Colin - 4-1-2005 at 05:31 PM
Anyone have any experience paddling a canoe on the cortez side? I'm too poor to get a kayak/fishing boat, and I'm wondering if my 16' canoe would
track well enough or be stable enough to take out on fishing excursions.
Colin
yes
fishinrich - 4-1-2005 at 06:09 PM
Why not colin---if it floats then it is a fishing platform. When the cortez is like a mill pond any thing will work. fishin rich
Bruce R Leech - 4-1-2005 at 06:15 PM
Just don't go far. when the wind comes up as it can do at any time on a moments notice it will swamp you fast.
Stay in shelter
JZ - 4-1-2005 at 07:15 PM
Stay close to shore, stay in a protected anchorage. Have a VHF radio and basic safety gear. This is the ocean.
pics please
Big Al - 4-2-2005 at 10:40 AM
pompano,
keep posting your pics and stories they are great.
Big Al
Packoderm - 4-2-2005 at 11:08 AM
We have a 16' Grumman square back with a 2 HP Honda. We have taken it around Isla Smith in BdLA. We have also used it to explore Concepcion from Playa
Armata (sp?) to the rio. It is perfect for exploring near shore. We have also taken it on a week long exploration of the Broken Group islands in
British Columbia. That was quite a trip.
daveB - 4-2-2005 at 11:25 AM
Have read the second of the Brazil-bound Canadian's books, documenting a nearly complete trip through the Northwest Passage through the Canadian
Arctic. One important detail to be brought forth is that he was traveling in a kayak, potentially a better vessel in many repects than the open canoe.
For instance, its speed was important especially when trying to out distance a chasing polar bear! From my impression gathered reading the book on
this northern epic (which ended with his rescue because winter was closing in) I am quite sure their trip around the Carribean and beyond was also
accomplished in kayaks.
That said, as a long time "sometime" canoeist, I can only say, know the water you are in and its weather, or prepare to sprint for shore.
In my area, the northen Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, the ocean is often easier to judge weather on than a lake, which can make its own weather
changes very rapidly.
I defer to Pompano's and others' advice Colin, be well equiped, be able to trim your canoe well, but stay out of wind and bad water conditions, and
close to shore.
Packoderm in the Broken Group
daveB - 4-2-2005 at 12:36 PM
that was one trip I'd promised myself but haven't done. Have fished the area from the Bamfield lodges in bigger boats, but...you must have had a
great time especially if the weather complied. Was in a group of three canoes Tofino to Hot Springs Cove, first time out on the open Pacific (where
did those other canoes dissapear to...?) and that with my (then) six year old son, what a great trip. Your having a motor and that great, almost
indistructable aluminum Grumman gave you a large measure of security. I had an 18 foot cedar and canvass and had a hard time keeping the sand out of
it, but we did some sailing on the return, very nice.
jide - 4-2-2005 at 05:54 PM
Marvin Patchen aand his wife Aletha attached 2 aluminum canoes together, and explored the coast (and canyons) on the gulf side between gonzaga and
bahia los Angeles in the 70's.
They could fit 4 people, and carry over 2000lbs of equipment they needed for their journey.
check out "Baja Adventures by Land, Air and Sea" for details
[Edited on 4-3-2005 by jide]
Canoe trip around Baja Penisula....
Pompano - 4-2-2005 at 08:44 PM
In 1976 a young man from England did the entire Baja penisula from San Felipe around Cabo to Ensenada in a canoe. He was sponsored by the London
Daily Mirror. He paddled into the Bay and camped at Burros beach.
Then again in 1978 I met these two fellows who went on to circumnavigate Baja in their homemade sailing/rowing dory built in their yard in Jackson
Hole, Wyoming They had trailered it to San Felipe and set off on their journey. I met up with them many times that year when I was out fishing and
camping on the Cortez. They progressed southward slowly through BOLA-Sta. Rosalia-Mulege-Pt. Conception-Ille del Fonso-Loreto-etc. Sometimes
sailing, sometimes rowing..seems like they were enjoying themselves. I heard later they had made it to San Diego.
Hey, if it doesn't go fast enough for dorado, I am not going.
backninedan - 4-2-2005 at 09:05 PM
I worked as a canoe paddle maker for
Ralph Sawyer back in the late 60s to early 70s and paired with Sawyer racing white water canoe on various Oregon and Washington white water rivers. I
would not attempt anything other than close to shore calm day outings. Canoes do not compare to kayaks for stability. Even with many years experience
I would not attempt anything other than close to shore outings. But them I am wayyyyy older and probably more chicken.. cluck cluck
Thanks Pompano
daveB - 4-3-2005 at 12:05 PM
For setting the record straight, that they travelled by canoe. On your own trip into Hudson Bay, where was your starting point? And I'm curious to
know if you can still remember if the insects bothered you at all/a lot/or terribly? Did you wear the over the face netting at all?
Canoes offer ease of loading, carry more, but as Colin will know, canoes are more vulnerable to wind and wave. A favourite feature to my liking is
their ability to carry vast supplies of beer, have been out several days and still had cold beer in the cooler, but have never portaged.
DaveB...being a canoeist you would have liked this trip!..
Pompano - 4-3-2005 at 02:43 PM
Being born on almost the same day and just blocks apart in a small town My lifelong friend, Randy, and I were destined to become best friends.
The Canoe Trip....After hauling it atop Randy's VW camper for a thousand miles from the northern US border, we dropped our canoe in at what was then
(1971) a very remote place in northern Saskatchewan, Canada.. called Missinippee..(A Cree Indian village). The beginning of the famous Churchill
River. This is where the road ended back then. Nothing beyond but wilderness forest and lakes. The paved roads are a long ways south of us by
now..These headwaters are at the end of a 275 mile-long gravel road going through some very scenic lake & river country..just 40 or so miles north
of Lac La Ronge, a huge lake and provincial wilderness park of Canada, which in turn is about 800 miles north of the US-Canadian border at Montana.
We had studied the entire route (1,100 miles from here to the seaport of Churchill, Manitoba on Hudson Bay) over the preceding winter..topographical,
hydographical, aerial photos, personal accounts of early explorers, and one very good source..'Canoeing With the Cree', by Eric Severeid (news
commentator) written after his trip when he was 21. He was a favorite author of mine and lived not far away from where I played in the woods as a
child.
Randy had just finished his PhD in advanced chemistry and his first job as a 'Dr.' was to dehydrate a lot of food for our upcoming trip. It fell
upon me to get the maps, whitewater/rapids lists and degree of difficulty ratings, DNR clearances, canoe or kayak choice, etc. (It was a little like
planning an early Baja trip!!) Back then, before sat. phones, etc.. any trip into the wilderness of Canada involving many overnights, required you to
post with the DNR and RCMP your intended routes, lenght of trip,and give certain time windows when you are supposed to check in...if possible, or
whenever the occasion arises..like when you come upon remote fly-in hunting & fishing lodges that have long-range radio communications (not a
problem today will sat. phones, etc.) Back then, if you didn't check in within the authority's time window a search was begun for you, as they would
have no recourse but to think you were in distress...and you had better be, because if not, you paid for the entire search party!..which would involve
planes, boats, hundreds of manhours, etc. A devastating expense for 2 young grads. We were already experienced kayakers and canoeists, but we agreed
to never try shooting any rapids designated higher than a '3'..the rapids being difficulty scaled from 1 - 6.
As you can imagine, we had a ball..seeing lots of unspoiled and untouched wilderness, full of wildlife and virgin forests. Now as to the
MOSQUITOS..all I can say is WOW..from time to time we would canoe up close to an island and it seemed like the entire land mass flew up into the air
and descended upon us. Many, many times we would simply cover ourselves with our blankets and wait until the roaring and buzzing disappeared. No
wonder caribou were driven crazy..jumping from cliffs into rivers from these hordes of insects. We lathered ourselves with something akin to DEET
which Randy had brought along. At night in our tiny tent we would light a small lantern I had brought to read by and record our daily notes. One
night I fell asleep and left the lantern burning..awakening to a 2 inch high mound of burned mosquitos around the cold lantern. I had bought us 2
North Face sleeping bags with bug/head shields so we slept unbitten. Bugs were certainly a fact of life, but after a few skirmishes we got used to
doing things to avoid them and soon forgot they existed..there was way too much else going on to think too much about the pesky skeeters!
We experienced so many great sights and events that it would fill a good-sized book to relate them all. Bears, elk, deer, marten, fish-hawks, eagles,
waterfowl, cougar, wolves, feral sled dogs, remote Indian villages, fly-in camps, RCMP outposts, traders, furcamps, camping and portaging where the
early fur-trade voyageurs had done the same 200 years before, getting an adrenaline rush shooting lots of '3' rapids, catching and releasing thousands
of walleye, huge pike, lake trout, and grayling, eating shore lunch and listening to the lake loons, watching them carry their young on their backs to
safey, listening to wolves howling at night, and knocking back some precious sips of our only bottle of sour mash whiskey. Swimming in icy waters,
looking at 200 year-old-names and initials chiseled into rocks at our campsites. Campfire on a remote northern lake island, having eaten a meal of
fresh walleye, some of Randy's dehydrated eggs & spuds, ..hey, what could be better.
I will try to end this before boring you to death..but it was a trip of a lifetime for 2 young men and I would recommend it highly to anyone who loves
nature. Randy and I started our more extended trips into wilderness together when we were 15..every year we have always gone to some new place and
adventure. We have done some things since then! We came together to Baja when it was my turn to pick a place to explore ...and look what happened!!
Thanks for your patience in reading my wandering answer to a simple question about bugs and starting points.
Here's a photo of me and mi compadre, Randy..when we were 15 and and 57...a helluva ride so far!
Pompano - 4-3-2005 at 02:48 PM
On second thought, forget the photo...who wants to look at a couple of old grizzled farts!?
daveB - 4-4-2005 at 09:41 AM
Thanks Pompano - that was surely a trip to remember! The mound of dead mosquitos around the candle in the morning: what a thought!
Hope you continue your trips and experiences.
Bruce R Leech - 4-4-2005 at 11:24 AM
I love this kind of adventure and this is a good Baja 
experience to me .
Skipjack Joe - 4-4-2005 at 11:26 AM
Pompano, your canoeing(sp) adventure sound like something from a book. About 25 years ago I found a book in our local public library that seemed to be
almost the same experience you described. These 2 guys decided to follow the routes of the old Canadian voyageur trappers in the Churchill River
country. I couldn't put it down and wanted to do it myself. The map showed a land full of lakes that had intereconnecting passages between them. These
guys would paddle across the lakes through the passage and on the next lake. Sometimes they had to portage their canoes overland to get to the next
body of water. I got real excited about the pike fishing.
I googled up 'Canoeing with the Cree' and sure enough - there was that face I grew up watching every evening on the CBS evening news with Walter
Cronkite. You look at an old man's face and you have no idea about the life spent as a youth. You know what I mean? Maybe its the suit and tie.
Somehow it's hard to imagine Walter Cronkite paddling in the arctic.
Skipjack Joe....
Pompano - 4-4-2005 at 01:32 PM
The history of the early French voyageurs was a large part of why we chose the Churchill River route. We had read a lot of accounts from the Hudson
Bay Trading Co. and also Northwest Trading Co. We knew we would be tracing the same chain of lakes and river system..camping and portaging at the
same sites as these early explorers and traders.
The Churchill River is more of a very long system of interconnected lakes..full of narrowing gorges that create huge rapids. It flows from the
continental divide eastwards towards the great bowl of Hudson Bay. It is still today one of the most adventursome and scenic wilderness trips you can
make in North America. When we set out in '71 we were joined by a small group of kayakers who accompanied us for about a week..until they decided to
shoot some rapids that were graded a '5'. Too advanced for us..we portaged around anything over a '3'..our rule. As we came over the portage we saw
the wreckage and gear of the unfortunate kayakers...it was a real mess. They had a few bumps and bruises, but thankfully nobody was seriously
hurt..they could have been killed, as others have been on this river. Their trip was cut short and they would return to the last outpost for help.
Our most serious mishap in rapids was at one called Three Rapids...and we got three creases in the bottom of our aluminum canoe! Go figure.
An interesting thing happened at Trade Lake..very remote spot near a Cree Indian village. Late that night, after we had set our tent and made a late
dinner...the sun never sets in the summer until about 1:00 at night, then pops back up by 3:00. Just at dusk, a RCMP officer comes paddling his canoe
up to our island and hails us.. We gave him our welcome and come-on-in. He stays with us that night and tells us he is looking for a young Cree boy
named 'Norman'. Norman had shotgunned his uncle to death the night before in the nearby village during a drunken arguement. The mountie asked us if
we had seen anybody along our route that day. We hadn't..thankfully. Nobody was thinking about sleeping anymore that night...we kept an eye out for
'Norman'. I had our old .22 Winchester pump (circa 1912) laying across my lap!
Yes, an exciting trip! In more ways than one!
Dang Pompano
jrbaja - 4-4-2005 at 01:47 PM
You have led a very interesting life indeed! No wonder you moved to the "heart of excitement"
Keep up with the stories please, I'm gettin too old to actually participate and really enjoy reading about them.