San Juan Island Day Kayak Tours
Orca Search by Kayak / Five Hours
Priced from $95/person
Best For: Advanced paddlers who want to spend more time on the water, and view the San Juan sealife.
Features: Departs from our exclusive Roche Harbor location daily at 11:00AM. This tour provides best opportunity to see whales from a sea kayak. Voted one of the top 10 Adventures by MSNBC.
Summary: We developed this trip 5 years ago for our customers who wanted to spend more time on the water. Our exclusive location at Roche Harbor allows us to paddle some of the most rugged and beautiful undeveloped shoreline in the San Juan Islands. We also spend much of our time in Haro Strait, on the west side of San Juan Island, giving our clients the best opportunity to see Orca (killer) Whales, porpoise, seals, and other marine wildlife. This terrain is similar to what you would experience on our shorter trip, except you spend more time on the water, and have lunch on a remote pebble and sand beach overlooking Haro Strait and the Olympic Mountains.
We feel the Roche Harbor departure location, and the fact that we also operate a commercial whale watch vessel with which we communicate, gives our five hour kayak trip the best opportunity to see whales from a sea kayak. Last year, our 5-hour kayak tours saw whales roughly 25% of the time. This statistic is higher some weeks. Just ask our guide Rebecca, who saw whales more than any other guide last year. While our chances are good, we feel that it would be disingenuous to not explain that whales can swim at 30 mph and a good kayaker might paddle 3 mph. While Orca Whale sightings from kayaks are frequent in the summer months, those who want the greatest chance of seeing Orca Whales should consider a trip on our whale watch vessel, which has a 90% sighting rate.
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Our five-hour San Juan kayaking tour departs from our exclusive Roche Harbor Marine Adventure Center, where we have specifically designed finger docks for safe and easy entry into our state of the art kayaks. We also have a lower guide to client ratio on this tour (max 8 clients per guide), so that you get more attention from our naturalist guides. All equipment is provided on this San Juan kayak tour, including dry bags for your camera and snacks, life vest, spray skirts, and of course our state of the art fiberglass kayaks.
Within an hour’s paddle of our departure point, you can experience over 3 national wildlife refuges and state parks. This is the best place to paddle in the San Juan Islands for viewing all wildlife, including Orca (killer) Whales, Porpoise, Seals, Sea Lions, Bald Eagles, Marine Birds, and shoreline & inter-tidal zone creatures. While we do not exaggerate the frequency of our killer whale sightings, and consider any encounter a once in a lifetime experience, we do feel that communication with our whale watch vessel combined with our departure location and experience, gives you the best opportunity in the San Juan Islands for viewing Orca (killer) Whales by sea kayak.
Viewing Orca (killer) Whales in the wild is an amazing experience. We would encourage those who want to kayak but also want the best chance of seeing whales to choose our Orca Safari package, which is a package including both a whale watching trip on our motor vessel with a 90% success rate, and a 5-hour sea kayak trip.
This San Juan kayaking tour is a bit more challenging and requires a good deal of upper body strength. Approximately 4.75 hours of the 5 are spent out on the water, so we require that our guests are physically fit and able to paddle at length comfortably. What do we mean by that? If someone works out at a gym 2-3 times a week, does physical labor for a living or kayaks regularly they will be able to paddle this trip more easily.
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