Pender Island Sea Kayaking Environs May 17-20, 2013
A holiday weekend with the Sea Kayak Association of British Columbia (SKABC), and ferry traffic can confound, but we’ve got reservations to Swartz Bay, Vancouver Island, and from there, an early afternoon ferry gets us to Pender Island Prior Centennial Campground in time to meet some of our SKABC club sea kayaking mates. Bruce Pickwell, trip leader, is there with his Bigfoot camper. We share his camp spot with Ted from Penticton and Noriko from Vancouver. Others have reserved camp spots: Colleen, Karen, and Brenda are three friends from Vancouver who’ve met through complimentary activities like snowshoeing; Nancy’s setting up her tent as we walk the circumference of the Pender Island campground, and Helen and John’s camp becomes our official campfire de-brief zone. We’re two doubles; the rest are singles. We dine at the Port Browning pub, a ½-hour walk away, where there’s also Port Browning marina and private campground: http://www.portbrowning.com/#!pub-&-cafe—menu.
Some mountain bike revelers calm down after midnight, but then I awaken to an owl serenade…no idea what time or what kind. Do any SKA members know? None of the others hear this when I ask the next day. It’s close to the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. One owl calls, then another responds, and perhaps another… in semi-or-quarter tone variations. How many are there? Surreal surround sound in between wakefulness and sleep. Savour it, oh yes, and fall asleep…maybe Barred Owls but without the territorial raucousness.
Saturday, after breakfast on Mortimer Spit, we SKABC across Plumper Sound, watchful of weather, compass, and chart readings, cutting between Saturna and Mayne Islands through Boat Passage, and out to the Belle Chain Islets. Hundreds of seals slip from their yogic driftwood poses into the water to spy on these sea kayaking creatures. Lots of oystercatchers. An eagle watchman. We round Samuel Island for lunch, then cut back over Razor Point to Mortimer.
It’s such an open, fair evening, we cook spaghetti with tomato sauce, toss a salad and finish with baklavas on the spit…campfire chez Helen and John later on. Sonny and Penny tell us we’ve done twelve nautical sea kayaking miles, and Bruce concurs. All I know is we’ve paddled for nearly five hours, taken timely breaks and feel invigorated.
Sunday, it’s more of the same, only this time we drive to Otter Bay opposite the ferry dock, beside the museum. We go clockwise round Prevost Island, given the wind and tide predictions, watching for ferries, letting them go, and staying en masse. We check out Glenthorne Passage with its sweet huts hugging a lee-side finger, and then cut to James Bay, an old apple orchard inundated with tent caterpillar larvae, a-squirming swarm. It’s posted: $4.90 per night (no water), the charge for this campsite, and we see two groups of paddlers: one from Duncan’s Cowichan Bay Sea Kayaking Club who already have tents pitched on prime view spots: the other, just arriving as we pull out.
We cook up our dinner with Colleen, Brenda and Karen on a grassy knoll complete with side-by-side picnic tables… smoked oysters, beer, crackers, humus and our remaining spaghetti. A congenial circle rounds the campfire later as we remember our glorious sea kayaking (SKABC) day. All that’s missing is a humpback whale.
Holiday Monday, we circumnavigate South Pender Island, and just before leaving Mortimer’s Spit, we spot a whale in Port Browning. Colleen, Brenda and Karen are near it, as they’re bringing a rental boat toward us, so we clamber to see what we can see. I glimpse a distant pectoral fin diving then its long, black body skims the surface as it’s leaving port, in the opposite direction to us…we proceed under the bridge, and when we’re launching from Gowlland Point after lunch, it resurfaces (same one?) right between the gals. Was it feeding on small schooling fish below us? Krill? Capelin? Sandlance? Pilchard? Brenda swears its big humpback whale eye ogled her! Ken and Ted notice the swirl of what appears like an eel (its dorsal fin or backbone?) an instant before it surfaces. I see its pleats; Brenda identifies its head knobs.
After referencing Helen’s link to the Vancouver Aquarium http://wildwhales.org/humpback-whale/, I find another humpback whale bio: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/species-especes/species-especes/humpbackwhaleNP-rorqualabossePN-eng.htm . From these sources, we determine our baleen buddy is a solitary humpback whale, thankfully without the surface gymnastics of breaching, tail lobbing, bubble feeding (yikes) or pectoral fin slapping, and one of a Southern BC/Washington extended family of 200-400 whales. They are protected but have made a good come-hump-back in the last 40 years.
Humpback diving its goodbye.
Adieu Pender Island, and thanks Bruce and SKABC.