Gino Thomas apparently decided to go surfing on this blustery winter day. He talked to Don Fleming, who talked to Roger and I and invited us to come along. (Especially if I brought an extra Frenzy kayak for Don to play on). Roger apparently arrived an hour early to get a parking space in Bolinas and to sit and read a book for a while. On a sunny warm weekend the town of Bolinas becomes gridlocked with people trying to find parking for the beach, so showing up early is normally a good idea. On this cold windy day, however, we had the parking almost all to ourselves. Don looked at the weather and decided he would not go unless Gino insisted on it. Gino apparently didn’t get Don’s message about the launch time and didn’t show up until 1:00pm and by then Don had given up and gone home.
Meanwhile Roger and I looked at the waves when we could see them through the rain in our eyes. Our conversation kept cycling around "Well, I’ll go for it if you go for it". Finally I decided that the waves were not very big, and we went for it. We put on our wetsuits and other battle gear and jumped into the water in the storm. Once dressed for getting wet the rain didn’t matter much, although I put my sunglasses on to keep it from blowing in my face. The wind was blowing from offshore while a strong ebb tide was draining the Bolinas Lagoon out into the bay.
I was feeling a little unstable on a Frenzy kayak, and not quite up to speed when the current pulled me out into the waves. I turned left to avoid Roger and got sucked into nasty spot where the waves were refracting and coming from several directions at once. Two waves moving perpendicular to each other broke over me and rolled my boat over. I came up to discover that I was in water only a meter or so deep. This meant I could stand up and hold onto my boat but the waves were breaking over me and it was difficult to find a time to climb back onto the boat. The current from lagoon was rushing between my legs. I jumped back in my boat but could not get control of the paddle in time and a wave knocked me over. Without my hands on the paddle and the leash the boat surfed away from me and the current pulled me OUT TO SEA. I found myself in the impact zone being hit by big breaking waves with no way to swim out if it.
Abandoning any hope of protecting my ego, I started waving for help when I could see Roger and spare the time from swimming. When he saw me and came over, he had a lot of trouble maneuvering in the confusing waves. When he did get close, he was afraid to get too close for fear of surfing into me with his hard fiberglass boat. I spent five minutes trying to catch my breath between breaking waves and ineffectively trying to swim towards shore. When I started getting tired and short of breath and seriously worried I suddenly I found myself in a calm Sargasso of water. There was a circle of kelp and my boat trapped in a spot with calm water and no breakers. Roger was able to paddle up to me at last and asked if I was all right. I said NO! He tried towing me over to my boat but the wind kept turning him towards shore and he couldn’t make any progress. So I let go of his rear toggle and just swam to my boat, flipped it over, jumped in and picked up the paddle. I easily could have rescued myself. Not because of anything I had done, but just because the current pushed me far enough south to get out of the nasty spot.
As I was catching my breath Roger shouted a warning about a large wave. This wave managed to break across the calm Sargasso but I was easily able to brace into it and ride it all the way to the beach. I let the waves push me back towards the opening of the Lagoon, then towed my boat around the end of the spit and into calm water. Roger joined me there to talk while I rested. He suggested quitting after an experience like that, but I insisted on getting back on the horse for a while first.
We paddled across the current to the beach on the north side, which was pretty tiring for me with my arms worn out from swimming. Roger went back to surfing while I stopped to rest for a few more minutes, then got back in the water to finally do some surfing myself. I felt like an invalid and didn’t want to get sucked into that current again. So I stayed on the north side of the channel and got all my rides in the soup zone in shallow water. My arms started feeling shaky with exhaustion after a half hour of this so we both quit and went back to my van to sit out of the rain and eat our lunches.