Drakes Estero has been closed to canoes and kayaks for months to give the harbor seals time to raise their young. It had just re-opened recently and in honor of this, BASK was having an oyster BBQ on the beach this afternoon. My house gets water from a mutual water system for which I am currently on the Board of Directors. We are trying to get organized to do a major upgrade of the system and I had to attend the board meeting on Saturday morning. I expected this major outlay of money to drag the meeting out all afternoon, so I would never be able to make the BASK BBQ. The meeting went about as I expected, but I did get away by 2:00 PM. There was plenty of time to drive down to the Point Reyes National Seashore and paddle out across Drakes Estero and have three more hours of sunlight for a BBQ. If only everyone else would wait that long.
I stopped at Johnson's Oyster Company and had a raw oyster cocktail in case I missed the BBQ. Then I launched from the beach next door around 4 PM. There was a strong headwind blowing directly into my face. I dug in and tried to make good time out to "Sunset Beach". The wind was 15 knots or less by my seat of the pants guestimate and became less and less as the afternoon progressed. Around 5 PM I ran into three people from BASK, including Joan Wiener. She had initiated this trip and informed me that everyone had wanted to eat early (all the oysters were long gone) and head back. So I had definitely missed the oyster bake but Joan invited me to come along to a birthday party to Brooks Island the next day.
I paddled on by myself hugging the east shore and paddled around the point to the beach. The tide was higher than any other time I have been out here. I paddled over a shelf of rock that I have walked on to snorkel off of before. One of the offshore sand spits was completely underwater with strange breaking water indicating where it was. I went down the length of the beach and back without bothering to land. I had a new seat belt and a helmet to go surfing, but decided not to go. In this very spot a BASK member had mysteriously disappeared while paddling solo in 1995 His body was found out at the Faralon Islands days later. The assumption is that he decided to go surfing in the waves entering the Estero, (a popular kayak surfing spot), was separated from his boat, and drifted with the tide and current away from shore. Even though I was dressed for fun, I decided to forgo the pleasure. Instead I decided to explore Berries Bay.
Drakes Estero is made out of a group of little "bays": Schooner Bay, Home Bay, Limantour Estero, Creamery Bay, and Berries Bay. I have explored each of these except for Berries Bay which is a little out of the way from all the access points. Today was a great opportunity to explore it. I had three more hours of sunlight and a high tide to allow me to hug the shore and explore every nook and cranny.
Everywhere I went on this trip I saw lots of huge Manta Rays in the shallow water. They looked wider and shorter than the usual guitar fish I have seen here before. (I saw a few of those as well). Some of the mantas looked almost a meter across from tip to tip! Usually these fish would see me coming and swim away. In the rippled surface of the water it was impossible to see them until the started moving. They would get "trapped" between my shadow and the shore and swim along beside me for a while until they panicked and zoomed away. One time I saw three or four turbulent areas at once in dark murky water where I could not see the fish I was disturbing. I could feel the shock in the water when these animals took off and sometimes it was a little frightening. One manta ray was trolling along near the surface in the same direction I was going. It did not notice me for a while and I watched its "wing" tips sticking lazily out of the surface of the water. It looked like two small shark fins a half a meter apart. But these two sharks were doing a beautiful synchronized dance, swirling back and forth and tipping over in unison.
I also saw a lot of other wildlife. A stag climbed up the bank of the estero to get away from me. I saw a tree full of egrets settling down for the night. At the end of the spit on the Drakes Beach side of the opening of the estero, there was a large group of white pelicans hanging out on the sand near the ocean. I chased a couple of great blue herons into Berries Bay. Of course I saw an infinite number of gulls and almost as many cormorants. As I paddled along the spit heading west past the pelicans I passed a place where the sand dunes got taller and covered with dune grass. Hauled up on the bank here were two kayaks. Although they were brightly colored I had not noticed them until practically right next to them. It occurs to me that this side of the Drakes Estero opening would be a good place to illegally camp, even though it is walking distance from the road access at Drakes Beach. Of course overnight parking is strictly monitored by the rangers so you would have to park outside the National Park. However, a kayaker paddling down the coast could stop here and set up a tent up in these dunes and never be detected.
When I turned into Berries Bay I was once again surprised at how large it is and how large the entire Drakes Estero area actually is. I did not have a map with me, and my vague recollection that Berries was a small side branch was not correct. The south shore of this bay had a few short valleys facing south with grassy beaches. At low tide the salt-tolerant grass probably has a muddy beach protecting it from the waves. At the extreme west end of this little bay I found a bunch of cattle from the ranches that are still allowed to function in the park as part of the historical heritage of the area. Everywhere I went in this bay I could hear the waves breaking on Point Reyes Beach South. The sound was loud even though it was two or three kilometers away over the hill.
As I came back out of Berries Bay and started the long haul back to my car, I saw my two "camping" kayaks paddling down the opposite shore. They were not camping after all but had fallen asleep in the dunes and gotten a little sunburnt, as I found out when I talked to them after we landed. I worked hard on this part of the trip and tried to make good time. After a while I found myself being passed by some slightly larger than normal waves. I worked a little harder and kept pace with them, hoping to get a free ride. I looked around and these waves were clustered around me. I decided I was following my own wake across the estero. As I paddled against the water I added energy to the waves and it came back to me in this train of waves following me to shore.
