Al has researched the currents going through the Seymour Narrows and published an article about the best way to paddle a kayak through there. He heard about me doing the Race to Alaska in a kayak, and spent some time getting in touch with me. Apparently he contacted some BASK people, who put him in touch with Kate DesLauriers, who was able to get text messages to my phone from time to time. Al and I eventually exchanged some text messages and had a vague arrangement to meet on the morning of June 14th to go through Seymour Narrows. Kate was scared for me going through the narrows and was insistent that I had to talk to this guy. As I worked my way past the town of Campbell River, a kayak approached me and it turned out to be Al! He saw me going by on the tracker map and came out to firm up plans.
My plans were lazy: I was going to find a restaurant close to the water for lunch, wait for the ebb tide to decrease and then cross over to stay in a hotel (The April Point Resort) that evening. After sleeping in a bed the night before, and only paddling 20 miles on this day so far, I could have tried to go through Seymour Narrows this afternoon as the ebb died down. But I chose to treat Seymour with respect and take it easy for another day. I took Al out to lunch at a local Fish & Chips place where we firmed up plans. He turns out to be a retired coder like me and has written a program that looks up the tide information on-line and generates time tables telling you when you should pass different landmarks on your approach to Seymour. After lunch he escorted me on my crossing to April Point and left me there. We would meet again at 7:40 AM the next day.
I had a nice stay at April Point, cocktails in the evening, a nice seafood dinner, another night roughing it in a soft bed. In the morning when I checked out, they could not find any of my receipts! I joked with the receptionist that not many people complain that they are not charged ENOUGH! But the result was that my dinner and cocktails were free!