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.

J-Pod and some of K-Pod cruised down Rosario Strait this morning at about 10:00, and they were swimming at a blistering pace! The tide was ebbing, and so in effect they were traveling "down hill" which probably was the reason for the incredible speed. This is the fifth day in a row that they've been here near Anacortes, and tomorrow looks good too. Although this is a very typical travel pattern during the summer months, it is clear that the killer whales are using Rosario quite a bit more these days.

James was leading the 10 o'clock Burrows Island trip today and had an incredible encounter with an Elephant seal. These monsters can weigh up to 4000 pounds. We don't see them very often so this is a pretty special event. Speaking of wildlife sightings, our good friend, long time guide, and "King of the Razzle Dazzle", Ryan Hopkins is making a guest appearance this weekend. His Early Bird Burrows Island trip had a super close encounter with a California sea lion.

You've got to love the Salish Sea, where else can you find such incredible biodiversity so near to a major population center?

Labels: orca whales, San Juan Islands, sea kayaking

I just got the report that our favorite local family of Orca Whales is swimming down Rosario Strait this morning. Our Early Bird Burrows Island trip is probably going to get lucky again!

We also have a 3-Day camping trip out on Cypress Island that may have seen them, I'm just waiting for our guide Monica to call in to let me know. Jeff Porter is coming back from a 5-Day tour to Sucia Island, he was on the water paddling at 6 a.m. and so it is almost certain that he and his guests had an encounter.

As always, we never want to give our guests the impression that this is the sort of thing that can be expected, but boy have we been fortunate over the last couple of seasons! The whale-watchers, local fishermen, and biologists seem to have the common opinion that the whales will once again be spending more time over here in the eastern San Juan Islands and less time on the west side.

In other news:
It's a little early for the big push of seal pups, but we've seen a few showing up in the kelp beds near Deception Pass and Burrows Island. Maybe the abundance of fish in Rosario Strait is the cause.
Also, the peregrine falcons are once again sitting on eggs in their nest on the cliffs of Burrows Island. In a couple of months we will be hearing the chicks incessantly calling to their parents for more food.