NORTH AND WEST VANCOUVER ISLAND entirely dependent on finding fresh water in a severe drought year. I also had the even less attractive idea take hold that I now had the privilege of lugging a seven-pound paperweight in the nose of my boat for the next 800 or so kilometres. First-class white guy problems, every last one of them.
D
ay
4: Wednesday, July 29th
I got up early to head out in search of water. The moon made for a bright, clear morning and I was in high spirits. After an extensive search, I found the stream bed in the forest. It was dry except for a few deep, still holes that had numerous signs of wildlife visitation. But there it was, water! As I began to treat it with a UV light, I made note of the various tracks in the soil. Coyote, racoon, deer and... oh, a cougar! As the significance of these tracks sank in I had a very still, quiet feeling that I was being watched. Chiding myself for my imagination, I carried on with my task. But I couldn’t shake the feeling and was happy to exit the dark forest with my prize and hide intact as the sun rose. At the time, I did not know that a kayaker had been attacked by a cougar on this very beach the summer prior. I was on the water by 9:00 a.m. and felt good physically, and was motivated to soldier on despite my setbacks and the increasing number of sea sores (saltwater abrasions) that were beginning to appear all over my body. I used a mix of body glide and petroleum jelly to try to limit them. The petroleum jelly does a good job of slowing the waterlogging of skin. The abrasions that this will cause are similar to second-degree burns. Petroleum jelly is crucial for your hands that suffer particularly badly, but one must be careful to put the petroleum on well before one grabs a paddle shaft. This works for the first six to eight hours, but after that it wears off as the friction and miles pile up. Anything that has skin-to-textile contact (even neoprene!) will abrade in the saltwater. More so skin on skin. High quality paddling clothing and skin-tight rash guards will help, but all bets are off when you are out for 12 hours or more for several days on end and cracking the whip physically. The other aspect of sea sores is preventing them from getting infected. Easier said then done. I was careful to save a little freshwater for a sponge bath at the end of each day, and to use clean bandages and Neosporin at night. This eats a lot of time,
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WILD COAST MAGAZINE
Sunrise on choppy water.
but it is a mandatory care regiment to keep your body running strong for so many days out in a harsh environment. My target for this day was to clear the Hesquiat Peninsula and make my way to a camp at Hot Spring Cove or possibly Flores Island Provincial Park where I would likely have good access to water. This task proved very difficult, with a strong current pushing against a light, on again, off again northwest wind and a large western swell. There were times when I made great progress, and this was the first time on my entire trip that I managed to catch a ride on a handful of waves resembling a downwind paddle. But otherwise I found the seas confused with very little directional energy to work with. Just mile after mile of hard paddling in messy water. At one point I was paddling past a buoy offshore of Nuchatliz, noting the strange mooing sound it makes as it sways in the swell. I recall staring at the buoy and reminding myself that sharks often hover near buoys in California. “Good thing to remember. Yup!” And then I glanced down to check my compass and noticed a shark swimming with me directly beneath my boat as it silently shadowed this strange new fish. I stopped paddling and just stared, totally absorbed like a child at the aquarium. WINTER/SPRING 2016
The shark then swam up beside me, tilted its head out of the water and stared at me with a jet black marble eye before disappearing. I noticed a large number of gills, so figured it was probably a six gill shark and was roughly six feet long. Not big enough to worry me, but maybe it was someone’s little sister? Onward! As the day and miles rolled by, I approached Hesquiat Peninsula at roughly 6:00 p.m. feeling tired but motivated to make the most of the day. However, the western swell made this a very demanding and dangerous crossing, as the breakers appeared to form three to four miles offshore and zoomed towards the reefs, closing out the entire bay. I thought I would be clever and save some miles by taking a tight, inside line. Upon doing this however, I was suddenly in a very dangerous spot as the reefs here are a maze and are loaded with kelp beds. On this particular day, six-metre barreling waves were making easy work of the reefs, blasting over them and into a washing machine. I delicately alternated between paddling over and through the tops of the breaking waves, and then turning back into them to surf down their backs to pick up speed as I tip-toed my way through the gauntlet. All the while the ghostly white lighthouse stared me down me like a witch tower out of the Tolkien trilogy. After punching through an oncoming wave I took a deep breath and sprinted into the next rushing blow. I was so thankful to be in a strong, stable surfski as I was paddling at my absolute threshold in an absolute no-fall zone. Once clear of the lighthouse and safely past the backline, I had a difficult decision to make. The wind was picking up quite a bit, and I really wanted to make my goal of Hot Spring Cove, which I could see roughly ten miles away. I had at this point paddled 100 kilometres of rugged, open ocean today. But the sun was setting, and it meant with some degree of certainty that I would be paddling an open water downwind in the dark. On the other hand, given what I had just gone through and feeling rattled, Hesquiat had a menacing, dark presence and I simply loathed the idea of a camp here. Remembering that the mileage is always greater than it appears, I reluctantly decided to head into Hesquiat Harbour, reasoning that I could make a fast, efficient camp and exit in the morning.