With hopes of recharging his relationship with his son, Rob Lyon embarks on a journey up the BC coast. Separating from his son halfway through, Rob hopes he’s taught Brook everything there is to know to about sea kayaking to ensure his survival.

“I was several days paddle south of Cape Scott and camped at the mouth of a creek on a long, remote stretch of absolutely rugged coast and I figured I could expect about as seriously free range a dump as man had ever taken. I had just walked down the beach to get water from the creek. On the way back I stopped and set the water bags down and looked around for a good place to do the deed. I was into logs lately, looking for that perfect perch. I was wearing a shirt and my UGGs, my sweats were hung up on a tree. I had just finished my business, when suddenly I heard human voices—a woman’s voice—quickly getting louder. And then, like out of a dream, this cute girl came around the corner on the bear trail I had just stepped off. She saw me and stopped, did some high speed collating behind raised eyebrows, turned quickly around to lock eyes with her partner, then continued walking. Meanwhile, I was standing there beside the trail, penis dangling, excrement steaming, and the dude, sporting a big grin, high fived me as he walked past!” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry

I was sitting on the back deck watching a swallow circle the patio, scoping the eaves of the house for a good spot to build a nest. I was sitting there watching this bird on its search to provide for its family, and it made me think about my son and what validates our existence once the kids are gone.

A whole lot of things, I suppose. Humans lead lives of great distraction. Thoreau called it “living lives of quiet desperation.” The Buddhists say it’s a result of an untamed mind. And I think the antidote to this validation is allowing yourself to be alive in the moment, which, as we all know, is what being on the water is all about.

I decided I would take my son, Brook, out to the BC coast for the better part of a month. We could travel together for the first half of it and I could get him up to speed, refreshing and introducing the necessary skills for a novice kayaker. We’d grown apart and lived distant from each other over the years and this seemed like a great father-son-reunion opportunity. After all, he was my main sidekick on my adventures when he was growing up.

Once we made it to the apex of the trip, and no better apex than Cape Scott, he could continue on down the coast alone for a couple of weeks and eventually meet me in the corner of Brook’s Bay. That was the idea, anyway, and when I called him up and told him, he was all over it.

Nine months later we arrived in Port Hardy, about a quarter of the way down the island from the bustling metropolis of Vancouver. When you launch in PH, you do it in the middle of town, in front of God and the Queen. Curious people constantly passed by — joggers and mothers strolling kids, older kids on their bikes, questions abound—and with our gear strewn over the ground around us it felt more like a garage sale with really cool stuff that wasn’t for sale, than a put-in. Ever a good steward, I patiently answered every question.

Not everything would fit in the boats like I’d hoped. We would be unsupported for the better part of a month and I was trying to load up the front end of the trip with supplies. Unfortunately, when it comes to kayaks, there’s not much room to work with. When we finally got afloat, the bay in front of the busy fishing port was full of jumping salmon, dolphins and sea lions. Passing skiffs and seiners motored out toward the next opening or headed into dock. It smelled like salt water again.

It was my third trip out Goletas Channel and I’ve never liked it. It’s a long, glacially scoured ravine as straight as a narrow hallway and runs for about twenty miles before the island screen to the north breaks up and you drop through the Nahwitti Bar and out onto a yawning North Pacific.

The first day was a grind for us and we ended up paddling against the tide before we were through, but the bright spot was Songhee Creek with salmon jumping in the cove in front and Brook bringing in one for dinner. We heard the fish jumping throughout the night like heavy rain, waxing and waning as the tide brought the fish in closer, then further out.

I felt considerably better once we traded the mud banks of the channel for gravel and sand beaches the next day. And while Jepther Point was only a hop and a skip from Shushartie, it had the first intimation of oceanic swell; we saw gray whales feeding close into shore and it felt wonderful, so we stopped early and pitched camp in homage.

Years ago, I had brought a hydrophone along with me and listened to the whales; that day we had only our eyes and the sound of their blowy exhalations.The weather remained bright and sunny. With our tents pitched high on the berm, a window to the ocean north and west, Brook went out and caught more fish for dinner.

We were in no rush, and I guessed at a leisurely pace it would take us six or seven days to reach the long sand beach at Experiment Bight. It was a traveling kayaking clinic, really, and I enjoyed the time with my son, hoping that in the short period of time we had together I could instill the salient routines and teach him evaluation protocols: things to do regularly and things to regularly watch out for. The general idea, I told him, is to recognize and stay ahead of the curves.

Once around Cape Scott, the shoreline would be less hospitable; potential outs are few and far between, and often should be calculated ahead of time, yet the essentials of what we have done to date, traveling in a small boat, will remain the same.

The swell train on the northwest coast of the island was a thing of epic beauty. The feel of open ocean is hard to articulate. Whenever I sit on a boat on the ocean I feel this, and when I on sit a boat anywhere else, I don’t. You can sense it’s part of a bigger whole, a bigger constituency, simply by being in its presence. Some people can be like this too. My wife is like this. Mostly we know ponds and creeks and coves, or lakes, but occasionally we meet an ocean.

We spent considerable time between Jepther and the tip discussing the tricks to launching and getting back ashore, camp criteria, fishing and foraging and bear protocol. We worked with the radio, learning to make sense of atmospheric updates from Environment Canada, and what channels and protocol to use to communicate or ask for help. He carried a SPOT and had been using it regularly since launching. We went over the charts in detail and I showed him how to interpret things like sand beaches, rocks, reefs, shallows and boomers. I had brought along a set of aerial photos of the area and showed him hoping it would offer a realistic glance at what lay ahead.

The big SoTs we paddled allowed us to circumvent the always problematic and never popular boat-filled-with-water scenario, and develop what is basically a surfer’s mentality about safety. I had Brook practice remounting the boat after spilling, an easy matter. I showed him how to brace into a wave and skid in on the rail. He had all this well-honed balance from riding all manner of boards, and I was impressed how well that transferred to him feeling loose in the saddle.

In the end I am more about soft skills than hard ones. Some of both for sure, but I believe you don’t need to go to Kayak Academy to get along safely out here. You will need a M.A. in Common Sense along with plenty of balance, strength and smarts. And this might seem obvious but nothing is more important than wanting to be out there, wanting to embrace the ocean’s energy with excitement, not fear. To dance with the fluidity of the water is a wonderful thing. She does have many moods, though, and some require viewing from a safe distance.

It was a couple of days later and nasty out. We were still on the water and pulling hard for a camp at the tip of Cape Suitl. I marked a big rock at the northern tip through a slather of mist and rain a couple of hundred yards off my bow. A big storm was moving ashore that would pin us down for several days wherever we landed. I could see Brook fifty yards astern as he paddled in close in case of any unexpected camp potential.

We worked in tandem. For example, while he made a quick dash in for a better look at the beach to be certain we weren’t missing something good, I paddled slowly toward the tip of the cape, assessing conditions. Getting into the beach looked manageable, so said Brook, but there wasn’t a level spot to camp for a few days. I pointed toward a reefy route, told him to follow me and instructed him to trust that the lumpy whitecaps would stay in their place as we skirted through—rockin’ and rollin’.

I rounded the booming gnash of sea and earth, and turned west to paddle in through a deep channel through the reef. It’s exhilarating to pass beside powerful hydraulics, watching the bone white spray and the enormous suck and slam of huge walls of water. The sound is like artillery fire.

I loosened my hips to deal with the criss-crossing energies against the boat. I paddled into gradually calming water toward the far tip and there lay a tiny sand beach, just where I remembered it, and a safe route ashore through a bunch of reef.

Brook checked in: “Cleared the rock and heading back toward you now; I can just barely make out your boat as I bob up and down back here. Hold up before you go in.”

I figured the tide was just beginning to turn and should give us the time we would need to catch dinner and duck in.

Capes make inspirational campsites and I like to camp out at the very tip of these great hombres whenever possible, a predilection dating back to both my sons’ childhoods. We called it Cape Capers. When a big storm was predicted I would pack up the kids and the basset hound and drive from Portland to the coast, then load up our big Kelty packs and hike out to the tip of Cape Falcon.

We’d pitch our huge North Face tent right at the edge of the cape, as close as we could get. It was like sitting on a counter stool at the weather café. The tent would flex and bend and our souls would glide out over the sea as we slept and gathered energies, whales migrating south beneath us.

Being in the teeth of the storm with the geodesic dome walls whomping with each massive gust was intense, like being in a giant womb with some kids and a dog. And a bit like what I suspected Brook was feeling as he began to climb that swell train behind me.

The radio crackled to life with an update from Brook. I reminded him to keep his hips loose as he turned broadside into the swell.

I pushed down on the button and laughed, “You know what this is, camping out on the tip of these capes?  Remind you of anything?
“Cape Capers, eh!”
I grinned.

Not much later, jonesin’ to head in, I get on the horn:
“Okay. Easy route in. Beach looks great. There’s a stream around the corner. We need some fish, though, want to jig some up when you get here?”
“Sure.”
“Watch my route in, there’s a channel right between these reefs, safe as biscuits. I’m going in to set up camp; it’s getting late.”
“Roger that. Be glad to put this baby in the barn, too. My butt’s killing me.”
“That kelp bed ahead of you is bull kelp, the deeper water of the two big kelps we’ll see out here now. Makes for better fishing. Stick a kelp bulb under your deck line if it’s calm enough and drop a line straight down.

We had tucked ashore just in the nick of time. I hate setting up camp in the dark, but when you know you’re going to be slammed for several days you want a skookum camp to chill in. If I hadn’t known the existence of this protected cove at the tip, we would have gone ashore earlier to avoid the dreaded late landing protocol.

We should probably have had freeze dried that night, instead of fish with the rain and it getting dark, but hell, the two fat black rock bass fillets needed to be sizzling in the pan. We stayed in our dry suits bustling around camp and fired up our little stove inside a hollow log. Would have been nice to cook in the shelter of our vestibules but you don’t do that in bear country. We drank tall cans of ale and toasted each other and our surroundings. It was a great night and we were both pretty jacked. I toasted to Brook’s adventurous spirit and Cape Capers from a kayaker’s perspective now, instead of a backpacker’s. We clanked cans and laughed.  It was a fine, miserable night.

“Being out on the water was amazing. Always shifting, never being able to pinpoint where the hell everything’s moving to next. It felt like I just sat there while a planet-wide conveyer belt of water writhed below me. Dad sent me a book two months before our departure, I saved the reading for my trip except one page, the first one. I read it and couldn’t wait to read more in my tent while camping. The books called Sea Runners by Ivan Doig, basically an escape made by four men from Russian-held Alaska, to Astoria, Oregon in 1853 sailing and paddling a dugout canoe to freedom. It was neat reading the part where the men sailed these same waters I was, and not in the 19th century, but the 21st century, great book.” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry

We did our last schooling on the long half-moon beach before Cape Scott, and took several days to relax and hike over the heavy dunes to Guise Bay.We practiced some surfing in front of camp. With the SoT’s water-tight fuselages it was easy to climb back in the boat if we went over. We were playing smart and I wasn’t worried about losing the boy. There were plenty of ways to avoid the old grim reaper out here. The real threat was fear.

It won’t kill us to get freaked out; in fact, it has allowed me the chance to deal with and overcome panic on several occasions. But it can be mind boggling on the water at times, dealing with vast hydraulics that amplify ingrained fears. It’s the edge of a very big ocean, after all, and coming up hard against a very large rock. But I figure as long as I’m careful and open to the surrounding energies, I can spin that fear into raw excitement.

As we sat on our boats and made small talk I glanced out past the tip. I didn’t want to spook Brook any more than he already was but that didn’t look like anything I would want to paddle.

The thing with tips, capes, points and anything sticking out into the body of water, is that the associated winds and currents are a volatile dynamic to deal with in a small boat. Make a small change to the equation and get a big change in results. Slack tide was often a very brief affair and, of course, the winds were on a schedule of their own.

I checked my watch and checked the tide chart again. I had figured about 11:45 for dead slack but I must have guessed wrong. We waited until we could see a slight softening to the drama off the point. Ten minutes later is was dramatically calmer. We hugged, as good as you can sitting in kayaks, and said our good-byes.

“I rounded the tip off the cape after waiting with Dad for the tide to go slack. Man, it was charging around the corner like a pack of wild dogs until then and had me freakin’. Damned exciting stuff. Dodging through the breakers and around the reefs, saw the lighthouse up on the shore and saw a whale. I let out a whoop when I was through the worst!” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry

My haul up Goletas was not entirely uneventful, albeit a patch on Brook’s journey. It was relaxing to travel solo again though, and not have to speak or respond or think about anything other than the single-mindedness of traveling. I saw no one along the way. I rounded Christensen Point and another couple of promontories and headed into a bay. Scoping the entire length of beach, the best I could find was a shingly strip with a low break and a thin strip of wet sand near the mouth of the Stranby River. Good enough. I surfed in and set up camp.

Still dreary looking in the morning, I decided I’d rather be on the water than sitting in a tent all day. I packed it up and got ready to launch. The tide was out and the beach was shallow and there were several lines of chump surf rolling in. Nothing I hadn’t managed with ease on many occasions. I powered up and headed out through the first two breakers, no problem, but when the third, and last, reared up in front of me, it broke and sluiced over me leaving me dead in the water.

This was a big kick in the pants. These waves were nothing. If they had been hombres of any caliber I would have been tumbled back to shore. Not the worst thing that could happen, but the conclusion was hard to shrug off: if I didn’t have the juice to tackle stuff like this, it was foolish my being out here. Fact was, I didn’t have the strength I had always relied upon and had seen this coming for a couple of trips already.

I paddled soberly the rest of the way back, processing the implications of this new development. I was optimistic about changes like this, though. I’d learned long ago that each stage in life has a unique array of interesting options.

“I love the wind all around me, went through a gale and leaned against one side of the tent so as to keep it from dislodging from the sand. The rain was torrential and by the time I was in my tent everything that could keep me warm was wet. I went to sleep for the duration of the storm, in my, thankfully dry, sleeping bag. I was naked with a fleece scarf wrapped around my neck looking like a tie with gale force winds outside. It was the only way to stay dry and wait out the storm, at one point I was laughing because I remembered I had brought an extra pair of wicker bottoms, but that they were outside the tent and stuffed deep in one of the boat hulls.” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry

The next day I was heading for a B&B on a ridge above the logging town of Port Alice, it was to be a rendezvous point with Brook on a little known beach in the corner of Brook’s Bay. I had called home to check in. They were getting daily SPOT transmissions, only it was coming from the same place each time, Raft Cove. Nearly a full week there and counting.

“Great time I had with myself, though, a couple weeks of pure solo time. I rolled a few times, some intended some not, interacted closely with bears on separate occasions, and crash landed onto a beach and damaged my shit. That day really felt like it was out of the movie Cast Away, hot and sunny with waves crashing. Fixing that situation left me feeling like MacGyver!”— Brook Lyon,  journal entry

Looking at the forest service map was an eye opener. The maze of logging roads on the west coast of Vancouver Island is amazing. There is a good chance a spur will travel close to wherever you might come ashore, the Brook’s Peninsula being the sole exception. Many of these roads are inactive and allowed to grow over. By the time I reached the beach at Side Bay I was many, many miles away from anything passing as civilization and driving over a worn gravel surface with bushes growing in the middle and encroaching from the sides like a dry car wash.

I finally made it to a marked turnoff and I could see salt water winking at me down through a screen of spruce. I parked and walked an eroded grade to the beach. There in front of me was Side Bay opening on Brook’s Bay. I could see the entrance to Klaskino Inlet, and the Refugium Range bludgeoning the horizon to the south. A pea gravel and sand beach full of blooming sweet pea ran west for a couple of hundred yards and a creek chattered into the ocean just to my left.

I was out of the loop in Side Bay. I left my VHF on throughout the day scanning for calls, but I had no more access to SPOT transmissions. I settled in to wait and catch up on my reading.

“I’d never been in a type of situation where no one else is there to help you, and it’s freakin’ crunch time! The worst I had was off Lippy Point, wind-blasting rain in my face, current against me, and three meter swell coming at me from two different directions and starting to break a bit on top. That while trying to hone in on a landing where there was little to be had. I just needed an ‘out,’ a route onto the beach that wouldn’t cost me too dearly, a place to lay my body for the night.” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry

Brook screwed the pooch getting ashore at Lippy Point and badly damaged the rudder. Not wanting to paddle in what he’d just been through again without one, he got on the horn to run his options. He lucked out when two guys fishing just a half a mile away responded and he paddled out and they hauled him aboard like a big tuna.

Roughly two weeks after leaving Brook at Cape Scott, I was sitting enjoying a morning cup of coffee when I heard the sound of an approaching outboard. Around the corner of the point off the end of the beach came a Whaler with something stuck sideways across the bow like a wing. I knew right off what it was.

I got the full story out of Brook in the first hour as I whipped him up a coffee. Then we celebrated that night with a bottle of whisky. The trip had worked out well; I was glad for that, of course. Maybe he will come back on his own here again sometime, or maybe he won’t, but he will always have this experience under his belt.

“I was lying on my cot in an empty fish locker in Winter Harbour nursing a can of Lucky, the local favorite, and contemplating what I’d been through. Didn’t seem like much, compared to ancient seafarers, but it felt essential, a kind of man traveling alone through NorPac seashore, type of experience. It was definitely the trip of a lifetime. Living on the edge of life and totally in the moment. Being so far away from society, really in the elements, best thing. Maybe one day I’ll continue that journey, but not without a big stash of Mojo bars. I thank you father for all the hard work you’ve done to keep me feeling alive in this wild world.” — Brook Lyon,  journal entry