Ngaio was up at first light even though we could sleep in today. She woke me up to go over the plan for paddling the Seymour narrows, we went over it so many times I started going cross eyed. We had timed it so we would be paddling through at ‘slack current’ we would be in our boats on the water 20 mins prior to that and we would have the ebb tide behind us once the current picked up. Ngaios dad called it PPPPPPP or ‘prior planning prevents piss poor paddling performance’. We both thought this was hilarious and we quoted it all day.

We got packed up and on the water as scheduled, we were paddling into the narrows right on slack. It was so flat and calm it was hard to believe it was the same stretch of water we had seen yesterday. We paddled up the middle of the narrows, Ngaio looked like she was expecting a whirlpool to appear in front of her at any minute. We both started to relax a few minutes into the paddle and we were rewarded with two pods of dolphins! They were cruising in the opposite direction to us, not phased at all they swam right beside us. Ngaio loves dolphins very much and she was over the moon to have seen them on this trip. We paddled on, the strong currents at the back of my mind. Not far down the coast I could hear what I can only describe as a roaring sound, we stopped and listened, it was definitely a loud angry roar. We cautiously paddled past the cove where the sound was coming from, there, was a small group of the worlds biggest sea lions. It was like the elite club, you had to be a certain size to join in. They were making these huge roaring, gurgling noises and two of them were fighting. The sounds echoed down the channel as the two sea lions lunged at each other, mouths open showing their huge teeth. There was a lot going on in this little section of the coast!

There was a headwind today which kept us chilly, and a low fog lingered, making it impossible to know what time of day it was. It was so beautiful where we paddled today, once the fog lifted and we had a bit more of a view we were both blown away. It looks like a picture from a post card. We pulled into a lovely little bay around 530pm. I carried the kayaks up onto the bank and secured them to a tree, just incase the tide came higher than I was expecting. Ngaio found a camp spot and we carried the gear up, we set the tent up looking out over the water, a beautiful spot after a beautiful day!

#kayaking #paddling #kayak #Canada #Nature #FirstNations #expedition #VancouverIsland