Instructional Sea Kayaking Programs -- Base Camp & Expedition Trips

Novice Instructional Mission Group Kayaking: 7 Days

Practicing 'hip flicks', body position, and balance skills

Our Base Camp supported introduction to kayaking for novice kayakers is geared towards enabling the paddlers to gain confidence and competence in planning their own sea kayaking vacations and adventures. These skills will also help you to more fully enjoy guided trips as you'll be less concerned about your comfort, safety, proficiency, and efficiency in the kayak - i.e., less focused on kayaking, and more able to fully connect with the areas you're visiting by kayak.

The instruction is divided between water and land-based instruction, and always includes hands-on practice with skills that you can apply to our daily outings in this supportive learning environment and world-class paddling destination. We provide handouts and learning materials that you can keep after the course. Some of the topics covered will include:

• Wet exits with assisted re-entry, and simple rescue techniques
• group travel considerations and strategies
• Paddle stroke development
• Leave No Trace camping skills
• Safety - flares, radio use, staying out of trouble, what to do if trouble finds you
• Understanding the marine weather forecast and your own weather observations
• introduction to kayak navigation including chart and compass use
• Day trip planning
• The essentials to bring on every kayak outing

Travel to and from our base camp in Kyuquot, and our daily routines follow a similar flow to that of our 7 Day Spring Island Explorer package, with more time spent on instruction, but still plenty of time to see the area - especially with stronger individual paddling skills after some initial instruction.

Scheduled and customized by request for groups of 4 or more.

“We had a super experience. Your skills and approach were outstanding.
We learned a lot and the location is absolutely beautiful. Thanks a lot.”
- Jean & Ron Roos, Comox, British Columbia
[ read more of our guests' comments ]

Intermediate Instructional Mission Group Kayaking: 5 Days

As above, but this instructional package is geared to those already familiar with the material and techniques and wanting further refinement and supervised challenge in applying these skills and knowledge to our daily outings and some mock scenarios. Material will be presented to a slightly more complex level, and will be geared toward multi-day tripping. Our experienced west coast guides can help you to find new comforts and techniques for safe and efficient sea kayaking.

Travel to and from our base camp in Kyuquot, and our daily routines follow a similar flow to that of our 5-Day Spring Island Explorer package, with more time spent on instruction, but still plenty of time to see the area - particularly with a more intermediate group who are likely to be more efficient (and possibly adventurous?!) on the water.

By request, this Intermediate Instructional week can be scheduled to run in a more rigorous format, in partnership with www.skils.ca, as a recognized Level 1 Guide training course for the Sea Kayak Guides Alliance of BC (SKGABC), which can also include the Paddle Canada Level 1 Skills certification.

Broached on a wave and side surfing to shore

Scheduled and customized by request for groups of 4 or more.

Intermediate Instructional Expedition: 7 Days

This instructional expedition adventure fuses the Intermediate Mission Group curriculum with our 7-Day Bunsby Islands and Beyond Expedition -- learning while doing! Any of our expeditions include an instructional component, however we can make the focus of the trip more explicitly about learning opportunities and coaching participants toward more proficient on-water skills and trip decision-making, including route choices, navigation, and weather interpretation.

Scheduled and customized by request for groups of 4 or more.