Today we got back onto the water with a freshly waterproofed tent and charged cameras and batteries. We spent the morning with John and Anastasia, it has been so great to see them before the final leg of our trip. They took us and all our gear to our boats which were at departure bay in Nanaimo, just where we had left them.

We were late getting on the water, this meant we wouldn’t have the 6 hours of tide to paddle with, instead we had about 4. This was fine as we were planning on staying on an island called Gerald island, 22kms away, we were lucky there was a nice tail wind. It felt strange to be back to just Ngaio and I on the water, we were missing Jesse and Austin! We paddled separately, lost in our own thoughts, I was definitely feeling like this was the beginning of the end of the expedition. I’m trying to be better at living in the moment, but I can’t help but feel like the next few weeks will have a lot of time for reflection on the rest of the trip.

The wind swell was a pain to paddle in today, it got us wet and kept washing over the front of the boats, sending us sideways. Tomorrow will be the same if not worse, at least the wind and swell are behind us pushing us up the coast! We came to Gerald island 3 hours after leaving departure bay, a nice quick paddle. We pulled the kayaks up onto the logs and explored the island, there was a nice clearing for the tent and bench seats and a fire pit set up by previous campers no doubt.

The wind was picking up and the sky was covered in thick moody cloud, it felt like winter was getting ready to unleash itself on us.

We put the tent up and then tarp over the tent, just incase the rain was heavy. I made a big fire to keep us warm and we went over the map, plotting different camp spots and ways to avoid the densely populated coast line. We should be out of the busy section of coast in around 5 days. 

Tomorrow low tide is around 1pm, sleep in for us!