Sea Kayaking Destinations and Tips for Hornby Island

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

We recently returned from a 2 day trip to Hornby Island where the focus was sea kayaking. We also had time to do some of our favourite walks which will be the focus of a second blog post. We have sea kayaked on Hornby Island on a few occasions but our favourite go to locations are Whaling Station Bay with a destination to Flora Island and Ford Cove with a destination to Heron Rocks and Norris Island. These off shore islands are home to sea birds, seals and often sea lions and in the past we have seen orcas cruising these waters in search of a meal. On our most recently trip on Sept 26 and 27 we saw no orcas but we did see 100’s of seals hauled out on the rocks as well as a couple of dozen large California  sea lions plus a large variety of bird life. 

 

Our first destination was Flora Island and our first tip is to bring wheels to help tow your kayak if you arrive at Whaling Station Bay like we did at low tide. We had a 200m trip from the car to the water and the “wheels” made all the difference. From there we paddled along the shoreline and paddled roughly 4 km around the 2 islands that seem to make up Flora Island. The first had dozens of seals lounging on the beaches and adjacent rocks and the later had a big colony of sea lions (see photo below)  on it which we heard barking well before we got there.  We paddled around the outside of the islands and snapped many pictures of the seals and noisy sea lions. In all we paddled about 8 km and allow about 2 hours for your trip. Although we see many seals when we paddle near Courtenay we don’t have the off shore islands like Hornby does to attract the big colonies. 

 

The next morning we had the tide in our favour and we set off from Ford Cove just a couple of hours after high tide. The “boat launch”  here is just a small path to the water adjacent to the wharf and again the wheels came in handy.  Here though instead of hauling our kayaks 200m across the sand like we did at Whaling Station Bay we only had to cover about 20 meters of beach to get to the water.  The paddle starts in the protected water of the Ford Cove marina and then we turned south and paddled past Heron Rocks and out to Norris Island. In this case we saw large colonies of seals and sea birds but no sea lions at this time. The distances and timing are similar to paddling to Flora Island – we paddled about 7.5 km  in one hour and 45 minutes.  Although we have paddled in other locations on Hornby Island we have found that these 2 areas provide the best wildlife sitings and are both a great overall paddling experience.  You can pick up a visitor map that shows the locations discussed in the this blog on the ferry.  See you on the water.