I heard about this trip via an email message sent out to the BASK mailing list. A few of us arranged to meet at the mouth of the Bolinas Lagoon to go kayak surfing. I checked the wave reports in the morning and saw 18 foot swell at Point Arena and 16 foot swell at San Francisco. I drove down to Bolinas with butterflies in my stomach worrying about the big scary waves. I had tried to get some other people organized for an estero or a creek paddle but everyone bailed on me because of the stormy rainy weather. They should have gone for it, because it was a warm sunny morning between storms with no wind to speak of. When I got to Bolinas, all the serious kayak surfers had arrived with their little river kayaks. I had brought my long Scupper kayak without thinking about it. What a dummy! I should have brought my little Frenzy model! I excused myself by saying I wanted to practice in the surf with the boat I was most likely to need to make an emergency landing in one day.
The Bolinas Lagoon has a long submerged sandy delta sticking out into the ocean that breaks the backs of the large waves far out from shore. This is another spot, apparently, where you can find conditions to match your skill level. So I stayed closer to shore than the real kayak surfers and got some very fun rides side-surfing in the breaking water. The anxiety I had felt over the wave measurements melted away and I had a great time.
I have noticed an interesting problem with my evolving skill level. Before I learned how to brace I got knocked over a lot just landing in mild waves. When I learned bracing and side surfing I became amazed at how well I could hold myself into the boat in large breaking waves. But lately I was getting knocked out more often again. I think what has happened is I have become completely relaxed about breaking waves. I used to get butterflies in my stomach just from the sound of them, and then when one approached me I tensed up and jammed my feet into the stirrups of the boat. This pushed my back into the seat and held me in the kayak while I braced into the wave. The bigger the wave, the more scared I was and the better I crammed myself into the boat. Now that I no longer fear the waves, I don’t tense up, and I don’t push myself into the seat. Now the waves can bounce me loose from the seat and roll me out! I have to get scared again or consciously remember to press into the stirrups with my feet as the wave hits.
I tried a seat-belt recently but it broke when Roger Lamb tried to demonstrate a roll in my boat. (Not his fault, it was my poor design that wasn’t sufficiently bolted down). Before that I tried out a pair of thigh-straps but they didn’t stay on unless I bent my knees up at a high enough angle. With the large scary wave forecasts, I decided to give the thigh-straps another try. I put my feet in the next notch of the stirrup, hooked the straps over my knees, and just made do with my knees sticking up high enough to mess with my paddle stroke and bracing angle. This actually worked reasonably well. I soon forgot about the problem of reaching over my knees and the straps stayed on until I wanted them to come off. When a wave hit me or when I was trying to balance on a breaker I really noticed the extra support in situations where I might have been bounced out. These straps might be a good piece of emergency equipment to keep in the bottom of the boat.
At first I wanted to stay near the opening so the tide would pull me back into the lagoon if I got in trouble. There was a channel down the middle that most of the tide went through. The waves tended to be calm through there. On the south side of the channel was a shallow area with a large soup zone and waves breaking towards the lagoon, so I turned left and rode those breakers in. On my first good ride I decided to try surfing for real and turned my boat to face down the wave. The nose of my long boat sank into the water and started creating a lot of drag, tilting the nose down more. I thought I could get out of this by turning sideways, but to my surprise I discovered exactly how shallow the water was by finding bottom with the nose of my kayak. The front stopped suddenly and the tail of the boat swung up and over. My weight and the turn I had started caused the boat to spin while vertical so I hit the water on my side. The straps held me in until then and I slipped out easily without thinking about them.
On the north side of the channel the waves broke at an angle away from the lagoon and onto a narrow sandy beach. I avoided this at first until I realized that I had been bracing only on my right side as I turned left. So I crossed the channel and practiced bracing on my left side and side surfing into this beach. On this side the water was deeper with practically no soup zone. The waves tended to relax a little, reform, then break again just before the beach. One large wave I was riding kept breaking across this mild area, met up with another wave that had refracted from the south, broke violently again and side- surfed me all the way up onto the sand. A single ride of more than 100 meters! Another pair of waves meeting close to shore like this rose up over me and broke straight down on my head. With the straps holding me in I was able to brace, keep the boat upright, and ride it out. But then in the confused water a few seconds later I lost my balance and rolled the kayak over anyway.
After only a few hours of fun I noticed that the elbow joint in my left arm was feeling stressed so I decided to quit early before hurting it worse. I tried to find one of those big waves to carry me all the way to shore but ended up getting a few mild rides and calmly drifting up to the end of the beach where the cars were parked.