Whacky strokes from these paddle folks make WAKE a pure pleasure

Up a creek with a paddle: Kayaker Bob Vine glides past weathered snags on a trip up meandering Dakota Creek during a recent Whatcom Association of Kayak Enthusiasts outing near Blaine. The WAKE group took advantage of a rising tide on Drayton Harbor, which backed water up the creek, to explore farther upstream than would normally be possible. (November 13, 2003)
Photo Credit: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

By GREG JOHNSTON, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

BLAINE -- I've never met a paddler I didn't like, but I've met few I enjoyed more than a slightly whacky group from a Bellingham-based club called WAKE -- the Whatcom Association of Kayak Enthusiasts.

They're some of the most serious, experienced paddlers to pull a blade through Northwest coast brine since the days of dugout canoes.

But they also can be funnier than a sea lion on a slippery buoy and are as enthusiastic as a teenage orca about exploring the incredible bays, islands and passages surrounding the place they live, year-round.

If you have adequate gear, a kayak and the skills to move it, you're invited to join them.

"Bring good food," WAKE president Lisa Wallis said with a laugh. "We have a lot of characters in the club. I don't think there are a lot of egos in the club. It has more to do with promoting fun and keeping things simple. We're not a big-league club."

But they are an active club with big skills and great places to kayak. The Getaways kayak crew joined several WAKE members recently for the club's Saturday morning paddle. Every week club members and guests meet in Bellingham and the trip leader chooses a destination based on the ability level of those who show up.


Assembled on Semiahmoo Spit for one of its weekly Saturday outings, a WAKE group prepares to launch into Drayton Harbor.
Photo Credit: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Trip leader Gene Davis chose Drayton Harbor at the border town of Blaine, a wildlife-rich bay enclosed by Semiahmoo Spit, where we launched on a cold but calm day during a rising tide.

It's a critical wintering area for waterfowl, and right off loons were spotted and the group heard their distinctive, almost mournful tremolo wail -- a treat since they're usually quiet in winter. Hundreds of Pacific, common and red-throated loons winter on Semiahmoo Bay outside the spit, following the flooding tide daily into the harbor to feed on herring and other small fish.

We also passed a group of saucer-eyed harbor seals hauled out on an old dock, curved-neck cormorants perched on pilings and small rafts of grebes -- diving seabirds like the loon -- and the small, fast-flying ducks called buffleheads.

Davis explained that the Saturday morning paddles are a lapsed club tradition recently revived to keep the club's 120-some members active during winter.

"We have so many people who come into the club that don't have a lot of experience, and they don't want to paddle by themselves," he said. "It increases people's confidence. It's also a real social thing. The nucleus of the people I paddle with on the west coast of Vancouver Island and places like that are people I met years ago on Saturday morning paddles. You get to meet a lot of people, and most of the sea kayakers I've met are really mellow, environmentally aware people."


A tiny island in Drayton Harbor gets close scrutiny by WAKE paddlers enroute to the mouth of Dakota Creek. The wildlife-rich harbor is a critical wintering area for waterfowl, including loons, buffleheads, grebes and cormorants.
Photo Credit: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Some also rarely launch their kayaks without stowing a bit of whimsy through the hatches. The Drayton Harbor paddle was no exception.

The plan was to paddle across the harbor and into Dakota Creek, a small stream swelled by the high tide and lined by snaggy-topped red cedars and spruce and the odd apple tree from old orchards of nearby homes.

One hung out over the stream and was full of ripe fruit. Several of these were picked by one Merv Davies, a WAKE member from Abbotsford, B.C., who had paddled down from nearby White Rock, B.C., in the gorgeous cedar-strip kayak he built himself. These he offered his fellow paddlers, and when some declined, he began lobbing them -- kerplunk! -- into the drink next to their boats, suggesting an apple-bobbing contest.

"You first," someone said.

"I can't," he replied. "Left my teeth at home."

A convicted practical joker, Davies is known to do things on overnight trips such as stuff fellow paddlers' boots with seaweed or pile the entire group's empty beverage containers at the door of a victim's tent just before turning in.

"That guy has got bananas coming out of his brain," said Wallis. "We have so much fun on those camping trips. It's just nutty."

Several Canadians are members of WAKE, and the club maintains links with a couple of B.C. paddling groups, as well as the Hole in the Wall Paddling Club based in nearby Skagit County.


An apple tree overhanging Dakota Creek offered easy pickings for Merv Davies of Abbotsford, B.C., who kindly offers to share his fruit loot by lobbing them at fellow paddlers. Davies met up with the WAKE group by paddling down from nearby White Rock, B.C.
Photo Credit: Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"This area is rich enough to have two kayak clubs," said Patty Peacock of Mount Vernon, who with her husband joined the Drayton Harbor paddle. "We belong to both of them, so we can go kayaking whenever we want. There's a lot of experience in this club. You go kayaking with them and you learn a lot."

Several club members are American Canoe Association-certified instructors. The club conducts training sessions every Sunday at a Bellingham pool, practicing such maneuvers as the Eskimo roll, and offers summertime training sessions on local lakes. About two years ago, the group also took on the maintenance of a popular Cascadia Marine Trail campsite on the southeast shore of Lummi Island that the Department of Natural Resources had threatened to abandon to cut costs.

"We try to get out there two to three times a month, March through October," Wallis said. "We clean the outhouse, pick up litter. We rebuilt a staircase, put in interpretive signs. We take a lot of pride in taking care of that site."

While most of the group stopped at a bend in the river and ate apples or snacks, a handful of us paddled on. Gradually, as we paddled up the meandering creek, the forest closed in and became more enchanting, with weathering gray snags of dead trees littering the streambed. Occasional small flocks of mallards lifted off suddenly as we came around bends, and we began to detect a slight current.

"A place like this is -- it's what kayaking is all about," said Mary Sanford, while looking up at the sweeping branches of bigleaf maples and firs, almost mesmerized.

After a mile or so, a logjam blocked most of the creek and we turned around to avoid getting trapped by the turning tide.

We caught up with the rest of the group and paddled back out into Drayton Harbor, where Wallis rhapsodized about kayaking.

"I'm a backpacker at heart and it's like backpacking on the water, and you're on this big, living, breathing organism that moves with you. It's so beautiful."

Wallis set a fast pace, confessing an urgency of nature. "On a scale of one to 10, I'm at seven and a half."

We chuckled and teased as we made our way back through the intriguing bay, one of many fine paddling locations WAKE members have the luxury to choose from.

The San Juan Islands are just across Rosario Strait and offer prime summer paddling. A half-hour north by freeway is the B.C. Ferries terminal at Tsawwassen, providing access to the Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island's west coast -- one of the planet's premier paddling regions.

Narrow, cliff-lined Deception Pass to the south provides a scenic location for practicing current-ferrying and wave-bracing techniques. Within an hour of Bellingham are nearly a dozen largely protected bays great for winter paddles, including Birch, Lummi, Portage, Bellingham, Chuckanut, Samish, Padilla, Burrows and Bowman.

"Bellingham is really a mecca for sea kayakers or anybody who likes the outdoors," said Davis.

WAKE members' boats need not gather dust.

"A lot of people make the mistake of putting their boats away in the winter," said Davis, one of the club's instructors. "Wintertime is really some of the best paddling. There are more birds, less people, less powerboats. You have to be more cautious, watch the weather. You have to pick the day and stay closer to shore."

It helps, too, if you can paddle in the WAKE of a crew that keeps you smiling.

WAKE lines

The Whatcom Association of Kayak Enthusiasts (WAKE) is open to anyone interested in kayaking. Annual membership is $20 per household, but non-members are welcome on club trips as long as they possess adequate paddling skills and the necessary equipment. For more information, see www.wakekayak.org.

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P-I reporter Greg Johnston can be reached at 206-448-8014 or gregjohnston@seattlepi.com.