TIDE CHARTS CANNOT BE TRUSTED

Our day had a less than optimal start. We (in all honesty, Dawson) woke up at 2:30 this morning to the movement of the tide under our tent. There is nothing quite like listening to the sound of the waves lapping against the rocks and realizing that sound is coming from directly under you. Immediately we were scrambling to get all of our gear out of the tent before it all started to float. We still had an hour before high tide by the time we had crawled out of the tent, which pushed us into the not so welcoming forest. There was a combination of searching for a new spot for our tent and monitoring our gear to make sure nothing was going to float away. Somehow, in all the chaos, we didn’t lose any of our gear, including the number of items that were floating around in our vestibule. After searching and being unsuccessful in our hunt for somewhere to relocate our tent to, we decided that our options had turned to packing up our kayaks and waiting for the sun to come up. It truly was one of those moments that made me look around and think how the f**k did I get myself in this situation. There was a serious misjudgment last night when we chose our camp spot, clearly due to the fact that sleep was on the mind. In all honesty, there was not much indication that the tide would come up nearly that high (??), yet it did. Packing our kayaks became a game of searching through the bush to find the right pieces of gear to make the puzzle pieces fit. 6:00 felt much closer when we were in a panic than it did when we were sitting in the cold and wet forest, trying our best to keep ourselves warm for the remaining hour of darkness.

Once there was the slightest bit of daylight we continued our paddle north up Laredo channel along the east coast of Princess Royal Island. It was another foggy morning but the rain was holding off; a small win that was desperately needed. We made it no more than 8km before we realized that our need to find a beach which we could use to dry out our gear was much greater than our need to have a long day of paddling. There were a number of factors that we put in the decision to change our route and head back in the direction of Swindle Island. ‍ ‍