East Coast Outfitters

http://contour.com/stories/2011-atlantic-paddle-symposium-sea-kayak-track ECO Guides, Kirk, Eleanor and I had the opportunity to attend the 2011 Atlantic Paddle Symposium up in Tera Nova National Park Newfoundland. We set out from Nova Scotia a few days early with the hopes of catching some icebergs off of twillingate. Kirk had been keeping an eye on www.icebergfinder.com for the few [...]

With relatively low water temperatures and comfortably warm air temperatures early spring in Nova Scotia brings us numerous banks of fog. This makes Dead Reckoning navigation an essential skill needed to safely kayak offshore. This last weekend the 2011 Guides in Training headed out to Hearn island for a night time navigation exercise. We were [...]

Sunday evening and the weekend is over, and what a beautiful weekend we had. Our season started off with the crack of delicious lobster being eaten. Saturday we had a wonderful group from a Dalhousie University conference come out for a little bit of kayaking, a breathtaking nature tour to the sandy cove lighthouse topped [...]

The wildlife changes around ECO during the winter.  Migratory birds leave us, grasses and heathers loose their color, but winter brings us some equally fantastic wildlife sights!  Here’s a few notable things that have crossed out kayaks this winter! Longtail Cockawee – Old Squaw Ducks Common during winter in the sheltered bays. They are a [...]

With less then a week left before the season opens we are all getting on the water more and more. Over the last week a good number of ECO guides and some of the guides in training headed down to Lower Prospect and checked to see what has changed over the winter months. We managed [...]

At ECO we take advantage of every ray of sunshine during the winter. On February 5th we got a little bit of that sunshine so Guides Eleanor Kure and Karl Vollmer headed out for a quick paddle just off of West Pennant. Enjoy the video. Music performed by our good friends McGinty. Every year McGinty [...]

One cold morning in late January ECO Guides Kirk Dauphinee and Karl Vollmer along with Guide in Training Tim Bryan headed out from Peggy’s Cove for a little bit of fun on the water on a beautiful calm sunny day. Here’s what happened…

The Big  Clam The Quahog takes 40 years to reach 4 inches in length. A four inch long Quahog will filter a gallon of water every hour. In terms of size, this Quahog is classified a “chowder clam” or more commonly in Nova Scotia,  “bar clam”. Quahogs are among the longest lived marine organisms in [...]

Summer is Here! Well we are definitely seeing some wildlife!  On the water, the guides are reporting sighting everything from Porpoises, Seals, Minke Whales, even White Tailed Deer! For some, the chance sighting is majestic, though impossibly quick – other times the wildlife is equally curious and playful about us. Last week, while paddling through [...]

Eastern Juvenile Willets Here’s a Willet we saw near the window on Friday evening. There were a few of them around. We’ve asked the birding community on Twitter to help us identify this guy, and the consensus is that this is an Eastern Juvenile Willet. The Willet is a shorebird in the Sandpiper family. The [...]