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Sea Kayak - Central Hood Canal

An amazingly calm and sunny March day and a beautiful, mostly pristine coastline made this north Hood Canal paddle very special. The Olympic Mountains provided a breathtaking backdrop for most of the day.

Will Greenough Will Greenough
March 20, 2023
  • Road suitable for all vehicles

  • The launch at Kitsap Memorial State Park is best done with wheels as the ramp down to the stairs to the beach is  long and fairly steep. Overall, it is a pretty good launch, but required a bit of a challenge at the end of a paddle. The bathrooms are close and in great shape.

    We had mostly calm conditions with only a little wind at the south end of our loop.Capture.JPG

All participants arrived on time and we got off the beach on schedule. The weather was beautiful, with the snowy Olympic Mountains across the Canal providing a backdrop for our launch. We paddled across to South Point and then headed south along the shoreline. We took our first break shortly after we crossed and then continued southward. As we progressed south, the shoreline became less and less inhabited - lots of beaches for breaks except at the highest of tides.

We took our next break about 3 nm southward and then proceeded another 3 nm along a totally uninhabited coast past Brown Point to a small beach across from the south end of the Bangor Navy Base. We had lunch at this point, knowing that we would have to be in the boats for longer on the next leg - crossing the canal and then paddling north along the outside of the Security Zone for the base for about 2.5 nm. 

After lunch we crossed the canal and then headed north staying well outside the yellow demarcation buoys, finally landing  just south of the North Range (East) Transit Station marked on the chart. After a short break, we paddled the last several miles back to the park. After 17.9 nm, getting the boats and gear back up the stairs and the long ramp was a challenge, but not too bad. 

This was a real gift of a day on the Hood Canal!S0903195.JPG