Scary clouds threaten me in the Strait of Georgia.
I made it through the night on my little sliver of beach without the waves or high tide getting to me. By 6am I was having some coffee and at 7:40am I had packed up and was launching. This was the easiest launch yet, as all I had to do was, sit in my loaded kayak, give a push, and slide down a slick pebble beach right into the water. This was to be the only thing that was easy about today’s paddle as the wind was out of the northwest and would be in my face creating rough seas in Sabine Channel. Normally in conditions like these, I try to stay fairly close to shore if that will keep me out of a strong head wind, but the many large boulders that lay submerged just below the surface along this coastline forced me to stay a quarter mile offshore most of the time.
The Shelter Point Regional Park is at Harwood Point on Texada Island.
After paddling into the wind for two hours, I had only traveled four miles, which is about half my normal speed of four miles per hour in calm water. I reached the Shelter Point Regional Park, which had been my previous day’s destination, before 10am. Since it was too early to stop for the day, I decided to just wait a while and see if the wind died down so I could continue. There was a restaurant in the park pavilion, so after securing my boat, I checked it out and had a burger and fries. The restaurants windows looked out on Gillies Bay, which was the next stretch of water that I had to cross. I was able to sit here comfortably and monitor the sea conditions as the wind howled outside.
Looking SE across Mouat Bay from Harwood Point.
By 2pm, it was obvious that the wind was not going to let up anytime soon so I went ahead and got a campsite for the night. The sites are just above the high tide line and are easy to access from the beach. If you plan to stay here, you should try and land near high tide as the beach is shallow making for a long carry at low tide. The park has hot showers and clean restrooms and the restaurant serves meals all day long. This is a “must stop” place to spend the night if you are paddling the west coast of Texada Island.
Looking south across Mouat Bay and the Strait of Georgia toward Vancouver Island.
Looking NW across Gillies Bay and up the Texada shoreline from Harwood Point.
After ten days on the water, I got into a regular routine every evening that I called “doing my homework”. First, I would get out my GPS and get the coordinates of that evening’s campsite. Next, I would take out my Palm Pilot on which I had loaded “Tide Tool”, a tide and current program available on the internet, and input the coordinates and date to find out what the tides would be for the next day. After I got this, I would then write the times and heights of the two high and two low tides for the next day on the laminated charts that covered the next day’s route. I did this with a Sharpie pen that is waterproof so the charts could stay right on the deck all day long with the tide information at my fingertips whenever I needed to check it. I would then make my notes in a logbook of the days paddle with entries on times, wind direction, wave heights, and weather conditions.
My campsite at the Shelter Point Park.
