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We munch
on fruit bars and bread for dinner. Darkness sets in, and we
strap on our headlamps. I stare at the chart on my deck, at
the peninsula ahead and to my left, trying to discern the shadows
of land from each other. A beach on the chart looks promising,
so we paddle toward it. We can hear the rush of water on steep
gravel as the swell surges in and out. Buffy looks over at me:
"It’s too steep, let’s keep going." Our paddles set
off swirls of glowing green light, and my boat’s bow wake glows.
We sneak along near shore, looking for the next possible landing.
We find a shallow bay with a reef blocking its entrance, protecting
it from the swell. Just off the beach, we pause with our headlamps
focused on shore as Kris lands her kayak through the small surf.
We each follow behind her. It’s now nearly midnight and we’re
ravenous, so we heat up instant potatoes and cheese before crawling
into our bivy sacks for the night.
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Jody
is nauseated the next morning, but she insists that we get on
the water and make our way to our next re-supply spot. In the
front of the double, she puts in an effort to paddle, often resting
her head on the deck. By evening, when we reach a pull-out near
Kyuquot, she’s still ill. The next morning, we paddle to a Red
Cross station in Kyuquot. By now she is unable to hold down any
food. The nurse practitioner diagnoses a combination of stress,
exhaustion and the flu, and she takes all of us into her home
for three days while Jody recovers. When we finally leave Kyuquot,
we crank for two days down a steep-walled, rainy inlet to reach
our food pick-up in Nootka Sound. |
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Somewhat
exhausted, and with many miles to go, we head into the fourth
month of paddling. Ahead of us is Estevan Point, with its shoaled
coastline and storybook white lighthouse. As we approach the
point, a dark fog bank thickens on the horizon, so we sneak
our way to shore on a path that the keepers have cleared through
the boulder-strewn shallows. The tide rises as we pay a visit
to the lighthouse keepers, eat lunch and gather handfuls of
huckleberries.
After
a couple of hours, the fog creeps away. The tide has swallowed
our pathway, and we are forced to dodge rocks through the swell
on the way back out. We paddle a mile offshore to avoid the
near-shore rocks and shoals. Within twenty minutes, seemingly
out of nowhere, the thick fog engulfs us and removes all visual
bearings. Buffy wants to turn back, but Robyn and I are not
so sure. "We can’t go back now, our pathway is gone and
there’s no way to pick our way to shore in the fog." At
this point, there is no conservative option. The option to turn
back is as daunting as it is to go on. The moan of the foghorn
and the swell crashing over the shoals to our left break the
silence. We rise up and down on the swell, straining our eyes
to see some form of land.
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