I was full of excitement at the prospect of being reunited with my wheelchair, which we’d asked a Vancouver friend to mail up the coast to Port Hardy. How fantastic it would be to enjoy a day or two of rest and independence—to wheel around and feel some freedom again while on land. I thought it would be a welcome break for the rest of the team too—everyone could just switch off for a while and not have to be keeping an eye out for me.
On the paddle to Port Hardy, we struggled against the biggest swell and seas we had encountered. My concentration was intense as the waves slopped around the kayak with no apparent pattern, wave reflections from the cliffs interfering with those coming in from the open Pacific. I dared not stop paddling for fear of losing my balance. If I paddled, I felt connected somehow and able to find focus through my fear. My gaze was straight ahead, and my paddle strokes had to be cautious because my paddle occasionally found air where I had expected it to find water.
Reaching Port Hardy under such rough conditions felt like a major achievement. There we were reunited with Adi and in the mood to celebrate getting through the first third of our journey. Suresh, Fran and Mark headed to the ferry terminal where the wheelchairs would be waiting, while the rest of us puttered about at camp, dreaming of a feast that we’d create after a trip to the supermarket.
A little later, the group returned from the terminal looking worried. “There’s a wee problem. Sorry to tell you, but your wheelchairs aren’t here. We need to phone Vancouver and try to track them down.” My heart sank. Posting the wheelchairs up the coast to various random “strangers” had always felt like a plan full of potential to fail. I took the bad news with silent disappointment.
A few hours later, after some effort from resourceful team members, Richard, the owner of the campsite where we’d landed, appeared with a wheelchair. It was sadly lacking in essential parts, such as a footrest, but luckily had round wheels. It was in no fit state to carry me around the center of Port Hardy, its wheels groaning and creaking for oil. My inability to manage its awkward structure was revealed when I fell out of it while transferring onto the toilet and when I crashed into piles of canned goods while in a grocery store.
“Hello!” “Goodbye!” “Hello!” “Goodbye!” Pete and Suresh shouted as they alternately appeared and disappeared from each other’s sight, carried up and down on the crests and troughs of the giant Pacific swell. North of Vancouver Island, we found the exposed passage around Cape Caution without wind and chop, but the ocean swell was large enough to roll our stomachs. We felt the power and expanse of the Pacific, but it was a peaceful, almost serene crossing, and a seed of relief grew within me as we safely passed the Cape and returned to more protected waterways.
As we paddled northward, a cheeky sea otter made off with Tony’s hatch cover when he opened the hatch to get his camera. The otter seized the moment and grabbed the cover, holding it like a steering wheel before flopping onto Fran’s deck. The otter then grabbed Fran’s paddle right out of her grip and rocked her kayak to alarming angles. Later, Mark and Susi were the first to spy a whale spouting in the distance. Later, a grey whale flopped its tail less than a hundred yards from the kayaks.
At the end of the day, we reached Duncanby Landing, a collection of shacks, a café and a small store. We sat at the café and consumed a lot of beer, chips and burgers—anything edible that didn’t involve porridge. Adi realized that his skin had deteriorated again, broken down by the previous days of paddling. The damp conditions, sand and seawater were a gritty abrasive that left their mark on Adi. It wasn’t safe for him to continue, so he decided to radio British Columbia Ferries to take them up on their offer of support. Adi’s logistics were made more complicated by his lack of a wheelchair, so Fran and Pete volunteered to stay with him, and we agreed to meet in Shearwater—four days’ paddle away.
It was four days of relatively easy paddling, with a bouncier stretch where we ventured out from behind the islands to the swell of the Pacific. The size and scale of the ocean was intimidating to me after the few days of more sheltered water we’d just enjoyed, but we soon left the ocean desert that extended west for the forested island scenes of Shearwater.
The sounds of buzzing floatplanes and humming boat-engines spelled -civilization. Fishermen, sailors, tourists—Shearwater was the happening place, and we all looked forward to spending a chunk of time in the warmth of the bar and restaurant among more “civilized” folk.
While we were in Shearwater, we cleaned, ate and sorted through our gear. We had many difficult discussions about how to proceed. Adi was not yet fit to continue because of the worsening of his pressure sore. No one wanted to miss the next two-week section to Prince Rupert, yet no one wanted Adi to sit two weeks out alone. Everyone on the team had invested a lot in this voyage. Some had even given up jobs to be here. How should we proceed, giving everyone the chance to paddle as much as possible?
Alan came up with a solution: While we paddled toward Prince Rupert, he and Tony would wait with Adi to put him on the ferry, then the two of them would paddle fast to catch us. Meanwhile we would shop and restock—the only disadvantage we could see was that Tony and Alan wouldn’t get a rest, and that if they were delayed for any reason, we might have to continue with only five people able to lift boats and me. We decided to go for it despite these reservations.
For the next 10 days, we had superb tailwinds and rain so heavy it bounced of the surface of the water and reduced the landscape around us to a hazy outline. The tide, current and waves swept us northward, and on some days we were amazed at making almost 40 nautical miles of progress. We negotiated sandbars, ran aground a few times, and eventually arrived to a disappointingly urban scene. Not that there was anything wrong with Prince Rupert, but we had come to breathe more freely in the wilderness.
Adi was waiting for us, and his injury seemed to have healed. But we’d arrived in Prince Rupert well ahead of schedule and after three days of waiting for Alan and Tony, we were eager to get back on the water. We left a trail of messages as to our whereabouts so that Alan and Tony could track us down.
Setback