Barnet to Jug Island Paddle

I have paddled and reviewed Barnet Marine Park and Belcarra separately, but this weekend I linked up the two and then some, paddling from Barnet to Jug Island on a 12km out-and-back paddle trip with my good friend and fellow paddle enthusiast Johnny.

The first challenge we faced was finding parking at Barnet on a Saturday afternoon. The parking lots were full, and we weren’t even allowed to enter the parking lot to wait. We circled back and saw someone leaving, so we told the parking attendant there were some spots that just opened up. Only then were we allowed to enter.

Barnet Marine Park.

This outing was a practice run with our camping gears, in preparation for our first paddle camping trip. Besides my sleeping bag and clothes, we basically brought everything we needed: a tent, 2 sleeping mats, a pump, a repair kit, a bear can, our cooking system, litres of water, etc. Between the two of us, we had no trouble fitting everything we needed onto our boards.

Fully loaded gear, with room to spare.

After a final check on the tie downs, we headed out. The sea was choppy with 30cm waves. It was also very busy with motorboats and jet skis. A particularly obnoxious boater was doing a doughnut with his boat not far from us. In other words, this paddle was not suitable for beginners.

Crossing Burrard Inlet from Barnet to Admiralty Point

Motorboats galore.

Unlike my previous visit to Belcarra in September of 2020, I was comfortably riding the waves and boat wakes this time. Even the narrow point by Hamber Island was not much of a challenge for us. Two cheeky kayakers sitting here had their phones out when a boat sped past, kicking up big 1 foot wakes, but I just turned my board into the waves and rode them out.

“We thought you were a goner!” they called out, disappointed that they didn’t record a good SUP wipeout.

“Nah, still standing!” We shared a laugh.

Passing Hamber Island.

After about 70 minutes of paddling, we arrived at Jug Island.

Since we had pretty much all of our camping gears with us, Johnny made some tea and I dug out some energy bars for our break.

Heading back took about the same amount of time, so the 12km journey took approximately 2.5hours. We are confident we can paddle for 18km in about 4-5 hours (distance to our camping destination) even if we take a break every 40-60 minutes or so.

The touring boards with front and back bungee cords had a lot of cargo space. Once securely tied down, the load was much easier to carry compared with shuttling our wiggly toddlers. It was helpful to split the load into two roughly equal chunks for the front and back for balance.

This was a very good recon run for our upcoming SUP camping trip.

Back to Barnet.