San Juan Islands Sea Kayaking from Anacortes

Wow, the stars aligned for us this morning and a whole lotta Southern Resident Killer Whales are presently passing by our Burrows Island Kayak Tour route. Monica and her guests were there, and so was James on a 5 hour kayak trip. It's a drop dead gorgeous summer day out there, and kayaking with whales is just a little icing on the cake.
The seals have been amazing this week too, the females are starting to have their pups and soon the waters around Burrows and Allan Island will be filled with bleating sounds of newborn pinnipeds.

Summer is officially here! We enjoyed a busy Father's Day weekend even though the weather was not quite as nice as it had been during the previous three weeks.
The peregrine falcon chicks are getting close to leaving their nest on Burrows Island. Andaria was leading a kayak trip out there the other day and reported that all three chicks have lost most of their downy feathers. Pretty soon we'll be seeing them hopping around on the cliff-face adjacent to the nest.
The seals and porpoise sightings have been outstanding recently, which makes a lot of sense now that there are large schools of bait fish coming back into the islands. The Orca whales, which were gone for nearly a month, are finally back too. The super-pod was seen yesterday as they traveled down from the Fraser River in Canada.

Our kayak camping trips are now in full swing. Once again we are taking folks up to Sucia Island, Cypress Island, and many other great places in the San Juan Islands. Call us, we'd love to show you around!

Labels: San Juan Islands, sea kayaking

We just completed our annual guide training classes with the awesome kayak coaches from Body Boat Blade International. Regular readers of the Reports from the Field might see BBB mentioned quite often because they play a major role in both our personal and professional lives, and because they have been a driving force in helping us to develop our philosophy on safety and kayak guide training out here in the San Juan Islands.

This year's training was great, probably because we have assembled a fantastic bunch of talented kayakers which enabled us to work on many different situations.
In the turbulent waters of Deception Pass we practiced assisted rescues, self rescuing, towing scenarios, and how to more effectively control our kayaks in dynamic water. We also set up emegency situations (hypothermia, heart-attacks, etc) so that the guides would have the necessary experience to deal with them in the unlikely event that something should happen.
Although we would never purposefully take our guests out into rough conditions, our philosophy is that if we train our guides to be comfortable in the crazy stuff then anything they may encounter on a kayak tour should be a "walk in the park".
I'm pretty sure that our guests appreciate this.

In other news, the weather has been unbelievable for the last month! We've been enjoying summer like conditions for most of this Spring. I think that we are going on our 30th straight day without any measurable precipitation, and temperatures have soared into the 80's on many days.

We have been having outstanding wildlife sightings as well, seals and porpoise have been seen on nearly every trip, and we even had a Humpback whale swimming in Burrows Bay and down Burrows Channel last week! We think that there is a lot of baitfish out there in Rosario Strait and that may be bringing in the larger animals.
One species that has been conspicuously absent since Memorial Day Weekend are the Orca whales, they have only been seen in the San Juan Islands a few times over the last week. It is thought that the dry weather is keeping the river levels low which is preventing the salmon from moving into the waters surrounding the San Juans, this in turn is keeping the whales away. They are out there somewhere off the coast, happy and well fed, waiting for the salmon to come in.

Labels: kayak tours, San Juan Islands, sea kayaking

Our Southern Resident Killer Whales have been at-large since Memorial Day Weekend two weeks ago. This is not necessarily abnormal, but certainly unusual. This is generally the best possible time to see Orcas around here. Luckily for the whale-watch companies, there has been a Gray whale lingering off of Whidbey Island near Deception Pass. There have also been lots of Minke whales way out in the "big water" in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

These kinds of anomalous happenings make me even more glad that we have chosen the high road by not misleading folks into believing that they are likely to see whales on their kayak trip. I imagine that the Friday Harbor companies who hang their hats on this sales pitch are feeling the pressure now, if they care.

On a personal note, our 4 year old son Taiga just received his first kayak! We bought him a Jackson Fun1 and he loves it. We were out on the lake this weekend playing around in the shallow water. His little brother Tashi was also pretty excited about the new boat and I can already tell that he'll take to the sport very soon. It will be fun to watch them develop their paddling skills, and it won't be long before they will be leading kayak tours on their own. (Well, ok, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here!)

The weather has been incredible for the last month and record warm temperatures have given the summer season an early start. Join us!

The weather has been outrageous these last couple of weeks. It feels like July out there!

Memorial Day Weekend was amazing, a great big Thank You goes out to everyone who joined our kayak tours and helped ring in the summer season with a bang!

In addition to running lots of trips, our guides have been super busy building their kayaking skills in the turbulent waters of the Deception Pass Narrows. Even though we would never bring guests into those kind of situations, we know that they take comfort in knowing that they are being looked after by truly competent paddlers.

In two weeks their skills will be put to the test when we bring in the "big guns"- coaches Shawna and Leon of Body Boat Blade International- for our annual guide training class. These are two of the finest coaches in the nation and they have a profound impact on how our guides approach the professionalism of their jobs.