Circumnavigation and Fall Fair

This time of year brings mixed feelings. We're lamenting the end of summer but excited about all the fall goings-on. The plethora of pot lucks; the whack of work parties and the crap load of craft shows. So this year's summer went out with a bang and a splash.

On Saturday the Hornby Island Fall Fair started at the civilized hour of 11a.m. with a parade of locals and their farm animals, crazy floats and agricultural entries. This is a gathering that sees most of Hornby Island's local population coming together in one place. Food, music, dancing, and catching up with neighbors has everyone smiling and exuberant.

This is a time of collective sighs of relief from the frenzied summer together with a kind of collective thank you for the bounty that this island provides - agricultural, cultural and geographical. People who live here love this place and that really comes through at this fair. It seems to be one of the top two festivals - the other being Halloween.

Our second personal celebration was the circumnavigation of Hornby Island. We have been thinking about this trip since we got here, and now we've done it! It took 6 hours of travel time on the water with a one hour lunch on a midden beach by the ferry dock.

We left at 8:30 in the morning from Whaling Station Beach. There was a fairly strong wind so we decided to head south away from the wind and hope it died down by the time we started up the Lambert Chanel on the west side, which is the straight between Hornby and Denman Island. We stopped for our only break at Shingle Spit near the ferry dock. By the time we'd finished lunch, the winds had all but completely subsided and we continued up the west side and up over the northern island.

The north side is an extensive network of rock beaches that were filled with sun bathing seals and shore birds we hadn't seen before. As we rounded from the north to the east side, back down to Whaling Station, what seemed like a hundred seals dove from their perches into the ocean. We were sorry for having disturbed them but were entertained by their grunts and barks behind us for about mile.

We arrived on Whaling Station at 3 in the afternoon where we were greeted by Pete and Judith! They'd been visiting with Pete's parents, who have a house at Whaling Station, when they saw us dragging in on our last legs. They walked down to the beach and congratulated us on our first circumnavigation - and then carried our kayaks up to the car! These guys are true friends.