The longest day yet. Forty-five miles! I was carried by a strong afternoon northwest wind and averaged five miles per hour. In the morning I had the rising tide with me, but when it turned the wind against the tide created immense boils and standing waves at the two headlands before Sooke Bay. At times I was gliding over the water with the push of the wind on the sail, but barely moving forward.
The fog never lifted today, and the Olympic peninsula remained hidden the entire time, and on three occasions I heard the loud horn of a large tanker ship but it was completely invisible, and I could not tell if it was entering or leaving the straits. That had me concerned. When I will eventually have to cross the strait and return to the United States I would rather meet the cardborasaurus that one of these naval beasts in the water.
The entrance into Sooke Bay was nearly sealed off by a long spit of sand behind which the waters were calm and shallow. So shallow, in fact, that I had to walk the kayak the last few hundred feet into the mouth of the Sooke river.
I was too exhausted to do anything other than sit down and eat an early dinner. I barely remember a conversation with a man at the camp who’d said he paddled around Vancouver Island some twenty years earlier.
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“It’s the kind of thing you do when you have a young vitality. I wish I could be you right now. Enjoy the rest of the adventure. You’re almost done.”
Sea Kayak Vancouver Island Circumnavigation
