Victoria Times Colonist 31 Aug '02
Part 5 of a 5-part series - Tofino to Victoria, BC

Passage to paradise
From A to B in 80 days. It's amazing to be able to trace our journey on a map of the world, but maybe it's more significant how far we've gone beyond our old limitations

“It’s been 108 days since you last backed up to a floppy disk” is the greeting I get from my computer when I sit down at my desk for the first time this summer. Yes, it’s been 108 days since I even thought about a floppy disk. It’s been at least 80 days since I did a lot of things. That’s how long it took my friend Dave and I to kayak from Prince Rupert to Victoria. It’s been nearly one million paddle strokes since I last slept in a bed, over 1,400 kilometres paddled since the last time I woke up with anything more to do than take down my tent and go kayaking.

I notice now that my shoulders are strong, the skin on my thumbs where I gripped my paddle is as tough as the heels of my feet, and I wonder in what other ways I’ve changed in the three months I spent outside.

The nine-day paddle from Tofino to Victoria was as beautiful and challenging as anything that came before. We’d been lulled into complacency by good weather, but then we had a wake-up call near Bamfield in mid-August. A far away storm kicked up a 4-metre swell on the coast for a couple of days. A Coast Guard ship reported 5- to 7-metre waves offshore, which is unusual for summer.

Early one morning, we set out to paddle south from Barkley Sound and ran into steep standing waves off Cape Beale, bigger than anything we’d seen in 10 weeks. We turned around fast and scooted between the rocks into a tiny lagoon behind the cape where a trail led up to the lighthouse.

The principal lighthouse keeper, Norbie Brand, who sees only about 50 visitors a year, frowned when two humble paddlers appeared at his front door.

“So you’re the kayakers,” he said severely before breaking into a smile and shaking our hands. “You were giving me grey hairs this morning! I saw you off the reef. Then it looked like one of you disappeared and I pulled out the binoculars to see if you’d flipped.”

Norbie, now 53 and nearing retirement, has kept the Cape Beale light shining for the past 24 years. He was glad we knew enough to turn around. He sees more and more kayakers at the Cape these days, many of them unprepared for the conditions. “You’d be surprised how few of them carry radios,” he said. He reminded us that we could call any staffed lighthouse on VHF channel 82A for help in an emergency or even just an up-to-the-minute weather report.

About half of the coast’s lighthouses have been automated, but 27 are still staffed by at least two resident keepers. Norbie splits the 20-hour workday with assistant keeper Ivan Dubinsky, 49, an ex-plumber from Whistler who has been manning the light for three years. The coast’s lights, the keepers told us, are desperately understaffed. Soon, Norbie said, the Coast Guard will either have to hire more lighthouse keepers or automate more lights. For now, it was nice to know that if we had to use our radios, somebody would be listening.

We waited at the lighthouse for high tide and paddled a shallow channel through the back side of Cape Beale. That was the easy way out, but it wasn’t the end of our challenges as we were about to paddle the “Graveyard of the Pacific.”

The notorious shoreline at the entrance to Juan de Fuca Strait is so-named for its many shipwrecks. The loss of the Valencia in 1906 claimed 117 lives and prompted the building of the West Coast Trail. It was once a route to get shipwreck survivors safely back to civilization, but now about 50 backpackers a day begin the 75-kilometre trek with the opposite intention.

Our biggest surf landing of the trip was here, on the beach at Carmanah Creek. We shared a campsite with a dozen trail-weary hikers who watched us launch into the surf the next morning. After a wild ride through the break zone, we were soaked but relieved that we didn’t flip in front of the audience.

A cold blast of salty surf in the face is a stronger morning jolt than three shots of espresso, and it’s not the only thing I’ll miss now that I’m home. Seeing a new stretch of coastline each day and lying down on the sand for a guilt-free nap after a day of exercise and a 1200-calorie burrito dinner are luxuries that don’t fit well into a nine-to-five workday.

“I don’t want to go home,” Dave said near the end of the trip.

“This has been the best three months of my life. This is what I want to do all the time. I just have to figure out how to sustain it.”

Many people asked us if we got tired of our trip routine. But nothing was ever the same. Weather and scenery are always changing. Even chores like washing dishes are different every day. Dave and I are now so used to scouring pots with sand that it will be hard to go back to soap.

“I’ll need to keep a bucket of sand by the sink when I get home,” Dave concluded.

As we went south, the trip seemed to only get better. As we neared the city and expected to be overwhelmed by crowds of hikers, we were surprised to find some of B.C.’s best paddling in Victoria’s backyard.

We enjoyed the craggy, seldom-paddled shore of the Juan de Fuca Trail. Later, near Sooke, we pulled up alongside a log boom being towed by a tugboat, hopped aboard and thought about taking a free ride to Vancouver. But after a few minutes chugging at 2 knots into the Strait, we shifted back to paddle power to explore the coves and crannies of East Sooke Park. One crack in the rock led into a cave barely wider than our boats. We walked our hands along the damp walls and gazed up at a blue sliver of typical Victoria summer sky.

A day later it took us only an hour to cross from Metchosin to Victoria with the current behind us. As we passed the Ogden Point breakwater at the harbour entrance, Dave pointed out a navigation marker a short distance away.

“When I first came to Victoria,” he recalled, “I tried to paddle out to that marker but I got scared and turned around halfway.”

I laughed and thought of how far we’ve come in 80 days. It’s amazing to be able to trace our journey on a map of the world, but maybe it’s more significant how far we’ve gone beyond our old limitations.

We surfed wind waves past Clover Point and paddled with the current to Trial Island. We played in the tidal rapids there, and stopped for lunch and a swim before meeting family and friends at Cattle Point, the end of our trip. “Now I’ve seen the whole coast,” Dave concluded, “but this is still one of my favourite places to paddle.”

Dave moved to Vancouver a few years ago to find photography work but now vows to move back to kayak-friendly Victoria. Turning away from the water for the first time in 80 days feels like waking up from a long dream of surf-swept beaches, rocky capes, whales, sea lions and eagles. I look back out toward the Pacific and think that if I keep paddling, I can be in Mexico by Christmas. In a couple of weeks, however, I begin a new job at a kayaking magazine in Ontario.

The first thing I’ll do when I get to work is reprogram my computer to remind me how long it’s been since I last went kayaking. Then again, who needs a reminder? I know I’ll be back
on the water soon.

THE END

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