PORT ANGELES – Members of at least 14 tribes were greeted by the Lower Elwha Klallam with songs and drumming on Saturday as they came ashore at Hollywood Beach in Port Angeles during a stop in the 2007 Paddle to Lummi.
A Tsartlip First Nation canoe, of West Saanich, British Columbia, was overturned near the tip of Ediz Hook by the wake from a passing pleasure boat.
No one was injured.
“We’re not going to quit,” said Vernon Tom, one of the pullers, as he held a blanket around his cold shoulders at City Pier.
The seven pullers on the canoe told Port Angeles Fire Department paramedics that they were in the water only two to five minutes before they were picked up by the Coast Guard and the Lower Elwha Police Department.
They were given blankets, food and water and were checked out by the paramedics.
Their empty canoe was towed ashore by a member of the Lower Elwha Police Department on a personal water craft.
Today, their canoe will be back in the water as they start the next leg of the journey to Lummi Island, where 15,000 people are expected to gather, beginning July 30, for a weeklong festival.
Young women of the Lower Elwha greeted canoes in their native Klallam tongue, and invited pullers to feast at the tribal center and rest overnight.
Today, at least 16 canoes, plus three paddled by the Lower Elwha, will go to Jamestown, on Dungeness Bay, and be welcomed by the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe.
Canoes arrived in Port Angeles from both Western Washington and Canada.
Western Washington tribes included the Quileute, Makah, Hoh and Quinault.
Those crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca included a canoe from Juno, Alaska.
It was trucked to Beecher Bay and was paddled over the strait from there.
Others from the British Columbia mainland or the east shore of Vancouver Island paddled through the Inland Passage between mainland British Columbia and the eastern shore of Vancouver Island on Saturday.
