|
|
|
Tropic of Canada
by Leslee Jaquette
Okanagan Lake brings a touch of the Carribean to C
Print This Article
|
Email This Article
The early morning sun caresses my neck with strong, warm fingers. The wind beats a quickening slip-slap across the water.
Sipping coffee in the cockpit of a 14 foot Mirage, I peel down to my bikini, rub on a healthy layer of sun block and watch the kids ready themselves for some high-speed tubing. As the day heats up to over 100 degrees, the beach vibrates with Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.” Throngs of tanned people paraglide, ride personal watercraft, waterski and stroll the strip.
While this vignette reflects the resort feeling found everywhere along the Tropic of Capricorn, this scene illustrates a mostly undiscovered northern parallel I call the “Tropic of Canada.” The region known as the Okanagan, located just north of the U.S./Canada border atop the 49th parallel, demonstrates almost every Caribbean charm. With 100 mile long Okanagan Lake as its ocean and oasis, British Columbia’s dry, warm, inland playground invites boaters to embrace “Okanagan-time” in Canada’s tropical paradise.
Okanagan Lake
Okanagan Lake is a long, lanky waterway set in one of the world’s most fertile near-deserts. More than a century ago, Canadian pioneers discovered that although ranching was impossible, farming proved easy.
These days, this inland Eden -- which receives only 10 inches of rain annually -- is famous for its vineyards and orchards. More than 50 wineries surround the lake and dozens of roadside stands offer visitors fresh cherries, grapes, apricots, peaches, apples and berries.
Glacier-carved Okanagan Lake is the longest lake in a chain starting at the border with pretty Osoyoos Lake and connecting to the sheltered, houseboat lakes of Shuswap and Mara. The largest lake in the central interior, Okanagan Lake basically runs north and south -- except for an elbow bend from Peachland to Kelowna. The lake is actually a trench, with some spots approaching a depth of 1,000 feet.
The occasional spit or rock is well marked, and in the past four years local yacht clubs have placed 75 yellow mooring buoys in some dozen anchorages about the lake’s perimeter. The lake offers only a few good coves -- such as the one at Commando Bay -- but it provides boaters with great stops at nearly a dozen provincial parks, a score of public beaches and campgrounds as well as several dozen marinas.
Still, boaters beware. Legend has it that Okanagan Lake remains home to a friendly sea monster named Ogopogo. Although natives were said to make an animal sacrifice when readying for a difficult paddle, Ogopogo is rarely seen these days.
“Still, Ogopogo is authentic and protected by the Canadian Wildlife Act,” Ken Davis, owner-skipper of Okanagan Boat Charters and the Casabella Princess tour vessel in Penticton, noted with a smile. “This means you can’t pull anything out of the lake three meters or longer.”
Penticton and the Lake
On our recent July trip to Okanagan country, my Seattle-based sons and I packed for a southern climate. Still, unprepared for temperatures 30 degrees warmer than those at home, our only choice was to purchase combat-level sun block and two inflatable rafts. Using the city of Penticton at the southern terminus of the lake as our first base of operations, we submerged ourselves in the local lake and water toy scene.
While towing Roger and Adam on tubes behind the Mirage, George Bishop, owner of Pier Water Sports located adjacent to Rotary Park, gave me the “cook’s tour” of the southern end of the lake. Constantly referring to the SunCruiser Okanagan Lake Directory (see sidebar), Bishop motored us first past the city beach’s swim area, to view S.S. Sicamous.
Once the finest passenger paddlewheeler on the lake, the restored but grounded vessel offers visitors a look at the lake’s commercial history. Locals would love to see the handsome Canadian Pacific vessel, which carried on daily passenger service to Kelowna from 1914 to 1936, completely restored and again traveling the lake.
After a quick tour of Penticton Marina/Yacht Club with its launch ramp, we headed up the eastern shore of the lake. Nudging the shore to soften the building whitecaps, we visited the first of dozens of beaches and picnic and camping sites located around the lake.
At Three Mile Beach, we saw several runabouts launching at the public ramp. The beach also provides fire pits, restrooms and a marked swimming area.
The bay offers fairly good protection from the summer’s prevailing northerlies. All in all, this southernmost section boasts eight beaches and a half-dozen parks accessible to the public.
Working north, the next five-mile-long section of Okanagan Lake is similarly covered with excellent stops and activities. On the eastern shore, we again stopped briefly -- this time at Naramata, the last hamlet accessible by road from Penticton.
We found Naramata Yacht Club, with its reserved Stall #5 for visitors, and a beach on the southeast side. The marina not only provides shelter from persistent northerlies, but is near Manitou Park (which has a beach and swimming area), as well as Naramata Center Park (which offers several more sandy beaches, a water slide, a large dock and a swimming area).
Back across the three-mile-wide lake on the western shore, we visited Summerland. This thriving community offers boaters access to popular Summerland Yacht Club and Marina, as well as an array of beaches and campgrounds. We particularly liked Okanagan Lake Park, a large campground shaded by enormous pines and cooled by the breeze.
Another Summerland option is to dock at Shaughnessy’s Cove Waterfront Restaurant for some refreshment and people/boat watching.
We stretched our legs on the self-guided tour through the Summerland Trout Hatchery. The hatchery raises rainbow trout and eastern char to stock 300 lakes with 2 million fish each year.
The next morning, before the wind piped up, the boys enjoyed their first personal watercraft ride. While they blasted about the lake, I visited the Penticton Wine Center and Tourism Bureau, where I learned that many wineries will pick up boaters at anchorages for tours and tastings.
After ripping around the lake, the boys and I indulged in the perfect mid-day activity -- a lazy float down Riverside Channel. Coyote Cruises Ltd. operates an innertube rental and transportation service for floaters enjoying the channel that connects Okanagan and Skaha lakes. On successive tube runs, the boys and I donned snorkel gear for cruising the current like supermen, at three knots down the channel past huge algae-munching carp.
Kelowna and the Lake
The next day, we relocated north to the regional hub of Kelowna. Located on the narrow waistline of the lake, Kelowna (population 100,000) is one of the fastest growing communities in Canada. All ages immigrate to this enviable environment that allows boating, snow skiing and golf -- all in a single day.
Once in Kelowna, SunCruiser publisher Andy Cloutier ran us south to his favorite hideaway at Commando Bay on the eastern shore, just across from Peachland. One of the lake’s few natural moorages, Commando Bay offers protection from both the north and south. It also provides three mooring buoys, picnicking, scuba diving and a beach area.
While touring Commando Bay on Cloutier’s custom-built 22 foot Campion Explorer, he told us how the British used the site during World War II to train commandos. He added that these days, the only thing dangerous in the park are two kinds of snakes: the poisonous rattlesnake and the non-poisonous gopher snake.
This section of the lake, just a short run south of Kelowna, is overall the most popular cruising area. It offers boaters more than a dozen stops, including several shoreside wineries in this five-mile-long segment just south of the lake’s elbow bend.
We ducked into a little niche in the granite just south of Squally Point. This cave is reportedly the home of Ogopogo. Cloutier warned us not to push the boat too close to the rock walls; not because of the legendary sea serpent, but because of south winds. Divers often explore the underwater cave, which opens up at about 20 feet in depth.
About a mile uplake from Squally Point, boaters will find a secluded beach and four mooring buoys at Reluctant Dragon Beach. In that same stretch, we briefly visited Wild Horse Canyon beach to see where herds of wild horses roamed in the early 1900s.
As we powered back to Kelowna Yacht Club, near downtown Kelowna, the heat boiled up to a froth. Cloutier explained that the lake is so big, surrounded by mountains and so far inland that weather is almost always thermal as opposed to system driven. For that reason, boaters find the winds very predictable in the summer -- calm early and late but increasing to whitecap conditions by late afternoon.
Kelowna sailor John Letchford said that occasionally, when the weather blows for days on end, it piles water at the Penticton end of the lake. As a result, when the wind subsides, boaters experience up to a three knot current for several days. While the phenomenon is interesting, Letchford said the current rarely directly affects any boaters.
Letchford also noted that due to the lake’s great depth, it takes 100 years for it to turn over. That’s one reason fishing remains mediocre. Currently, rainbow trout and kokanee are restricted, leaving anglers fishing mostly for freshwater lingcod called burbot.
While fishing may be lackluster, boating, camping and family fun run rampant in the Tropic of Canada. Far off the beaten path, the Okanagan Valley is well known in wine and outdoor lovers’ circles. Still, as I joined my young men near noon for an hour’s Tigershark PWC blitz from Sparky’s watersport concession at the Grand Okanagan Hotel, I was amazed that there were so few boats on the lake.
Although I regularly scrimp and save to take a holiday in southern climes, I am thrilled to discover this “Canadian Caribbean.” In lieu of expensive airfare and strange customs, I prefer to trailer a boat a short distance to Okanagan Lake amidst the “Tropic of Canada.” Here, we forget the rain gear and, instead, focus on sodas, sun block and spending Canadian currency -- another sunny pleasure, given the current exchange rate.
|
This article first appeared in the December 1, 1999 issue of GoBoating Magazine. All or parts of the information contained in this article might be outdated. |
|
|
|
|
