobile trailer tending the garden. Oh, m’name is Garr! Come for happy hour, eh?”
I was more than happy to accept the invitation. The motel room was a real bargain. It had a comfortable king bed, a spotless bathroom, kitchenette, Living Room with TV, and a million-dollar balcony view of the marina looking over the Johnstone Strait and the mountains in the background. Mr. Garr is sitting on top of a goldmine of a location, but doesn’t seem to know it.
“How about we start happy hour a little early, eh? I’m heading into town to swing by the liquor store.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ll go with you, and I’ll buy the wine.” I offered.
I jumped on to Mr. Garr’s truck, and we drove off. On the way we passed a multitude of log piles neatly on the side of the road.
“A lot of logs, eh” Mr. Garr remarked, “You’ll see plenty more on the water. One of the barges had a mishap and now they’re floating all over, eh.”
We arrived at the liquor store at the junction with State Road 19 that runs the length of Vancouver Island until Port Hardy.
I must admit that I have next to no knowledge of fine wines or liquors of any kind, and was unsure of what to get. I looked through the aisle until I found a bottle with a pretty label. A Cabernet Sauvignon from a brand called Alexander Valley. It was called The Silver Oak, and had a picture of a wooden hut, shaded by a twisted oak tree in a rolling field of lavenders.
“Oh, we are drinking fancy stuff, eh?” Mr. Garr remarked with a laugh.
Over the course of a few glasses Mr. Garr told me the story of his life.
“Oh, he’s a talker,” his wife said, “if you keep giving him rope, he will keep pulling.”
He was born in Manitoba, had worked for the oil and gas industry in the Tar Sands of Alberta as bulldozer driver and met his wife in a place called the Gopher Hole Museum.
“You make good money working the sands, but it’s backbreaking shift work; twelve hour days, fourteen days on, seven days off. The mine is a bleak place like the surface of the moon, and it smells like an inferno from all the sulfur in the air..”
“At least you had something to look forward to on those seven days off.” Irene mentioned with a smirk.
“It’s what kept me going and from going mad, eh!”
“Oh, look at who’s nearly gone. I think you’re boring him.”
I was dozing off on my chair and struggling to keep my eyes open.
“Must be the fine wine, eh?” At that moment I was jolted awake by my phone ringing, which was a surprise because I’d not had reception since leaving Heriot Bay. It was my mother wanting to check in with me, and we spoke for a little while.
“Was that French you were speaking? You from Quebec?”
“Oh, no. It was Portuguese. My family is from Brazil.”
“I could never tell the difference. The only French I know are the curse words, you know, in case you need them. You better turn in for the night. Got another long day tomorrow, eh?”
June 15th - Day 17
I had another weird dream about my kayak last night. I was paddling when suddenly an enormous hole had opened under the hull like a wood board floor being ripped by a saw. The cockpit had filled up with water, but the water was warm as if I was in a bathtub. Suddenly I woke up from the dream, and I knew exactly what the dream meant. I had to urgently go pee. The alcohol was working its way out of my system. Just in case, I also went to check up on the kayak sitting on the balcony. The hull looked just fine.
From Kelsey Bay it’s only 70 more miles to Port Hardy. The conditions in the morning were calm with a slight breeze from the east pushing the ebbing tide.
“You better get moving to make the most of this while it lasts, eh?” Said Mr Garr as he split some logs with an ax.
“And keep an eye for the floating logs.”
He wasn’t kidding, there were a lot of very large driftwood logs floating about the water, and sometimes I had to deviate from them like potholes on the road. None of them seemed to have any barnacles, so they mustn’t have been floating for very long.
There were several logging boats transiting along the channel. They were of two types. One was a tugboat that dragged a huge raft of logs tied together like cattle in a corral. The other type was a barge that carried a comical quantity of logs piled on the deck.. If a big wave tossed the barge too far to one side or another all the logs would roll away like pencil sticks. Perhaps that’s how so many logs were lost on the water.
By late afternoon I arrived in an estuary called the Naka Creek, where there was a proper campsite. There were no facilities nearby, but clear stream running close by the campsite served for a great freshwater bath, and I also washed the dry suit clean of the crusty salt.
There was only one other trailer on the campsite. A girl and her boyfriend on a summer trip, and their three over-the-top friendly Labrador dogs.
“Gosh, how do you feed them every day? You must go through sacks of dog food.”
“Indeed, we do. About a ten-pound bag every week. And having them in the trailer with us every day is like a sleepover party every night. Sometimes I wake up with a dog’s butt on my face.”
“Are you French?” I asked, noticing that she had an accent.
“We are from Quebec,” said her boyfriend
We switched to talking in French which for some reason really delighted them. When I was ready to turn in for the night, the boyfriend said to me, “Thank you for speaking French!” and handed me a can of Molson Beer.
June 16th - Day 18
I had a text conversation with my friend Lee from Victoria.
“Hey, how’s the progress going?”
“I got to Naka Creek Camp today.”
“Oh, I know that place! I’ve been there. Guess what I’m in Heriot Bay. Heard from some locals you came through here. Have you seen any whales yet?”
“No, not yet.”
“Really? That’s a surprise. Try going through the Blackney Passage between Hanson and Harbledown Island. I guarantee you’ll see some whales there.”
I decided to give it a try, and after paddling for ten miles I turned north to cross the Johnstone Strait towards Hanson Island. The weather deteriorated considerably, with curtains of rain coming down in heavy pours, but at least there was not much wind.
When I entered the straits of the Blackney Passage, I heard a puff of exhalation louder and deeper than any sigh I had ever heard a human do. I looked around in the direction of the sound but could not see anything other than thousands of raindrops falling over the flat water. I waited a little while longer and heard it again from a different direction, and this time I caught sight of the moisture cloud from the animal’s breath though it had already submerged. On the third time I saw the whale breach the surface, exhale, and only after it had dived, did the sound of its powerful breath reach my ears. The whale’s breath is loud enough to be heard almost half a mile away. I tried to paddle a bit closer to where I had seen the breath cloud and maybe get a better look at the whales, but they quickly moved around, unseen under the water and by the time I saw one of them breathe again, they were already in a different place.
As I paddled around in the passage trying to catch up with the whales, I sighted what I thought was a flock of birds in the distance waiting out the rain and the fog. When I got closer however, I realized they were not a flock of birds at all, but a flock of fifteen paddlers.
“Wow! It’s incredible how in this mist and rain, even the deck color on your boats takes a tone of gray. I thought, from a distance, that you were all birds waiting out the rain.”
“Oh, not quite or we would have been flying.” Said a lady in the group who seemed to be in charge of the flock. “My fellow guide and I are leading a group for six days around the islands north of the Johnstone Strait. We put in at Telegraph cove. Got another two days to go before we go back. We heard there’s a guy from Seattle kayaking around Vancouver on a yellow kayak. Is that you?”
“Yes, that’s me! My reputation travels faster than I can paddle, though I guess that four miles per hour that’s not too difficult.” I joked.
“Well, for an average, from Seattle, with gear, it’s not bad.”
Silka told me she had been running tours with a local kayak company at Telegraph Cove for the last four years.
“After a while you get to know the circuit like the back of your paddle, and it feels like you are on autopilot. So long as you’re paying attention, nothing too crazy happens, though I did once have a client who flipped his boat in the water. His stern hatch must not have been closed properly, and all the gear suddenly was floating away. We recovered most things, but the tent poles went down to the bottom of the sea. Four people had to spend a night in a tent made for only two. Come tag along with us for a little bit. We are going to go see a thousand-year-old Cedar.”
I paddled with the group for the next hour. We landed on a pebbled beach on the western shore of Hanson Island exposed by the low tide.
“Let’s not stick around for too long here. The tide is going to turn and start rising soon.”
As everyone got off their boats and carried them up the beach, I couldn’t help but notice that I was the only one wearing a dry suit. Even the two guides in charge wore shorts and wet neoprene shoes.
“You don’t wear dry suits?” I asked.
“No, not for these trips, we are always in calm water, and the clients are not required to have dry suits. Our company’s boss thinks it would look bad if the guides are warm and dry but the clients are wet and cold, so everybody gets to be wet and cold together.”
“Oh that sucks. Don’t you guys have something like OSHA here in Canada? I would complain. Seems like you are working in a cold sweat shop.”
“We do, it’s called the Canadian Occupational Safety and Health, CanOSH. But good luck working with them. I’ve never heard of anyone filing a complaint. Besides, getting wet is part of being a kayak guide.”
“Yeah, just like getting skin burns is part of the job of being a firefighter. I bet you that’s what your company boss told you.” I answered with irony. “What you guys really need, even more than a dry suit, is a Union.”
It seemed like I had touched on a subject that wasn’t meant to be discussed because I received no answer.
“You know, the tree is five minutes up the trail; you will see it on the left. I need to give a talk to the group, but you can go ahead of us.”
I went ahead and walked the trail. The woodland was thick, and visibility wasn’t very good. Even so, after what felt like more than five minutes, I was still not seeing any tree that I would confidently say was much bigger than the others let alone a thousand years big. There was, however, one very large tree that had toppled and its roots had ripped up a large chunk of the soil. I don’t know how long ago it fell, but it had some very large mushroom ears growing on the roots and bark.
“I think your tree fell over,” I told the guide as she was wrapping up her talk. She abruptly developed a look of fear on her face.
We all walked together up the trail, and I pointed out the fallen tree.
“Oh no, it’s not that one! Thank God! You didn’t go far enough.” She said and gave me a hard slap on the shoulder. “You scared the loonies out of me. That tree better be around long after I’m gone!”
“You said it was five minutes.”
“Well, you know, five minutes-ISH.”
We walked a little bit more past a small stream, after which the trail made a slight bend to the left, and then in between the foliage of the undergrowth there appeared the trunk of an enormous cedar wide enough that ten men holding hands would not have been enough to encircle it.
“You should have said, go beyond the stream.” I joked, but she ignored me.
“This tree has an interesting story. The whole island had its old growth forest logged, but this one cedar standing. Its trunk is a little crooked, and the inside has some rot, so it wasn’t high quality wood. It’s interesting to see what we value as society changes. A hundred years ago these trees weren’t worth more than what their wood could be turned into. Today, how much more money above what the loggers got for the trees would we not pay to have them back? We are fortunate that one ancient Cedar escaped them. This cedar has been here so long that it was already ancient when the two hemlocks next to it were little saplings, and they are big two-hundred-year-old trees.”
The tide was rising quickly, soon it reached the kayaks and mine, which was the one closest to the water (I didn’t want to lift it with all the gear and find out if the hinges would hold) was already almost floating. I said goodbye to the group and continued westward along the north coast of Hanson Island, while they set off to Harbledown Island.
Handson Island fractured into lots of small islets between which the tide flowed quickly and created many swirling whirlpools requiring me to hop between eddies. Further west I reached an island group called the Pearse Islands which were elongated from East toWest and separated by narrow channels. The rising tide made the current in these channels seem like mountain streams filled with rapids and shallow clear water where the rocks on the bottom were clearly visible. Occasionally, there was also a fallen tree in the stream clinging onto the bank making ripples in the flow. I paddled as far as I could up the flow, but I eventually could not keep up with the current and was resigned to go around the entire island group.
Not too much farther I reached the day’s destination. A large island called Alert Bay where there is a small indigenous settlement. I paddled along the waterfront where several buildings were constructed on stilts over the water until I found a boat ramp where I could land.
“Look at that, how lucky can this be?” I thought to myself. A hotel called the Pass’n Thyme Inn was immediately across the street from the ramp. It looked like I wouldn’t have to drag all my gear around town looking for a bed. I walked into the hotel bar where I could find the receptionist.
“Oh, you picked the busiest of the year to find a place on arrival. It’s high school graduation day. And this year we are hosting the indigenous soccer tournament, so all the rival schools from BC are here too. I doubt you’d even find a place to pitch a tent.”
“You sure? The town looks empty; there's hardly a person or car out the street.”
“That’s because everyone, and I really mean almost everyone is at the Big House.” They are having the Potlatch right now.”
“What’s a Potlatch?”
“It’s the graduation ceremony.”
I wondered what to do. It was already late and the town campground was at least a mile walk away; too far to walk just to check and find it full, then have to turn back around.
After getting my kayak out of the water and onto the dolly, I began walking along the waterfront drive wondering what to do. I looked up every hotel and campground in town on my phone, but just as predicted, they were all full.
That was when I was approached by a bystander on the street.
“You look like you’re looking for a place to stay.” She said.
“Indeed I am.”
“Well, try the Siene Boat Inn which you just passed . They are probably full, but I am friends with the owner. His name is Edward. His brother was coming for the weekend to stay in a room, but he had an emergency in Port McNeill, and is only going to come the day after tomorrow. He might rent the room for you. Tell him Jane sent you.”
I thanked this mysterious lady for her generous advice, and for my fortunate meeting with her. It seemed so convenient in both time and place that our encounter reminded me of stories from the Greek gods who disguise themselves to interact with the mortal hero when he is lost, steer him in the right direction, but keep their true identity unknown.
I was all the more suspicious of the nature of our encounter, when the Innkeeper wife said, “Yes indeed, my husband’s brother isn’t coming until Saturday, so yes, I do have a room available. But who is this, Jane? I don’t think I know any Jane.”
Her husband wasn't there, but on hearing that, I concluded it was best not to mention the name Jane again. Small towns can be big infernos, and there are some things the passing traveler should not go digging into.
After settling in, I walked around town, and following the sounds of beating drums found my way to the Big House where the high school potlatch was in full swing. The building looked like a warehouse whose front had the face of a giant menacing killer whale painted in the totem pole carving style . In fact, next to the building was the tallest totem pole I had ever seen. So tall that it could have been mistaken for a radio tower with guide cables and the topmost carvings were hardly discernible.
I walked up to the front door at the center of the building which was the mouth of the killer whale and where the drum sounds seeped through cracks. The door was locked.
“No late arrivals were allowed, I guess”. I strode to the back of the building, where the drum sounds were the loudest and a faint smoke was rising out of the chimney. Hoping at least to get a glimpse, I found a backdoor and opened a small crack to take a peek.
Inside was a burning fire pit and three dancers dressed in native regalia treading around in a manner that suggested they each represented a different animal spirit. Two rows of bleachers some ten rows deep were set up along the walls and packed to capacity, but unlike a soccer match, everyone was silent and attentively watching the dancers while seemingly hypnotized by the drums.
I stayed hidden next to the backdoor, perhaps also hypnotized by the drumbeats and the rhythmic movement of the dancers and the fire, but eventually I came to my senses and not wanting to be caught in any kind of trouble left before I could be found out.
June 17th - Day 19
I made a short half day paddle to Port McNeill of only six miles. With strong northwest winds forecast for the afternoon, getting to Port Hardy could wait another day, I thought. It felt strange to be done before midday so I decided to go back out into the town harbor and practice some rolling with my euro blade and try to do a wet re-entry a few times in the icy waters. Even with a dry suit, there won’t be very much time to be immersed in the water before the cold seeps through , and the sluggishness of hypothermia begins to take hold of the body. It takes just ten to fifteen minutes in the water before you get overpowered. When paddling alone, this presents a conundrum; should I dress for the paddle, or the swim? Too many layers, and I will sweat until my clothing is soaked, and yet too few I am risking life if I cannot get upright in the event of a swim. The solution is to have a fail proof roll no matter the situation.
After an hour of practice, I paddled back into the marina.
“Did you see the orca?” Said a man walking his dog by the boat ramp as I emptied the gear out of the hatches.
“No, I didn’t. Where was it?” I said surprised.
“Oh, it was right where you were, eh. A big bull with a dorsal fin as big as a small man. I think you had your back to it when you were doing your flippy thing with the kayak, eh. He sure seemed interested in you with all that splashing. Poked his head out of the water to check you out two times. Probably thought you were a seal in distress or something. An easy lunch. Lizzie here was barking like crazy.”
“I must not have heard it sneak up on me because of the ear plugs.”
I don’t think I would like to have an unexpected encounter with a wild, curious, and possibly hungry, orca. The only orca I have ever seen is Shamu at SeaWorld. I was amazed by how fast the enormous creature could swim and turn. It’s an animal the size of an elephant, with the agility of a leopard. You’d have to go back to the age of the dinosaurs and meet a T-Rex to find an equivalent land predator. If the orca makes up its mind that you look like food, then you are going to be its lunch. Fortunately, I’ve been told they are fussy eaters, not inclined to change their diet, and there isn’t, as far as I know, any recorded incident of a wild orca eating a human, even if by mistake . Here in Vancouver, even different family pods of orcas have different diets. The resident orcas are keen on salmon, while the transient that migrate up and down pods prefer marine mammals. Humans, it seems, are not on their menu, at least not until one of them tries out a plump American tourist from Florida.
June 18th - Day 20
The morning brought dead calm conditions. The tide was falling and that helped to make fast progress early on, perhaps even a little too fast.
I covered the first six miles to the western tip of Malcolm Island in a little over an hour where there is a lighthouse that marks the end of the Johnstone Strait, and the beginning of the Queen Charlotte Sound. There was a perfectly good beach to make a stop for a pee break, but I just wasn’t feeling like I needed it, and so I kept on going. That was a big mistake. Several fellow kayakers have told me that when you wear a dry suit you should pee when you can, and not when you have to. Port Hardy was another eighteen miles away.
Three hours later I was folding myself into a pretzel with the urge to go. Peeing in a bottle in the kayak felt a little too difficult, because opening the pee zipper in the dry is a very risky thing to do in the water, even in relatively calm conditions. In warmer waters like in Florida, it is easy. You just pee in the kayak, and then splash in some water to dilute the urine and make enough volume to pump it out. Here, however, If I flip over, the shrinkage would be the least of my problems. Perhaps, if I had someone else next to me to hold on to my boat, going about the business would not have seemed so daunting, but alone, I just could not relax enough to do it.
I spotted a humpback whale far in the distance hitting its pectoral fin on the water. At first, like the last time I had seen a whale at the Blackney Passage, nothing could be heard, and only after a few moments the splashing sounds reached my ears in powerful thumps like someone trying to beat down a door with a battering ram. Whatever it was telling its friends, they would have heard it from miles away. Perhaps it said, “Come take a look at this guy in a kayak, you won’t believe the face he’s making trying not to wiz himself.”
I pulled into the Port Hardy marina early afternoon, stood up on the boat ramp, and took one of the longest leaks I’ve ever done, not caring one bit if there was anyone looking.
There were two hotels adjacent to the Marina, but both were full for the day.
“Come back tomorrow, and we will have a room. For tonight, however, you’ll have to try and see what you find in the town.”
Ever since I had to do the twenty-five-mile portage on my kayak journey around Florida, I have concluded that it is almost always worth it to pay extra to walk less. Fortunately, except for one steep hill on the way to downtown, the portage today was nowhere as demanding. and the gas station halfway was a welcomed break for an ice cream.
I called ahead to a hotel called Kwa’lilas which had a room available. As usual I did not let them know ahead of time that my 18-foot kayak would be a guest with special needs, and only sprung the situation on the receptionist once I had already checked in.
“What’s your vehicle?” he asked.
“An 18-foot kayak.”
“Like on the roof of the car?”
“No, that is the vehicle. Any chance you have a place for me to park it?”
He looked outside through the main double door in the lobby.”
“Oh… hmmm... Let me call the manager.”
The manager arrived after a few minutes. He was an indigenous man with a very round face, and a broad shiny forehead exposed from his hair which was pulled back and tied into a long silky ponytail. He had an imposing frame and wore a suit that looked chiseled from a black rock. A sharp contrast to my ragged beard and loose dry suit.
“So, you’re kayaking around the island, eh?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Ah, I’m sure we can help with that. We can put it in the back courtyard, that way it’s not out in the street.”
We walked past the lobby, down a corridor, and through a dining hall. On every wall were paintings and carvings of native art, which I found hard to not pause for a moment and appreciate. They were images of bears, eagles, killer whales, and wolves, with radiant shades of red and black hues, and geometric forms that fit together like a puzzle. I especially liked one carving of a school of salmon appearing to frantically swim up a river, and I imagined how I could draw something like that on the deck of my kayak.
“Yes, it was done by one of our locals. He has a gallery downtown, if you have the time, you should go see it.”
“Yes, they are beautiful works.”
“We also sell many carvings and paintings in the hotel gift shop. You should look and see if you want to take something home with you.”
“Oh, I wish I could. I don’t think a delicate wooden sculpture would not survive for a whole month inside my kayak hatch. And I would hate to fold one of the paintings down the middle like a napkin.”
“Ah yes, here is where we can keep your kayak.” He pointed at a wooden bleacher next to a large flat deck in the back courtyard. “This is where we had our grand opening ceremony six years ago. It was a big deal, eh. The first native funded, constructed, operated, and owned hotel in BC. The whole news media from Canada came to see the Chiefs bless the building and watch the kids from the high school play and dance. It was a big deal, eh. I think the blessings worked. We survived the pandemic, the tourists are back in droves, we’re the fanciest place in town, and the business is booming.”
“Oh that is such good news!”
As he was telling me more about the hotel, my eye caught sight of something that made me excited.
“Oh, you have a water hose here! Can I wash my kayak?”
