We discussed our Seymour Narrows plan last night while going to bed. 
I suggested going through at the end of the ebb in order to save a day, so we got up early (this will be a common theme) in order to make it into Campbell River by 11am. We left our kayaks tied to the dock in the marina while we went grocery shopping and ate at the Riptide Pub and Grill, which was quite fancy. The servers gave us the eye when we walked in with our neoprene shorts on, saying "nice spandex". We changed into something more comfortable in the bathroom, and Roy even did a little wash(!) in the sink. Once again, the marina restaurants are excellent. I had cajun snapper with mango salsa, caeser salad, and chocolate mousse cake. Yum. At the supermarket nearby, we picked up some string cheese, apples and broccoli. We were back at the marina to put on our dry suits (a bit hot) and push off at 1:30, which was maximum ebb through Discovery Passage. This turned out to be an excellent choice, as we flew the eight miles up to the Narrows. Water coming out of the Campbell River mouth create a giant rip that stretched all the way across Discovery Passage, and we found ourselves effortlessly pushed all the way across the Passage as we followed this eddy line diagonally outwards.
We planned our whole trip to hit Seymour Narrows on a half moon, and the five knot
maximum current today was nothing special. Later in the month it would hit 14 knots. We arrived an hour and a half after maximum ebb and went through. No freighters or cruise ships threatened us, and the current was tame, albeit squirrely. Big ship wakes would make this passage a bit more problematic.
We stopped at Elk Bay, a primitive camp site a couple hours north of the Narrows. It had a river, toilets and a trash can. We picked a spot by the beach that may not have been an official spot (no fire ring) right next to some tire tracks down to the water (a boat ramp?) I made sure not to block the tracks with our kayaks, because you never know who is going to want to use the boat ramp in the middle of the night. In the early evening, a guy and his girlfriend drive in with their truck and a boat in back and seem disappointed that we took the spot that they had intended using. They end up camping in a spot not too far from us for the night. It turns out that the friend of a guy camped next to us showed up at 11:30pm and drove right into our campsite with his semi rig. This thing was BIG and LOUD. I was fast asleep, and almost hit the ceiling of my tent when it came down the boat ramp with its headlights shining right at us. To find such a large vehicle out in the backwoods was incongrous and terrifying (Roy's tent was in front of mine, so he would have been squished first). 
In any case, the guy camped near us runs over to tell his friend that he is about to run over complete strangers. He backs up, missing our boats by a couple feet, and parks his rig in the next camp site. Yikes. I thought that being on the water was going to be the only dangerous part.
While we are having dinner at Elk Bay, a cruise ship goes by. It is a majestic animal, huge and graceful as it cruises silently by, heading for Seymour Narrows. "Can you imagine, they're paying hundreds of dollars a day to see us?" I ponder.
Day 9: Elk Bay to Kelsey Bay
Up at 5:15 or so. There are lots of tugs out on the water today pulling huge loads of logs. I think tugs must takes Sundays off, so yesterday was a good time to go through the Narrows with little 
traffic. Our goal today is to get through Race Passage before the end of the ebb at 5pm. We saw three groups of orcas today off of Ripple Point, all containing about 4 to 5 orcas and moving in the same direction about five minutes apart (I believe that they were all part of the same resident pod). You can hear them far off as they all come up for air almost at the same time, and then sometimes disappear for a couple minutes in the depths of the strait. One baby orca jumped out of the water about 30 yards from Roy, making us a little nervous. There were also several bulls with majestic dorsal fins.
The wind can kick up in the Strait, and we hit gusts of 15 to 20 knots. We also had waves up to 3 to 4 feet at times, but then later it would be calm. Conditions vary widely.
We passed Race Passage at 3:30, and struggled into Kelsey Bay after a super long day to find a marina build out of derelict ships and a fairly empty town scattered with large machinery. The cafe, WesterLees, said "open", but there was noone there, although there were public bathrooms and showers. A bear-watching tour schedule on the wall was from 2003. I felt like we were in the twilight zone. I suggested camping at a simple parking lot campground near the beach that had one RV in it and a couple picnic tables. Roy wanted to push on. We found a secluded beach a half hour further on that had some dense forest right down to the water that had been partially devestated by loggin machinery. We managed to find camp spots in the ruts left by the loggers. While we ate dinner, a woman with bad teeth came by and told us we were on private property and could not camp there, so we had to pack up and leave. It was ironic that she kicked us off property that her family had just ruined through logging, but oh well. I heard later rumours that they were growing pot somewhere on the property. We ended up kayaking back to the RV park in Kelsey Bay and paying $15 to stay in the parking lot, but it was enjoyable to have a place to sleep where we wouldn't be bothered too much. The German family in the RV next to us were very nice, so it was not such a bad spot after all.
Day 10: Kelsey Bay to Windy Point
We took advantage of the public showers this morning and got a leisurely start. Today is the first cloudy day of our trip. Orcas came past just as we were launching off the beach. I made it fifty yards from shore before I realized I had my drytop on backwards. Du-oh!
All day we struggled against wind. There was no evidence of the ebb as strong westerlies
left a constant surface flood, and by 3pm, we had made only 10 nm when we came upon a small bay with a native tour boat in it. As Roy went over to look at it (Roy loves boats), a man waved us to shore and offered to let us stay in some cabins that he had built that look like native longhouses. He called them mini-bighouses and he was setting up a tourist kayak camp. With the strong winds, we were definitely not going to make it to Naka Creek (10 more nm away), so we pulled in the get some culture from our Kwakawakawak tour guide. Tom Sewid was a former Guardian at Mamalilacoola (Village Island) and was a great storyteller, telling us why there were no grizzlies on Vancouver Island (one lost a bet and turned into a rock near Campbell River), where the orcas go in the winter (they become people), and the history of his people, including the 1921 Potlatch out at Village Island and the repeal of the potlatch ban in the 1950s.
He also talked about the "punk" lifestyle. Here, punk is the dried cedar shavings kept in a can above the fireplace stove and sealed with wax. In the backwoods cabins, people leave a knife next to the door of their cabin so that when someone wanders by, they can use the punk to start a fire, use the knife to refill the can, and maybe leave a note or gift for the owner when they leave. Tom told a story about leaving out bait herring and a bucket for payment and getting hundreds of dollars in the bucket because people were so honest. He also won a creative writing scholarship, so I 
imagine that his stories were embellished as well, but they were very entertaining. His website is www.villageisland.com. We stayed for the night in a mini-bighouse with a killer whale painted on the front.
Just when you thought you saw everything, we saw two jet skiers cruise by wearing drysuits, with lots of gas cans piled on the back. When we talked to Tom later, he said they had stopped in and told him they were travelling by jet ski from Alaska to Miami (via the Panama Canal?). We're all following our dreams - some are just way more crazy than others.
Day 11: Windy Point to Blinkhorn Penninsula
Up at 4:30, on water at 6am. We stopped briefly at Naka Creek where we had spent such a
pleasuable day last year watching orcas. Robson Bight is 4 miles to the west. Up until now we have seen only two other kayakers, but between Naka Creek and Alert Bay, we will see several groups of kayakers, including one group headed by a guide in dreadlocks and a cotton t-shirt. Robson Bight itself is an ecological reserve, and no kaykers are allowed inside the bight. There is not much wind or adverse current, so we go out and around, which seems to take forever. Luckily, the wind doesn't pick up, as we cannot land on the south side of the strait for 4 miles. A warden is posted in a boat on the west side of the bight to educate boaters about this restriction. More orcas go by at a distance. Today has been cloudy and calm, although the wind starts picking up as we work our way up the coast looking for a suitable campsite. We end up on the inside of the Blinkhorn Penninsula. There are some campsites and a toilet back in the woods that look like they are part of some First Nation owned site, but we just camp on the gravelly beach, spent after a long day.
Day 12: Blinkhorn Penninsula to Wolf Beach
We get out on the water early again when the water is calm and mist still lingers along the shore. Three groups of orcas worked their way down the Strait, their blowing exhalations punctuating the silence
of the morning. We didn't know which way to turn, as they were all around us, up and down the Strait, although they never surfaced closer than 100 yards away. They definitely knew where we were. A power boater comes along and breaks the quiet, and we turn and head for Alert Bay.
Alert Bay is full of charm, but decaying. One half of the town is an Indian Reserve, and the other half is white. We pass a couple B&Bs that are not open, and eat some breakfast at a grocery store. Alert Bay has a couple attractions. The first is a graveyard filled with totem poles. Signs 
say not to go in, so we looked at it from the street. The second attraction is the Umista
Cultural Center, a big longhouse-type building on the edge of town. It is a museum of Kwakawakawak(sp?) culture, and the main attraction is a room full of potlatch masks that were returned to the First Nations people after they had been taken during the crackdown on the 1921 potlatch on Village Island. There were also coppers and references to the Hamasta (high-ranking warriors), both of which Tom Sewid mentioned during our stay with him three days ago.
After leaving Alert Bay, we passed a big marine construction site at the entrance to the channel. They were driving piles for a giant conveyor belt for gravel and sand, so that they could excavate a nearby mountain and send it to Los Angeles, all in the name of progress.
We continued on for a few more miles, into some sporty swell-generate waves that were coming from the open ocean to the northwest. It is so nice to finally be out of the Strait after four days of constant westward paddling. Port Hardy is only 15 miles away when we set up camp on a non-descript beach, and we are anxious to pick up supplies and meet up with Scott tomorrow.
Day 13: Wolf Beach to Port Hardy
When we woke up at 5am, there were wolf tracks in front of our tent. The sand was covered with dew, but the paw prints had dry sand in them, so they were probably very recent, mabye even less than an hour old. Today is cloudy with light southeast winds, suggesting that a storm is coming. A humpback whale surfaced 200 yards away from us and dove down with a giant tail slap.
We arrived at Port Hardy at noon on the beach
by government wharf. Odyssey Sea Kayaking was only a few blocks away, and Scott Hagerty was talking with Pat Kervin, the owner. We picked up our food packages that we had shipped to Pat to hold for us. He even offered to let us store our kayaks in his storage yard for the night. We found a reasonable hotel right in front of the beach where are kayaks were parked, and they also said that they could store our kayks in their banquet room(!). It's nice when everyone is fighting over us to help us out. We stored our kayaks in the banquet room of the hotel. Everything went smoothly. We unpacked, 
sorted and repackaged our gear. Roy mailed off a package to himself in Spokane, and I left some stuff in Scott's truck for eventual return. Outside it was drizzling, and a big storm moved in during the evening. The weather report recorded 45 to 55 knots at Solander island, and 50 to 65 knot winds and 4.5 metre waves at the East Dellwood buoy. Cape Scott was also blowing at 50 knots. It sure is nice to be in a hotel today, but we are anxious about what tomorrow will bring. Tomorrow winds are reported to be 20 to 40 in our area.
Day 14: Port Hardy to Cape Sutil
Today looks nice, with no sign of supposed storm. We use Scott's truck to move gear from the hotel to the beach, one block away. My stuff is unbelievably heavy, as I've added 10 kg of water and 16kg of food to my kayak (26kg = 57 pounds of consumeables). Scott's plan of having a friend drive his truck back to Port Townsend didn't work out, so he might have to store his boat in Victoria and catch the bus back up at the end of our voyage.
The wind is 10 knots from the southeast as we cruise up Goletas Channel. 
The wind and waves are behind us, and the current eventually goes with us too. The scenery is beautiful. Our west coast adventure has begun. The wind builds as the day goes on and I get a little nervous as my kayak gets surfed along the channel at a reckless speed. Amazingly, we complete a marathon on a day where I thought we might have to weather it out in Port Hardy for another night. Bear tracks cross the beach by the river where we camp. We hang our food for the first time..
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