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But wait a minute, there's a hook. It turns out that paddling is the preamble to an evening of star gazing on a remote island off the busy city of Victoria, BC (you know, that place where they have the damn February Flower Count, while the rest of the country is still shovelling the white stuff.) It happens in the soft dark, away from urban lights and noise. So close, you can almost touch the town, and yet as remote as if you were on the Shield, north of 60 (but with not a bug in sight).
Throw in a fresh seafood meal, and suddenly I'm wavering. The old survival instincts are strong, but the promise of seeing Jupiter in conjunction with Mars, or the Plaeides standing, seven-star clear, in a pitch black night sky, is too attractive. I'm in.
The hotel's launch carries 8 kayaks with ease, and we slip out into the darkening waters of Haro Strait as the water to the west is turning from gold to purple. "Victoria's in the rainshadow of the Olympic Mountains in Washington, so we get over 2,100 hours of sunshine a year," says Sandra, "and that means we get excellent night sky watching too."
A few minutes later we launch the kayaks, and set off for an island. There's a light evening wind that's running against a flood tide, making for an interesting chop, but Joel is close by with advice. Ahead in the dark there's a fire on the beach.
As we pull up onto the dark shingles, our learned astronomers are already setting up a reflector telescope. It seems that Saturn's rings are visible, the moon is in someone else's house, and everyone should be cautious with matters of the heart today. Who reads the horoscopes anyway?
There's a cauldron of steaming crabs (freshly trapped), and more bottles of Vancouver Island wine than you can shake a paddle at. Hey, does it matter if you didn't even know there were vineyards on Canada's western edge? Here's the proof (about 8%, at a guess), as glasses are raised, toasts proclaimed, and nebulae ogled.
The evening slips away in a bliss of cheerful chat, astronomical observations, good wine, great seafood, and before you know what's happening, Joel is mopping up stragglers and advising us this is the last chance to get back to the hotel without walking on water.
We reluctantly drain the remains of the local vintage, load the kayaks onto the launch cradles, and someone else (thankfully) pushes the boat off and jumps aboard. Nobody's feeling very co-ordinated at this hour. On the return trip, someone sings "Fly me to the moon" very loudly, and very off key.
Joel called the next day to ask for the words.
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