Living on the water, I have become addicted to sea kayaking. Initially, my wife and I seldom ventured more than an hour when paddling, and we avoided wide channel crossings. But, as our experience has grown, so has our confidence with travelling considerable distances.

The average single kayak moves at about 3 knots (6km/hr) and a double kayak at about 4 knots (8 km/hr). Put in a couple of hour's of paddling (not a very demanding form of exercise) and you quickly realize you've covered a lot of ground. Well, water actually. And all the way, you pass wonderful exposures of rock which wind and waves have swept clean and keep fresh! What better way to rockhound?

Many sites that are nearly impossible to access from the land (because of being privately owned property, or protected by brambles, or cliffs) are extremely easy to inspect up close, from the comfort of a padded kayak seat. And if there's anything to check out, well, the entire BC coast up to the high tide line (apart from Indian Reserves, prisons and military complexes) is public land!

Mt Sicker volcanics on Salt Spring Island.

No hassles with owners or barbed wire. And when you excavate something interesting, there's no sweat-drenched epic hauling it down (or up!) the hill to the vehicle … just slip it into a hatch, and the kayak will carry it home for you with a minimal increase in effort!

There are some great places to double your enjoyment, by combining these two hobbies. One of my favorites is in the Gulf Islands. Most of these outcroppings in Georgia Strait are made up of Late Cretaceous (about 70 Mya) sediments of the Nanaimo Group (see map at bottom). They formed after the small Wrangellia Plate (including Vancouver Island) slammed into the North America Plate (including the Lower Mainland) about 80 MYa. This collision forced up the Coast Mountains behind Vancouver, and the peaks along the spine of Vancouver Island (such as those in Strathcona Park).

Over millennia, these summits eroded, washing down into Georgia Strait, where they formed extensive sediments, including the coal fields which would later make Nanaimo rich. The climate was warmer then, and into these sands and silts sank the life forms of the age. Visit the Courtenay Museum on Vancouver Island and witness some of the spectacular animals that roamed the seas of the Early Tertiary. The museum boasts the complete skeleton of a 15 metre (50 foot) long elasmosaur and numerous huge sea turtles, found in the Trent River Formation at the Puntledge River. But you don't have to set your sites on giant sea creatures. On the islands between Mayne and Saturna are numerous Upper Cretaceous deposits (medium shading on map below) that erode onto the beach, and can offer fascinating finds without having to lift a hammer or wield a crowbar.

Nanaimo Group sediments.

Further north, Thetis and Galiano Islands also share the same structures, and are a fine source of fossils, notably ammonites and bivalves. Being more a mineral maniac than a fossil fiend, I have tended towards the metamorphic areas, rather than the sedimentary ones. The available exposed areas are smaller, but the pickings just as good. I've found the best region is where the Mt Sicker Group is exposed along the southern shore of Salt Spring Island, from Fulford Harbour in the east round to Burgoyne Bay in the west.

The Sicker Group (darkest shading on map below) is one of the oldest structures on Vancouver Island (370 Mya) and has produced such important deposits as the copper mines on Mt Sicker (from which it takes its name) just north of the town of Duncan, and the copper-lead-zinc Lynx Mine in Strathcona Park (one of only two active mines on the island). From a rockhound's perspective, the famous rhodonite deposits on Hill 60 (near Cowichan Lake) and Hollings (on Salt Spring Island), and the extensive jasper deposits on the Chemainus River are Sicker Group too.

Paddling round the southern coast of Salt Spring Island is a rockhound's treat: jaspers, sulfides and blebs of unidentified minerals are exposed within the heavily folded and sheared layers along the shoreline. Just above, through the trees (there are no houses in this area) one or two old mine dumps are worth pulling the kayak ashore and visiting.

Across Sansum Narrows, south of the village of Maple Bay, the basalt bluffs offer a feast of little pockets of pyrite, chalcopyrite, bornite and cuprite. Veins of crystalline and massive quartz are interlaid with blebs of shiny hematite and magnetite. I have found wonderful botroidal (grapelike) hematite here, and sugary red jasper that's a lapidary's dream to polish.

Choose a sunny day, and be wary of wind. Know the tides (they can pump through some of those narrows at 4-5 knots!). Take a wide brimmed hat, sunscreen, a hammer, water and lunch. What could be better?

S. Vancouver Island Geology: dark shading=Mt Sicker, medium shading=Nanaimo Gp.