Every Thursday since spring, I’d been checking the weather forecast for Cape Erimo. And every Thursday, the Windy.com forecast was nothing but green, orange, or red. Nothing less than 20km/h constant wind every weekend for about four months.
And then, a miracle happened. Three days of extraordinarily settled weather, with next to no wind. And better yet, on a weekend.
Weekend plans were now set in stone. We’d be going to Cape Erimo for the first time ever.
Friday 21st July, 2023
Haidee and I drove down from Sapporo on Friday night, getting away from Sapporo after work at 6:30pm. It was a solid 3.5hr drive from Sapporo, so we didn’t make it to the Erimo-misaki parking lot until 10pm.
Timbah and Martin were each driving down that night too, but arrived after us. We didn’t wait for their arrival – we set up the van as soon as we arrived and bedded down for the night.
Saturday 22nd July, 2023
The morning on Saturday broke beautifully calm and clear. No fog, no wind, beautifully mild in temperature. Perfect for a parking lot breakfast.
We’d read in an old (1995) Japanese sea kayaking guidebook where we could put in, but there wasn’t any information about timing for paddling in the area. “Just make sure to say a friendly hello to the kelp harvesters at the put-in,” the guidebook said.
Given the weather forecast, we weren’t concerned with timing today. So we finally got on the road to the put-in at around 7am, arriving at the put-in at 7:30am.
Along the way, we got glimpses of the kelp drying fields, with locals busily spreading it out to dry.
At the put-in, I wandered over to two men sitting on front-end loaders, clearly waiting for another boat-load of kelp to arrive.
“Is it OK to launch our kayaks from over there at the concrete steps?” I asked.
“No problem,” one of them replied. “Just don’t get in the way while you’re paddling.”
We parked our cars off the road next to the put-in (a faux pas, it would transpire later), and got on our way. It was now 8:30am (again a faux pas, we’d later find out).
As we paddled along the sheltered western side of the cape, we would pass about five small kelp harvesting boats. All of them were hauling in large amounts of kelp. They all gave us smiles as we passed by, greeting them with a friendly ohayou-gozaimasu.
It occurred to me that this was our first time paddling an exposed coast on the Pacific Ocean in Hokkaido. Accordingly, the ocean had a very different feel compared to other locations we’d paddled so far. Thick, hefty swells surged up and down the rocks. It was very different to the mostly benign summer Japan Sea closer to Sapporo City.
It wasn’t long before we left the shelter of the mainland, and started our way along the rocky islets of Cape Erimo proper. Paddling his new-to-him yellow Wilderness Systems Tempest 165 Pro, this was Martin’s second-ever sea kayaking trip, so it was clear he was feeling somewhat at the edge of his comfort zone.
“These swells are really quite huge,” he mused as we paddled further out towards the tip of the cape.
On this western side of the rocky shoals, there were no waves breaking, but on the eastern side, the southeast swells rose up unimpeded, crashing with some force against the rocks.
The rest of us were feeling more at ease, enjoying a dynamism in the sea that we don’t get to enjoy as much in other calmer locations.
“Let’s paddle around to the eastern side,” I suggested.
Martin looked pensive, but with a little coaching, he managed the paddle around the far end of the cape, despite looking visibly nervous.
“I’m sure I’ll get used to it,” he said afterward, “but for now, that was pretty scary.”
Indeed, closer to the rocks the wash was forceful. Further out, however, we were simply carried up and down the large swell.
Haidee looked to be in her element.
Timbah scouted one of the outer passageways through the shoals and called us through after confirming it was safe enough to paddle through.
“Just make sure to keep either left or right of the submerged rock right in the middle,” he radioed.
After all the excitement, we paddled to the small beach at the tip of the cape on the mainland and had a relaxing half hour eating a snack.
It was now 10:30am, so with plenty of time left in the day, we set out again along the western side of the shoals to see if we could get a better look at the seal colonies.
This time we were keeping our eyes out better for them, and saw a number of groups lounging on the rocks.
It was about 12:30pm when we started back to Toyo fishing port to take out.
Along the way, we pulled up at a beach. Still with plenty of time in the day, we spent an hour or so working on kayak skills. Timbah worked on getting his roll dialled. “It’s been a long time since I worked on making sure I have a bomber roll,” he confided.
It wasn’t until 2:30pm that we finally arrived back at the beach at the fishing port. The rush and bustle of the morning kelp harvest had subsided. One boat was out, clearly trouble-shooting their outboard motor.
After the paddle, Martin opted to head back to Sapporo that day. “I’d love to stay, but family and work beckon,” he explained.
Haidee, Timbah, and I discussed our options.
I was keen to paddle the cape-proper portion of the area at sunrise the next morning. It would be a very early 3am wake-up, but if we had clear weather like we had this morning, it promised to be an amazing experience. The weather forecast was for sunshine all day, including at dawn, with no wind.
So it transpired that Timbah and I towed Haidee’s kayak back to the small beach at the tip of the mainland cape, while Haidee drove the van back to the cape parking lot. We left the kayaks there overnight for a crack-of-dawn paddle.
Back at the parking lot, Haidee had an interesting encounter with an official-looking chap.
“Are you guys paddling again tomorrow?” he quizzed her.
“Yes, we were planning to,” she replied.
“Please don’t paddle between 5am and noon,” he requested. “There are too many boats around, so it’s too dangerous.”
We were planning on a quick dawn paddle, so we’d be off the water by 5am anyway, so we didn’t think too much about it, other than feeling a bit sheepish that we might have ruffled some feathers being on the water at 8:30am today.
That evening, we drove up to the public bath and had a long soak before having dinner on the beach at the surf beach take-out at Hyakunin-hama.
We were back at the Cape Erimo parking lot and in bed at 8pm for an early night in preparation for a very early wake-up the next morning.
Sunday 23rd July, 2023
My alarm went off at the gutwrenching hour of 2:30am. Such is the no-daylight-savings summer life of an outdoors-person in Hokkaido. I shook Haidee awake.
Timbah was already up and clambering out of his car.
It was dead calm, and the sky was clear. It was promising to be a beautiful sunrise.
We had to move quite quickly, but we also wanted to be out of the way of the kelp harvest that promised to start at 5am. Therefore, we decided to have a quick paddle around the cape, and then paddle to the Hyakunin-hama surf beach landing for the take out, northeast of the cape.
We quickly did a shuttle, forwent breakfast till after the paddle, and headed down to the boats at the cape.
By the time we arrived on foot at the cape and got the kayaks ready to go, however, a thick fog had rolled in. Windy.com hadn’t forecast it. But it was there.
It was 3:42am. Just over an hour before the kelp harvest for the day would begin.
We weren’t only under time pressure in terms of kelp boats on the water, but also in terms of vehicles arriving from around the town down to the coast. We needed to be out of the cape area – either by kayak or by foot – by 4:30am at the latest to avoid getting in the way.
So, we decided to wait until 4am. If the fog hadn’t cleared by then, we’d pull the plug and make the hard decision to haul the kayaks up the dirt road from the cape to the paved road where we could pick them up in the van.
4am came and went, with no improvement in the fog.
“Even if we did manage to dodge kelp boats in this fog,” argued Timbah, “I don’t feel like landing at the surf beach in this fog would be safe.”
So it transpired that at 4:30am, we had hauled three kayaks up the steep dirt road to a grassy area next to a pull-out on the one-lane paved road heading down to the cape. A friendly local kelp harvester was at his gravel yard spreading out kelp he’d gathered the night before.
“Hi guys, too bad about the fog!” he said cheerfully. “It’ll probably burn off fairly quick.”
His friendly demeanor cheered us up and reminded us that despite the reprimand from the official the day before, these kelp harvester folk were a lovely bunch.
We were back at the pull-out by 4:50am to load the boats. The fog was still hugging the cape.
It was clear that the day’s paddling was over. We all had long drives back to Sapporo, so Timbah took his leave to get back to Sapporo early, while Haidee and I opted to head back to the Cape Erimo parking lot to get some more sleep before breakfast.
By the time we roused ourselves from our nap at 9am, the fog had dissipated, and the parking lot had filled up a little more.
With a bit of extra time up our sleeves now, we spent some time exploring the Museum in the Wind 風の館 – a nicely designed information center at the very top of the cape.
Using the various telescopes on offer, we were able to get a different view of the seals we’d seen the day before.
We also did a short walk around the outside on the cape. Great views of what we’d paddled the previous day.
After our walk around the top of the cape, I called Yanagida-san, the sea kayak guide that the old 1995 sea kayak guidebook suggested to get in contact with to ask about paddling in the area. Ideally, I would have done this prior to the weekend. I arranged a time for Haidee and I to meet him, and then drove over to his ryokan.
He was very happy to sit down with us to talk about sea kayaking in the area.
“I retired just last season,” he explained. “But it’s such an amazing area to sea kayak, so I’m happy to hear you came for a paddle.”
We explained that we’d been told by an official not to paddle between 5am and noon.
“Most of the harvest each day is finished by 10am,” he said. “If you talk to the fishing coop at around 9am, they’ll usually give you the green light to head out by 9:30am or 10am,” he explained.
“Oh and by the way, I saw your van parked up on the grass next to the put-in,” he said. “That’s not the ideal spot, as it still gets in the way of the harvesters when they’re transporting their kelp.”
“Every second counts for them,” he explained earnestly. “They have to make most of their annual income in the space of about three months, so not a second is wasted. They understandably don’t want recreationalists pottering around their workplace, getting in the way. Better to park out of the way in the fishing port parking area.”
So it was that we finally got the whole story about the depth of the human landscape at Cape Erimo. Prior to our chat with Yanagida-san, we were feeling a little put out that paddlers were being excluded from the water. Couldn’t we all just share the water?
The answer was obviously much more complex than we’d anticipated. After learning about the real livelihood concerns of the local kelp harvesters, we felt a new respect for their way of life and work.
We’ll certainly be back to Cape Erimo to paddle again in the future. Next time we’ll be much better informed in our actions in this fascinating place.
