An Early Morning Paddle

July 4th (Saturday)  

This morning we were up at 06:00, and although it was cloudy it was also a perfectly calm and beautiful morning.  We headed out for a low-tide paddle.  
At around 07:00 it was a 1.3-foot tide and we made our way along the shore looking at everything.  
There were so many different types of kelp and seaweed, many types of snails – some with very ornate shells, starfish, sea anemone, giant pacific chitons, sea slugs, and goby fish, to name just a few.  

White spotted rose anemone

It is always nice to kayak at low tide, especially when the water is calm and we can not only see what is exposed above the surface, but also look into the shallow water, which is usually covered in 10-15 feet of water.  It is like looking into the best salt-water aquarium.  
We made our way out to the far end of the Rage Reefs and we made our way back along the inner side of the many rocks, most of which were not even visible at high tide.  Although the wind did pick up enough to ripple the surface of the water, it remained mostly calm all day.  
In the afternoon, at about 13:00, we started our engine and untied from the dock in the basin.  It was high tide and a perfect time to move outside of the inner basin.  Because we wanted to ride the flood current back to Ocean Falls in the morning it meant that we would be leaving here at a low tide of one foot.  The depths in the narrows are such that we did not want to go through on a tide any lower than four feet, so we decided to move over to the area a Louisa Cove and anchor there. 

There were some horseflies that came out to see us in our cockpit, but they seemed more interested in our black cockpit cushions than in us, and for the most part we were able to coexist amiably.  
In the evening, after dinner, we headed out for some evening salmon fishing.  We bobbed our way along through the swells, and fished along the outside of Rage Reefs and then along the outer side of Wurtele Island.  The wind was clam and it was a beautiful evening to be out.  We did not catching anything, but we did see four very curious sea lions, and one whale blow in the distance.
Back at home we had a cup of hot chocolate in the cockpit and enjoyed our beautiful surroundings as the sun set on our last evening out at anchor. 



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