Search trip reports
Placeholder Routes & Places

Trip Report    

Sea Kayak - Carr Inlet

A blustery day with all sorts of weather. Sunshine and clear skies in the morning and gusty and raining in the afternoon. Challenging paddling with headwinds all morning and gusty tailwinds in the afternoon with great surfing opportunities.

Will Greenough Will Greenough
March 11, 2026
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • On a weekday, morning and afternoon traffic past this launch is very busy. Parking is across the road from the ramp and getting cars into and out of the ramp is quite challenging. A safer option might be to carry the boats/gear across the road using the signalled crosswalk.

    The weather was cool and mostly sunny in the morning with a 5-10kt wind from the SW. During the late morning and early afternoon, the wind strengthened to 10-15kt with gusts to 20+kt, accompanied by rain showers. We had 1' to 1.5' waves with lots of whitecaps on the return paddle from Penrose Point to the Purdy ramp.

    Lots of seals were basking on the beach at Cutts Island, so we couldn't do this planned stop on the return paddle. Screenshot 2026-03-11 090024.jpg

This was a fun, but challenging paddle. We launched about 15 minutes early and hugged the west shore as we headed south into the wind. We stopped for a break just south of Thompson Spit and then pushed on to Penrose Point State Park. In spite of the headwind, we made it to Penrose Point (9.5nm) in a little over 4 hours with the break. The sun was still out for our lunch break, but it started to cloud over with the wind picking up by the time we launched again.

From Penrose Point, we headed across the inlet towards Green Point, but turned downwind toward Cutts Island about 2/3 of the way across.  By the time we reached Cutts Island the rain had started and the wind had picked up to 10-14kt with gusts just over 20kt. This made for some good surfing opportunities. We'd planned to stop at Cutts Island for a break, but there were a bunch of seals on the southern beach and the north end of the island was very exposed to the weather, so we decided to just push on to the ramp.

We made it back to the ramp at 4:10pm.
Total distance: 18.08nm
Average moving speed: 2.8ktIMG_1833a.JPG