Gabriola Island weekend, Part 1: Kayaking

On the last weekend in September, ten of us spent two nights on Gabriola Island - one of the picturesque Gulf Islands off of Vancouver Island. We stayed in an awesome beach house B&B right on the water, and the attendees were: us, Stuart and Rosanne (now living in London for a few months!), John and Helene, Connie (the weekend's organiser), Juanita, Heidi and Ruth. Ben and I car pooled with Ruth for the four ferry rides involved in getting to Gabriola and back - here are some pics Ben took from the first ferry, going from the mainland across to Vancouver Island on Friday evening...

After a lazy Saturday morning, we launched our five double kayaks (hired from the B&B) into the water just down the beach from the B&B. And then we set off on what we had planned would be about 7 hours of kayaking! During the first hour, we paddled along the shore, past some low cliffs formed by interesting honeycomb-like rocks. We even saw a seal - for a split second before it ducked back underwater as a seagull swooped it (no pics I'm afraid)!









About an hour into our journey, it was time to find a spot to enjoy our pre-packed picnic lunches, so we paddled into a harbour where a lot of boats were moored. Getting across to the harbour involved a difficult paddle across an open patch of sea, while the wind tried mightily to push us onto the wrong island! During our lunch break we found out that the wind was forecast to increase, and since we had planned to paddle much further that day but our return paddle would be against the wind, we decided to wrap it up early. First, however, we enjoyed our hard-earned lunch on the shore of Gabriola Island, not far from the very awesomely-named boat in the second photo below!













After lunch, having called the B&B owner and arranged a pick-up spot for the kayaks, we just had to paddle to the other side of the harbour. On the way, Ben found the remains of a rusting catamaran for us to kayak through!! Back on solid ground, while our kayaks were being loaded we witnessed a very interesting method of four-wheeler transportation being carried out by two guys setting off on a hunting trip by boat...









Then, we had the rest of the day to explore the island by foot/car. I'll tell you about that next time!

**To see lots more photos from our Gabriola Island weekend, please click here or on the link under "Our photo albums" (above right).**