I was supposed to get up early, to avoid the wind kicking up and to get to work. But I had put my wetsuit away damp, and didn't relish putting it on. So I napped in the sleeping bag until the sun came over the hills. The fog had never come back Sunday night, and we had a beautifully clear sky in the evening and a bright blue bowl of sky over our heads in the morning. As a result, the wind was already starting up and I did not relish paddling into a head-wind all morning. Another reason to delay and wait for my wetsuit to warm up a little more. Martin got up pretty late, and finally started boiling some water for tea and hot chocolate. Something else to delay and wait for before putting on a slimy wetsuit. When I finally put the suit on, it was after 9:30 am, and putting it on damp was not really as bad as I had anticipated. Either that or I was correct to delay just this long.
I listened to the weather report. The evening before, when the wind calmed down in the late afternoon, they had predicted gale force winds and 10 foot swells. But Bodega had reported only 6 foot swells in the evening while I had practically had calm air. The prediction for Monday had originally been better than Sunday, so I had gone to bed thinking things would be great today. But the early morning wind had already kicked up 9 foot swells at Bodega, so I knew the weather was serious today. The hikers helped carry all my stuff down to the beach, and I finally got ready to go. The waves did not look much worse than the evening before, since Drakes Bay is a relatively protected place. But I have never launched in "soupy" water like this before. The tide was low again and the waves were breaking far out on the shelf of sand. Multiple sets of breakers were coming in at once, but none of them were very high. This is actually supposed to be great surf conditions for launching a sit-inside kayak. You can get yourself inside the kayak and the spray skirt attached while still in the "soup" of the mild breakers, then paddle out through the rougher breaking water. So I put on my wetsuit jacket (still dry from being inside the kayak all day Sunday). I expected to get wet and wasn't looking forward to that, but I'm pleased to report I wasn't afraid of the breakers this time. When I started out through the breaking waves, the first few large ones seemed to push the kayak back. I glanced over my shoulder a few times and wondered if I was being pushed back each time and not really making any progress. But suddenly I discovered I was over a hundred meters out to sea and the hikers were becoming small figures on the beach. I turned north into the wind and started paddling towards home. Despite the wind the beach started to slip behind me and I made slow but steady progress. I can do this!
However, it took me two hours to paddle the three kilometers to Arched Rock, where it took me only one hour to drift the other way yesterday. By the time I got there I was tired and discouraged. The wind was so strong that I would stop moving forward and rapidly drift backwards if I stopped paddling for even a few seconds. This made me extremely reluctant to stop paddling to eat, to scratch my nose, to adjust my seat. The seat could no longer easily be adjusted while sitting in it because the straps holding it in back had apparently slipped way out of adjustment. This was important, because the angle of the seat was no longer a good one and by back was starting to hurt. By the time I got to the beach north of Arched Rock, I needed to lie on my back in the sand for a while to straighten myself out. I stopped only long enough to lie down for a while and drink a little bit of the sulfur-tasting water that I brought from Wildcat Beach. My landing at this beach was a lot less exciting than the one the day before, and the launch was also fairly easy. The properly adjusted seat-back felt wonderful. I turned north with new energy and was able to see my progress around the rocks leaving the Arched Rock area. I can do this!
I left my wetsuit jacket on because I expected to get wet on the launch, but I didn't. This was surprising considering that the wind was worse and the waves outside of Drakes Bay were reported a lot higher. The launch was so easy, I was sorry I had not taken the jacket off, since it was chaffing me under the arm pits and the inside of my elbows. I decided to take it off the next time I stopped. In the wind driven waves, the nose of the kayak was often washed over by a few centimeters of water. After two and a half hours of this, I finally noticed that the drain plug was unstoppered and a few cc's of water bubbled in every time the water washed over it. This was not enough to cause any problems, but the nose of the kayak was the driest place the day before, so I had put the drysack with my clothes in there. I decided to stop again only one and a half kilometers north of Arched Rock at Point Resistance. As I approached Point Resistance, the wind got very gusty. This meant that occasionally it would pause, and I would paddle harder to try to make up for the slow going when the wind was up. I felt like I was barely holding the kayak in place during the gusts and had to make up for it in the calm times.
Resistance Point protected me from the wind, so when I go there I was able to easily paddle back and forth and do a little exploring looking for the best hidden beach to stop at. I ended up on the same beach where I stopped yesterday, but this time I walked around a little farther. I walked through the surf in one of the little caves to the other side of a point. I took off my wetsuit jacket and mopped most of the water out of the kayak with my pack towel. This time I remembered to stopper the drain plug in the top of the prow of the kayak. This little beach had stone walls sloping back to lean over the sand, but a little sunlight found its way in to shine on me. Water was dripping down from above, and where it splashed off of irregularities in the walls, it sprayed out little droplets that drifted around in random directions, backlit in the sunlight . There were wildflowers growing out of the stone walls, but if these were dripping petals on the beach, they were being washed away by the occasional wave that made it way up the sand. It was a nice place to visit, so nice that I forgot all the hard paddling I had done to get here. But I had to get going. In this protected beach south of the point, I waded out into the water and sat down in the kayak. No worries about launching in the surf here!
I had two choices for starting out: I could go out around the tip of Resistance Point, or cut straight through the arches and caves. The water looked choppy inside the arches, but it was windy and choppy outside the tip of the point where the waves reflected back. I decided to go for the caves. Inside, I found a new force that I have not had to contend with in arches before. The multiple openings and the chimney allowed a wind to blow me sideways and closer to the rocks than I expected to be pushed. I could not spend much time here and started out the other side. Halfway out the arch on the other side a TREMENDOUS wind came straight back in at me. It was a wind tunnel, with water spraying back off the prow of the kayak and whipping into my face and arms. With the wetsuit jacket off, I was able to paddle hard enough to make headway against it, but I got wet and cold. I figured it would only last for a few minutes, but as I pulled away from the caves and past a big rock, the wind never let up! Looking at the NOAA wave data later, this was about the time that the wind changed from 25 to 29 knots with gusts up to 34 knots. The wind-whipped spray off the prow of the kayak hit me with such force that it rattled as it struck the fabric of my flotation vest. The drops stung when they blew into my face, and stung again when they got salt in my eyes. I put on my sunglasses to shade my eyes from the water. I figured that I would not be able to make progress in these conditions, but to my surprise, Resistance Point slowly slipped away behind me. I'm not having any fun, but I guess I can still do this.
This strong wind didn't let up for the next two hours. I watched the parallax on the shore and knew that I was making slow progress. I felt like I was only gaining a few centimeters with every stroke of the paddle. The brim of my hat had two stable positions: pushed down flat over my right eye by the wind, or pushed straight up vertically. I wanted it to stay down to help shade my eyes from the late afternoon sun, but it preferred to pop up and expose my face to more sunburn. Water continued to spray off the prow into my arms and face, and I was worried about getting too cold. After an hour and a half of continuous hard work, I decided if I could only get to the end of Limantour Beach, I would drag the kayak the rest of the way back to the car.
Limantour has a long stretch of smooth continuous beach that extends three kilometers from the parking lot south to the first rocky point. I promised myself that I would land and rest after I got past this low shelf of rock. But it took me two hours to get that far from my last stop. The last half hour I discovered that I was fantasizing about food. I had not eaten much for breakfast, and had not felt like eating on the last two stops. After 5 hours of hard paddling, not counting the rest stops, I was apparently just about out of energy and getting famished. I finally made it past the last rock to the beach and landed. In a protected spot out of the wind I sat down to eat lunch after 4:00 PM. I ravenously ate some smoked salmon and a bagel, a chocolate Power Bar (TM), and a handful of fruit newtons. I didn't even mind drinking the sulfur-tasting water from Wildcat Camp. I tried dissolving some instant spiced cider mix to add some flavor and sugar to my drink.
After my appetite calmed down, I got out my Marine Radio to try my first (ever) radio-phone call. It had become obvious some time ago that I was not going to get to work at even an unreasonable hour. I had held onto the idea of getting to work in time for a company meeting at around 5:00 PM. But now I gave up on going to work at all, and called in on the radio-phone to tell them why I would not be there. I had little trouble contacting the Bodega Marine Operator, and the call went through right away. On my end, the receptions was quite clear, and Bob at work was surprised to hear that I was calling from my kayak. After the phone call, I had an attack of the shivers. I didn't feel especially cold, so it must have been exhaustion. I went back up to the protected spot out of the wind, lay down for a while and tried to take a nap to give all the sugar time to get into my system.
The spot where I landed was were a small creek had carved its way down through the soft soil of the cliffs until it was spilling over tilted plates of harder rock at the base. Then it carved a curved path in the sand that changed while I was there and threatened to undermine the spot where my kayak was parked. Once again I was in an attractive spot, but it was a little more difficult to forget all the hard work that had brought me here. I must have managed to get a few minutes of sleep, because it was almost 6:00 PM when I got ready to go again. I really did consider dragging the kayak the last three kilometers, but got back in the water anyway to give it another try. I could land anywhere along here if I really wanted to try that option. I made the worst launch of the trip in the mild waves here, and actually did get pushed backwards up the beach by one wave. I kept plowing into the breaking waves and was soon heading north again. The coast curved to the west here, so the wind was now coming at a slight angle off of the beach. The cliffs and dunes along the beach created a little bit of a wind shadow. If I hugged the shore just out of the reach of the breakers, the wind was a lot milder, and I made rapid progress. The beach slid by faster than I could have walked, and much faster than I could have dragged the kayak. I can still do this!
As I got closer to the landing spot, the cliffs got lower and turned into dunes. The dunes got lower and disappeared. Soon the full force of the wind was blowing on me again, and I was dragging myself forward centimeter by centimeter through the water. There are two parking lots at Limantour, and I usually prefer the one farthest north which has a paved walkway most of the way to the beach. The firm footing is better when carrying 50 LB's of awkward kayak on your back. But the south parking lot is half a kilometer closer to me today. If I landed here, I could walk north and drive my car back to pick everything up. I decided against it, and headed past the first trail. Then I realized that I would have to go past the main trail before turning in so that I didn't get blown too far south as I landed. The thought of having to keep going even after I got there was too much. I turned to shore right then and landed in front of the trail to the south lot. It was 7:00 PM when I hit the beach, nine hours after I got in the water this morning, 6 hours of paddling.
I ran into a German man I had talked to about kayaks on the other end of the beach. He gave me a ride in the back of his car to the other parking lot and saved me the 500 meter walk. We talked about kayaking in Europe. He was interested in getting a kayak before he moved to an area on the east shore of Italy. Then I drove my car back and started carrying equipment up to the car. The wind was not done with me yet. It was whipping up a layer of sand and blowing it in a half a meter thick mist over the beach. Every piece of wet equipment ended up with a thick film of sand sticking to it and adding more weight. The wind twisted the kayak in my arms as I carried it up to the van. When I picked up the kayak to put it on the van, the wind blew the salt water dripping out of the drain directly into my face. The wind blew the kayak back off the van the first time, and I only got it to stay on the second time by running around to the back and catching the stern as it slid off. It was around 8:00 PM before I got everything stowed, semi- dry clothes on, and started home.
