Hornby Island 2006 - Victoria Day Long Weekend

This past weekend, Kim and I headed up to Hornby Island to spend the weekend in our kayaks and on our mountain bikes. We haven't been out too much in the past while as rowing practice for the corporate challenge has been eating into our time. This has left Kim's brand new Specialized bike fairly unused so we had to get some dirt on it. We decided to leave on the Saturday instead of Friday after work to avoid the rush of traffic and packing. This turned out very well and was the start of a stress free relaxing weekend camping. Camping? Well that's what I told Kim anyway. With the high cost of camping, and with no showers available, I booked us into a cabin on Ford's Cove looking out toward Denman Island. Kim had no idea. I even brought my latern and stove to make it look like camping it was going to be. It was somewhat of a late birthday present as the weekend before (on her birthday) I was too involved in the MOMAR race and wasn't able to spend very much time together.

Needless to say, it was a very good choice. We had beautiful weather until Sunday night and were able to do two mountain bike rides and a short kayak trip. We were planning on doing a long trip around the entire island but when we rounded the south tip and headed east, the ocean was swelling hard with big peaks and long periods. Some waves I even lost sight of Kim! So, we turned around and cut our paddle short which, looking back on it, was the right thing to do.

Sunday night we went to the local community hall to watch a showing of "Thank you for Smoking" which was really good. The hall is all made out of trees and various other natural materials. If there is a place in BC that is working toward sustainability, it can be found here on Hornby Island. Definitely a special place.

Sorry. No picutres for this one.

Hornby Island

This was taken from a mountain bike trip to Hornby Island last year. It was wet and super foggy but fun nonetheless. Finally, at the end of the weekend, the fog lowered enough that the tip of Hornby protruded toward the sky. A sea of clouds engulfed the island.

Langley Site Visits

Lately, I've been doing some site visits over to Langley and have snapped some nice photos on the Ferry ride over. Thought you might enjoy them.

MOMAR Ucluelet

What an awesome race. The weather was perfect, the water was glass, and hey, how can you complain when everything turns out well. Tash and I were doing this race solely for fun. We rented our kayak late and ended up with a Libra XT which has a huge beam. Nicknamed the Starship Enterprise, we paddled her into the ocean.

The race started with a kayak start and everyone lined up for the start. A bit of bumper boats unsued, however, shortly after boats started to separate and form into groups.

Suprisingly, we kept a good clip on the Starship and managed to come in with the first five or six boats which we both thought was pretty good considering our situation.

Continuing on bike and foot, we kept climbing ahead of others and started to realize that, hey, we're doing pretty good here. The last leg of the race was about 12km of running along the Ucluelet shoreline. It was here, at the second checkpoint in the run, that we found that we were in first position. We had some competition right on our heals but managed to out navigate them from the checkpoint and ran the rest of the leg flawlessly.

After a ocean swim crossing which was incredibly cold, we crossed the finish line as the first coed team to ever win a MOMAR. Exstatic but cold, we headed back to our hostel for a long hot shower followed by a nice cold local brew. The end of a perfect day.

Paddling at Race Rocks

This was just a great paddle on an amazing day. We hit the tides at the perfect time, saw lots of wildlife and heard the Sea Lions yelping away on the rocks. What more could you ask for.