May 29-31, Sidney to Portland Island

After my first week of paddling, I was in pretty rough shape; I had started to get pretty serious chafing from my wetsuit on my shoulders and the crook of my right arm, and had skinned several knuckles pretty badly in the storm on the 23rd.  None of these issues would normally be a big deal, but the knuckles in particular were making me nervous; because my hands were spending so much time wet, they weren't healing at all, and I was worried that they might get infected.  I was also pretty sore and worn down--the kind of mileage I was covering on a daily basis would be no problem later on in the trip, but at this stage, it was wearing on me.

On top of it all, Carl and I had a number of errands we needed to run.  Carl had bought a second hand kayak from an older paddler on Saltspring Island and paddled it back to the Saanich Peninsula, but needed a better and newer PFD, a paddle float and pump, and a few other odds and ends.  He had also done most of the grocery shopping for the next several weeks of the trip, but we needed a few remaining food items and also needed to pick up a package of food (difficult-to-find items like powdered eggs) that I had mailed to myself, care of Jon and Teva.  And we needed to repackage food and send resupply boxes to Port Hardy, Shearwater, and Prince Rupert.

Carl sorting food in Jon and Teva's basement

Because of all these things, I decided that it would be best to take two days to recuperate and organize.  In the end, that was probably a good decision, because it took us most of two days to get everything done, driven by the fact that outdoor gear and other things were a little difficult to find in relatively small Sidney.  I later wondered if it would have been more efficient to make a trip to Victoria, where we might have more quickly found what we needed.

We were ready to re-launch on the 31st, though, putting our boats in the water at Downey Bay, on the West side of the Saanich Peninsula.  In order to make the trip continuous, though, we paddled around, the peninsula clockwise, through Satellite Channel and back to Tsehum Harbor, crossing my earlier path at Canoe Cove, before heading East and North around Coal Island.  From there, a short crossing led us to Portland Island, where we planned to stay for the night.  The island is a Provincial Marine Park with a very attractive campground that included a food cache and tent platforms as well as a privy.  From our tent site, we had great views of the Gulf Islands to the North, and company from a few eagles and ravens.