The sky was just getting light at 7am. I’ve noticed with each day that passes, the sun is coming up a little later. It’s a reminder that we are heading toward winter, the temperature is slowly cooling off too. We have been so lucky this week with sunny calm days, the week to come looks like we will be wet and chilly.
I headed to the beach to shoot the sunrise with Austin while Ngaio made breakfast. We had a coffee with caffeinated chocolate in it, that would get us going for the morning!
Today we were paddling through the false narrows, I had checked the tides and currents to ensure we were paddling on the incoming tide and not when the current was at its strongest. We had a short 5km paddle from our campsite to the false narrows, once we arrived we could see the swirling water and immediately felt the pull of the swift water. We gently paddled in single file, getting the feel of the currents and how fast it was moving. It was perfect, we were zooming along hardly needing to forward paddle, there were no scary waves or whirlpools and we made it through in no time. We were chatting about how sweet it was and how we had had nothing to worry about when out of the blue a big sea lion jumps out of the water and dives I front of my boat! It was so close to landing on the front of my boat, it’s huge body landed back in the water spraying me as it went, that was unexpected. We think I must have given him the fright of all frights and he tried to fly before swimming away.
Our paddle across the harbour to Nanaimo was a windy one. It was at least 15 knots and there were waves and whitecaps sloshing over the front of our boats. ‘Soupy’ conditions aren’t the most fun to paddle in, I looked back to see how Jesse and Austin were doing, they were both smiling and loving it! After all the beautiful flat days they enjoyed having a bit of excitement. It took about an hour to cross the windy channel, and on the other side was the ultimate reward. A floating pub. Its called the dingy dock pub, we thought it would have been rude not to take advantage of being able to paddle up, tie up the kayaks and pop in for a beer and burgers. It was our last day paddling together so it seemed like the best way to celebrate! We chilled out in the sunshine and enjoyed having fresh food, then waddled to the kayaks to paddle the last few kms to the camp site. We set up camp on an island just off the coast of Nanaimo, a beautiful spot with raccoons and bats and an awesome view. It’s bittersweet to be having our last night with Jesse and Austin but we are going to make the most of it.