The Bermuda Triangle: Soulsby to Serpent Group, Sept 11, 2018

This was the weirdest, coolest day. A peak experience, but one I'm at a loss to explain properly.

After heavy rain all night we woke to light drizzle and no wind. We saw a boat running south down Hunter Channel, which we took to be a good sign. If the locals were emerging, then so would we!

An 8:00 launch, a quick crossing of the channel, and finally, near the end of our trip, we were in Hakai Luxvbalis park. Paddling through the McNaughton Group was beautiful, the water like glass and the currents initially with us, then building against us as the current caught up with the changing of the tide.

Jon suggested poking our noses out through the channel that runs east-west through the big island to see what conditions were like on the outside.

There was very little current in that channel near low tide. It was calm and pretty and very passable by kayak.

When we exited the channel into the sound between the McNaughton Group and the Simonds Group, we were met by huge waves rolling in from the south. They were easily 3 meters, but friendly and low-period, and for whatever reason we felt like we could take what they were throwing at us. Jon asked if I wanted to go back to the protected channels, and — you know what? I really didn't. Once free of the clapotis in the McNaughton island bay, the big rollers became quite pleasant to paddle on. I was going very slow, as I was feeling very tippy in my boat and was trying to figure out how to paddle in these conditions. I became easy with untucking my thighs from the braces and articulating my legs for strong drive, the way I would to make miles on calm water, but I had a really tough time putting the whole stroke together. It was much less rhythmic and more opportunistic as I had to catch water on whichever side it was currently available as the waves rolled by under me. We stayed well off the coast, outside the foam line, thus avoiding rebound waves and feeling the unadulterated strength of the ocean coming at us from way out in the wild enormous Pacific. I wished — for the first time ever — that I had a GoPro, because there was no pausing to operate a camera. The waves got bigger and bigger as we crawled like tiny ants across the vast surface of the water, south and out of the protection of any islands. Jonathon would disappear, then as I crested a wave I would see him a couple hundred meters away, clawing his way up the face of the next wave. I reckon the waves were easily 6 or 7 meters high, and I marvelled at the volume of water that must be contained in each one.

When we eventually arrived at Superstition Point we tucked in behind some islets for a breather and a snack and to decide whether to go to Cultus Sound or push south. It was only about 4 km from where we'd exited the channel, but it had taken well over an hour to get here. Jon thought the worst of the water would be in the mouth of the sound and that the point wouldn't be too bad if we stayed beyond the foam line. We had plenty of gas in the tank and it wasn't yet noon, so we decided to head for Spider Island and refill our water there, then proceed to the Serpent Group.

Nosing out toward Superstition Point we were proved wrong: the water around the point was a total gong show, a reeking mess of clapotis, wind waves, and steep-sided swell. If the previous leg was a challenge, this was a battle. The whole shoreline was a mess of spray and foam, impossible energy meeting immovable rock, and every bay was a disastrous soup. We fought the chaos and looked for a passable opening into Spider Channel. All the openings were clustered with rocks and reefs. The waves would crash against one shore, rebound toward the other shore, and meet another rebounding wave in a mess of white water. We were pushed further and further offshore to get free of the energy being thrown back at us from the land while we scouted openings and fought to stay upright as the waves hit us from all sides. A couple of guys on Sea-Doos roared up from the south (where on earth were they coming from?). They looked sick and terrified; I'm sure we did too. We were in an endless present moment, reading the water and reacting, simultaneously somehow in fast-forward and pause mode. Time seemed to disappear. At last Jon pointed at a line he thought we should take and I responded in the negative. Apparently what I actually said was, "IT'S A FUCKING BLOODBATH!" We found another, wider, blood-free entrance and took it. It felt so good being in the protection of the reefs and islands in more manageable water. In the bay on the northeast of Spider we found a beautiful sandy beach with some kind of infrastructure on it: A big A-frame of logs and miscellaneous featurettes.

Dry land never felt so good.

Zombie snax

 Once we caught our breath a bit, recapped the adventure, and had a bite to eat, we started to poke around the place. There was a little run-down hobbit cabin in the woods, which I recognized. It was Randell Washburne's old cabin from the 70s! But wait, that cabin was certainly not on Spider Island. I couldn't remember for sure, but I thought it was on Triquet. Which was clearly impossible, because we'd only been paddling we guessed about 45 minutes from Superstition Point to Bloodfrei Passage.

I pulled out the InReach and fired up the phone to get a GPS location. Sure enough, it showed we were on Triquet! We'd gone more than twice as far as we'd thought, and somehow had entirely missed Spider Island, which is kind of a big island to just overlook. Some kind of Bermuda Triangle/Tales of the Uncanny shit was clearly going on here.

Before we could parse the mystery, a skiff came putt-putting in to the beach. It was loaded with two kayaks and three German dudes. Two of them had been kayaking down here when the storm hit, and they'd been stuck on Triquet, a bay or 2 over, for the past few days, til their friend could bring the skiff out to get them. It turns out, they were the ones responsible for all the infrastructure at Islet 48! The skiff's pilot was the SIMON of the sign — he lived in Bella Bella and was married to a local woman. He gave us his number in case we needed to hire him for a lift sometime, although he couldn't guarantee he'd always be available to check messages. We bid them auf wiedersehen and filled up our water before launching toward the Serpent Group.

Triquet looked like a really neat island; I wish we'd had the chance to explore it more. Next year!

It was a short but intense paddle to the Serpent Group — there was lots of confused water and we were tired. But we made it, approaching from the northeast as per instructions. When we saw sand on the bottom, I knew we were close. Jon, unschooled in the lore, made the expected exclamations that there's no way these rocky crags could host a campsite, and then...

Serpent Group is an amazing spot, just an absolutely magical hideaway. The upland tent site itself isn't ideal — a bit sloped if you don't like camping on sand — but you can't beat the location. Featurettes galore, including majestic promontories for viewing the ocean, a rock wall that reflects the heat of the sun and dries your tent like billy-o, and a deep tidal pool where full-sized crabs and fishes live.

Modern art?

 Check out the local churn:

We were absolutely bushed after our huge day, and we spent a couple hours just exploring and relaxing.

Here, at last, through time-warp and wave action, we'd found the transcendence that we'd been missing. Our bodies were battered and our minds exhausted, but our spirits were soaring. We spent a beautiful evening looking out into Hakai Pass with a well-deserved mug of excellent sherry.

Almost the weirdest thing about today? The InReach stopped recording our location pretty much at the exact point when we decided to take the channel to the outside of McNaughton, didn't even record the ping where we checked our location on Triquet, and didn't start working normally until we left Serpent Group the next morning. So we will never know where we were between the hours of 9:30 and 1:30 on September 11, 2018, how far we were off shore, how fast we were going, how we missed seeing a gigantic island, or how we landed on ancient Triquet. As Rod Sterling might have narrated,

They were looking for transcendence, and they found it ... in the Twilight Zone.