The paper chase

Saturday Dean, Hazen, Neville and Terry were going to take a test to determine whether they met Paddle Canada level III competencies.  If they passed that would open the path to do their level IV in August.  With that in mind Dean and Hazen wanted to make sure they were prepared so they, along with Brian, Cathy, Gary and myself, met at St. Philips on Friday to do some rescues etc.

Here Hazen comes to the aid of the damsel in distress, Cathy but ...

... she also knows how to get a rescue done, rescuing Dean.  Its important not only to know different rescue techniques as the rescuer but also as the rescuee so when it happens it goes with the minimum of discussion.  Everyone on the same page.

With everything under control, we went for a short paddle.

It doesn't hurt to have someone as knowledgeable as Brian around too when practicing any kayak skill.

Cathy in lime Rikki.

My favourite passage and a good place for a swim rescue practice.

Gary.  Somewhere along our paddle Cathy and Gary hatched a plan to do a one night kayak camp trip to Kellys Island.  The subject of three previous posts.  I couldn't resist so I joined them; it was a blast.

A short break and stretch before finishing the day.

Saturday Cathy, Gary and I went to Kellys Island.

Dean and Hazen went to Placentia and passed their level III evaluation.  They're on to Burgeo in August to do their level IV.  Good for them because I paddle with these guys and I will feel a lot safer when they get the highest level kayak course offered by Paddle Canada.  Me, I'll just be uncertified but certifiable *lol*

One night on Kellys Island (Part 3)

We hit the sleeping bags around 2:00 am.  I awoke 6:00 ish and lay looking at the roof of my tent for a while before getting dressed and packing drybags and stuffing the sleeping bag into the compression bag.  Then I quietly unzipped the tent door and looked out upon the world and the start of a new day.

There was no sign of Cathy or Gary so I went on walk about but Cathy, as it turns out, had already been out.  I saw footprints through the grass.  I looked back at our tents between the two trees, took a snap.

At the cliffs edge I looked back at the tents of Ant City perched 30 meters above the water of Conception Bay.  I ...

... zoomed to catch the tents on top of the cliff and the kayaks nestled in the grass just above the beach.  Click to enlarge for the full effect!  A bit of a climb to lug the tents up but well worth the view.

We took down the tents and carefully making our way down the steep cliff face carried our gear down to the kayaks and readied to return home.

Not content with a straight line, rapid return we paddled around Kellys Island alongside the gently dipping sedimentary beds.  Along the way we noted numerous places where rocks clung precariously to the cliffs threatening to fall on any unwary paddler.  We stay off a bit just in case.

Nearing Easter Beach we were ready to begin our short 3 km crossing back to Long Pond.  Paddling into a slight headwind we made the crossing in 30 minutes making an average of 6.0 kms/hr.  Cathy and I exchanged knowing glances off and on; I was impressed with the speed she kept up.  Rikki cut through the small wind waves like a hot knife through butter.

Red ... Right ... Return.  At the red buoy we stopped for several minutes before entering the harbour.  We drifted slightly towards the green buoy which made us look slightly ignorant of the rules when a large craft came up behind us.  Oh well!  Image is not everything.

Back in the industrial complex of Long Pond and back to civilization.

Twenty-six hours earlier our bows were pointed away from the beach.  We were back from our one night camp trip to Kellys Island.  It was a short 26 hours but we packed so much fun into those hours that it seemed a much longer trip.

It was a nice break, speaking for myself, as I had spent a frustrating time hooking home to town services.  I felt refreshed (*lol*; private joke between ourselves) and ready to take on the world.  This trip shows its not necessary to go far afield to get in a super night, not on the town, but out of the town.

Thanks Cathy and Gary for a most memorable trip and a thousand laughs.

One night on Kellys Island (Part 2)

In part 1 Cathy, Gary and I left Long Pond for Kellys Island where we set up the tents and left some of our gear before paddling the 5 kms to Bell Island to explore.

We paddled over to "The Bell" which took us further away making the bee line paddle back to Kellys a longish crossing of 6.5 kms.  The wind had picked up and without working at all we did the crossing in 60 minutes.  Then it was time to try and catch our supper.

For my friends who are not Newfoundlanders, a short backgrounder.  In 1992 the cod stocks on our Grand Banks had been decimated by over-fishing.  Canada totally mismanaged the resource and was forced to shut it down.  At one time we could catch cod whenever we wanted to but during the "cod moratorium" we weren't allowed to catch even one for our own use.  While the resource is making a comeback its not enough for a large commercial fishery but thanks to the big hearted crowd in our nations capital we're permitted to catch 5 cod per person each day.

Cathy brought a jigger so we could try from our kayaks.

Cathy and I rafted up and threw the jigger overboard.  She spooled off I don't how many feet before it hit bottom.  She pulled it up sightly and began "sawing" away.  The jigger is pulled up and let sink repeatedly in the motion of a hand saw and with baited breath we waited for that tug on the line signaling we had one.

Repeated attempts yielded no reward so we pulled the jigger in having only sent it on a swim and headed for our campsite.

We were perched on a 15 meter hill overlooking Conception Bay.  We could have camped on the beach but we liked the view from up on high so we carried only what we needed (tent, sleeping bag, thermarest, etc) to populate what we called Ant City.  The rest of the stuff we left ...

... one the beach where happy hour ensued before ...

... supper.

After supper I gathered what wood was on the beach and we had a fire, not a large one but as large as we could make it with the limited amount of fire wood.  It cooled down considerably as the sun began to set behind the cliff above our heads where the tents were set up.  We decided not to open the bar until the fire had burned down and we had climbed safely up to our lofty perch.

The wind that was gentle at sea level accelerated up the cliff face and blew quite strongly where we had camped.  Cathy's tent had two doors so the three of us sat looking out the back door and out of the wind.  We played guessing games and laughed so hard my sides began to hurt.

Eventually the wind dropped, thankfully, and we moved to sit in the front door.  Four kilometers across the water the lights of Conception Bay South filled the horizon.  Cathy got a craving for Cheezies and I suggested pizza.  She texted Dean to see if he would bring it out to us.  We laughed some more and around 2:00 am we hit the hay.

A wonderful day full of adventure finished with a night of sound sleep.  Good night Irene!

One night on Kellys Island (Part 1)

We've been to Kellys Island in Conception Bay numerous times.  We checked it out for possible campsites and threatened to camp there.  Its close by and ideal for a one night kayak camp trip.

Friday Cathy and Gary hatched a plan to bring that one night trip to fruition.  I wasn't sure about the timing as my "To Do" list was extensive but I decided I needed to cross that trip off my list.  We met at Long Pond at 9:30 to load up the kayaks for the 4 km crossing.

Leaving Long Pond we headed straight for the cobble beach where we would decide to either camp on the beach or on the hill 15 meters above the beach.  We climbed the steep hill and selected a site for our tents.  The plan was to set up the tents first, have lunch and then ...

go for a paddle.

On the northwest side of the island we set off for Bell Island.  We took turns predicting the distance to a beach.  Cathy had it at 4.2 kms, Gary 5.0 and myself at 4.7.  The GPS read ...

... 5.2 when we reached the island so Gary won that one.  But, there was no prize as we hadn't placed any bets.

The water was so clear and the sun so strong it made Cathy look like she was floating unsupported above the sea bottom.

Cathy wanted to paddle to the west side of Bell Island to the Grebes Nest so we headed west across the south side of the island under impressive cliffs reaching 50 meters in height.

At Freshwater Cove a short ladder up the hill attracted our attention.  The day wasn't all about the paddle so we landed and took a short hike up following a small stream up a ravine.  Further on we used a rope hanging down a slippery slope to climb onto ...

... a flat area with a great view down the ravine we named "Ant Hill Ravine".  We walked a short distance with the hope of finding a pond the stream ran out of but we gave up.  A subsequent review of maps and Google Earth showed the stream had no source in a pond.  Good call!

By the time we continued our paddle it was 3:00 and getting too late to make the 14 kms round trip to the Grebes Nest so we agreed to go as far as "The Bell" of Bell Island.  Here I named the two stone pillars "Homer" and "Marge".

Under crystal clear blue skies in Front Bell Cove with "The Clapper" on the right.

Cathy approaches "The Bell", a massive seastack ...

... standing off of Bell Island.  We padled through in a stiffening breeze out of the north that increased in intensity squeezed between the two land masses.  Around "The Bell" we rafted up and decided to make a bee line for Kellys Island and return to camp for happy hour and supper.

The game this time was to guess ho long it would take to cross the 6.5 kms distance.  We each had a guess which turned out to be 60 minutes but we could have shaved 10 minutes off of that if we had wanted to as we got a good push in the following wind and sea.

A glorious day is finished at Middle Cove

Finished lunch in Flatrock we set off on the return leg too Middle Cove.  A man was taking pictures of us.  Turns out he was from the Netherlands.  For me, "een kans om een beetje nederlands te praten", a chance to speak a little Dutch.  I dallied too long while the group paddled on.  I said my good-bye and dug in to catch the crowd which I did a kilometer further at the Beemer.  They were playing riding the surge of the submerged extension of Flatrock Point.

Done playing we paddled back down the channel south of the Point and ...

... check out the iceberg again.  Some of us grabbed some of the chunks floating around.  I threw a good size piece into the cockpit hoping its size would help it survive in the heat.

As we passed by the cliffs we noticed a group of climbers had arrived to climb.  I zoomed and ...

... caught one on the rock face.

Massive slabs of rock loom over Cathy in this cave.

Terry and I check out another cave paddling over indigo coloured waters.

As we approached Torbay the sun highlighted the petrified ripples of and ancient seafloor of the Neoproterozoic.  You would need to click on the image to enlarge to see the ripples just at 11:00 of Brian's cap.  Sedimentary rocks are dated by reference to fossils they contain.  As these rocks date from before the emergence of complex life they cannot be dated with accuracy and are ascribed to a period from 1 billion to 541 million years ago.  That's a long time for ripples to survive.

As on the paddle to Flatrock we crossed across the cove and did not go down into Torbay.  We explored some of the caves between Torbay and Middle Cove.  This one was a beauty that ran ...

... deep into the rocks.  Hard to get a good clear shot because there's not enough light for the camera to auto-focus.

Running out of caves we round a bend and catch sight of the beach at Middle Cove.  When we left in the morning around 9:30 there were only a few people to see us off but ...

... when we returned the beach was crowded with people out enjoying the super weather.

I checked my piece of iceberg I had collected and 90% of it had turned to water.  Realizing what was left would not survive the trip home, I spotted  group who would appreciate the ice for their drinks.

Brian, Cathy and Des had to leave directly.  Gary, Hazen, Terry and I stopped for a coffee before heading home.  It was a most fantastic day along a spectacular coast with high cliffs, caves and this day, one iceberg.