Victoria Times Colonist 24 Aug '02
Part 4 of a 5-part series - Port Hardy to Tofino, BC

Holy waters of fury
Where tidal currents meet the ocean swell at the tip of the Island, a rough commute is the rule

If you refuse to paddle when there's a gale warning you won’t get anywhere in a kayak on the windy north section of Vancouver Island's west coast.

Picture this as your daily commute: Eat a cold breakfast at sunrise to be on the ocean before the wind picks up. Out there, the ride is bumpy. You keep your gaze forward and squint into the sun’s glare. Exclamation marks of spray in the distance could be surf breaking on reefs or the blows of gray whales. You look down and see grape-sized jellyfish by the thousand in the clear water. It’s as disorienting as driving into a blizzard.

You focus on the feel of the paddle. Surrounded by waves, it’s more like you’re in the water than on it, swimming with paddle blades for hands. Snug in the cockpit of your kayak, you feel the waves through your hips, great rolling mountains of water. If you feel your stomach drop like you’re on a roller coaster, you know the next wave will be big. The kayak surfs or slides half-sideways down the face of the wave as it grabs the tail of the boat. Over your shoulder a wet green wall looms and you see your friend one floor downstairs in the trough. Later he’ll say you were at the top row of a soaring amphitheatre of water, and what a picture it would have been if he’d dared pull out his camera.

Lean out on the paddle for stability and ride onto the wave crest. As you bounce through the whitecap, water dumps across the deck and froths up to your armpits. Then, for a moment the paddle touches nothing but air. The sound – the only sense you’re left with when fog rolls in – is all thundering surf. A random whitecap snarls beside the boat – or is that a whale blow, or one of the aggressive male sea lions that will charge right out of the surf to chase a kayak? Sliding down the back of the wave feels like slipping into reverse. The sea seems to push you every which way but forward. But to your left, Vancouver Island glides back like a ship on a skirt of white foam. Yes, you are moving forward. And fast! Time flies too, with all your attention focused on staying upright. Before long you ride the front end of an afternoon gale into a beach campsite with half a day left to read or sleep in the sun.

It probably seems crazy to anyone who sees our tiny kayaks bounce along in the vast sea. Crazier, however, is that this is what Dave and I are used to after paddling most of the west coast of Vancouver Island to arrive in Tofino on day 70 of our 12-week kayak trip from Prince Rupert to Victoria.

We had good reason to be scared of this most dangerous stretch of our trip. Our guidebook says the places most exposed to the “full fury of the Pacific” – Cape Scott, the outer Brooks Peninsula, the west side of Nootka Island and Estevan Point north of Clayoquot Sound – are for “expert paddlers only” or simply “not recommended.” Sport fishermen in Port Hardy told us that even their boats were too small for the rough waters of Cape Scott.

I figure, however, we have a margin of safety that’s at least seven layers deep. First, we have judgement. Then, our kayaking skills – like using a paddle as a brace to stabilize the boat. If we flip over, the eskimo roll might save us. Alternatively, we can resort to a partner-assisted rescue. Or a self-rescue using an inflatable float on the paddle as an outrigger… If these fail, well, things are going downhill pretty fast. But the wetsuits we always wear will buy us a bit of time in the cold water as we call for help with flares or a VHF radio.

In the four weeks between Port Hardy and Tofino, our fears were almost justified, but not where we expected.

Steep waves often form off Cape Scott where tidal currents meet ocean swell at the tip of Vancouver Island – our first challenge. The Nahwitti people who once lived here would often drag their canoes across the sand neck of the Cape to avoid paddling around.

We planned to camp nearby and round the Cape in early morning. But as we approached the headland on a sunny afternoon, there was no sign of the predicted gale-force winds. We kept going and passed close between the Cape and the offshore “boomers” – submerged rocks where the swell periodically breaks with an explosive burst of white water. We floated on calm seas and ate a snack among menacing towers of rock that the Nahwitti named Nomas. The sea monster, who haunts the coast’s most dangerous waters, appeared to be on vacation.

We rested after the Cape and visited the lighthouse keepers, who had just received a new living room window. The old one was broken – by the wind. We heard tales of winter storms with waves 20 metres tall. Nomas was only sleeping.

The monster chose the next section of our trip to roll over. We left our sheltered campsite to find the swell had grown threefold during our rest day. Clouds raced across Vancouver Island, above our heads and out to sea, and we hugged the shoreline to hide from the wind.

Soon, the wind shifted to our backs and began to rip spray off the crests of building white-capped seas. As we wove a narrow track between the boomers and the shore, a wave threw my boat forward, almost into Dave, who’d stopped paddling to brace.

“I’m not liking this,” I yelled to Dave.

“We shouldn’t be out here!” he replied with a wide-eyed look.

We both had the same plan: to get the heck off the water A.S.A.P. There was no place to land, but we soon cruised the waves into Raft Cove. Heavy surf crashed on the beach. I pulled on my helmet for a rough landing, but we tucked behind a rock and avoided the surf completely.

“I hope that’s the last time we paddle on the open coast when there’s a gale warning,” I said. I didn’t yet know that this was to be our new routine, paddling seas so rough that I would thank Neptune for the ludicrous number of books packed in my rear hatch. I haven’t read half of my floating library, but it makes my keel so heavy I can’t flip my boat if I try.

The rough commute was the rule until we approached a great green promontory. A wall almost a thousand metres high that sticks 16 kilometres into the Pacific, the Brooks Peninsula channels winds around Cape Cook at its outermost tip to make it, according to our guidebook, “the worst section of water on the west coast.”

Gulp. Time to revise our routine.

The automated weather station on Solander Island off Cape Cook reported 40 knot winds (over 70 kilometres per hour). Sand blasted the tents like ice crystals in a mountain storm as we spent a few days waiting for calm seas. How long would it be before we’d get the 10 knot winds we wanted? I joked that we’d increase that threshold by one knot a day until we could leave.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Dave.

“…and when it gets to 20 knots,” I continued, “we’ll turn around and call off the trip.”

After a couple of days we woke at 4 A.M. to set off in a light breeze with skittish nerves and pounding hearts.

“It’s just something we have to get through,” Dave said after half an hour of dry mouthed silence.

Tufted puffins with orange, wedge-shaped beaks circled us as we passed their Solander Island colony – a rugged crag half-shrouded in fog.

The low cloud made for a gothic scene but there was nothing like the monster seas of our nightmares.

In fact, Nomas stayed soundly asleep. The swell was all but gone and the Pacific Ocean lived up to its name for the rest of our trip to Tofino.

We paddled around Estevan Point into Clayoquot Sound close to shore, 50 kilometres and our longest day yet. “Boomer city,” this point has been called. But the city was more of a ghost town. We could touch the sea floor with our paddles yet the only white water in sight was from the blows of 25 whales, white puffs of smoke on the water.

Two more weeks on the Pacific’s frothy rim and we’ll be home in Victoria. How will it feel, I wonder, to return to our former lives after 12 wild weeks on the coast?

A few days ago, the low swell made it possible to paddle into the mouth of a sea cave. Waves gurgled in the coal-black depths like a giant stomach. Nomas. I shivered as I backed out of the cave and remembered how lucky we’ve been. I hope the monster sleeps for two more weeks.

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