Last year when we went to Wildcat Beach, we went camping with Julie and Brian Wilson. After that trip was over, Marty and Julie looked out over the shallow water of Limantour Bay (part of Drakes Estero) around Limantour Beach. They decided that we should all go canoeing and bird watching there. But a year has past and we still haven't gotten around to it. Finally, I picked a date and told Brian we should do it then, or he should pick a different date and we would do it anyway. Brian and Julie were gone most of the week before this date, but decided to do it anyway. When they came back, we played telephone tag for a few days and had trouble getting in contact to plan things out.
One of the plans was to borrow a second canoe and all go canoeing. But my brother Paul was out of town this weekend, and out of touch to try and borrow his canoe. Another friend of mine, Keith Hutchinson, has a canoe but was not home. I left a message on his answering machine. My neighbor Barbara Lawson also has several, but she was also away. I considered borrowing one of hers anyway, but the only one I could find outside did not have any seats. I'm not sure if this is a theft prevention system, or if she is repairing the canoe. I talked to Brian about renting a canoe or a double kayak, and he went shopping to look at canoes and talk to places about renting. Unfortunately, he did not find anyplace that would rent him one. Although they have considered buying one, it would be foolish to get one today on such short notice without shopping around and doing a little more research. Brian did find a nice book on building wooden canoes, and offered to build one before morning. That would mean he wouldn't be rested for the trip, so we had to cancel that plan.
Another version of the plan was for Brian and I to put on wetsuits and paddle my two kayaks, while "the girls" went in the Kevlar canoe. But Julie wanted to be in the same canoe with Brian, and Marty normally prefers to have me do all the paddling in her canoe. So this was not a popular plan.
Fortunately, while Brian and Julie were out shopping for canoes, my friend Keith called back and told us we could borrow his. Keith does fiberglass work on expensive cars at Aesthetic Engineering Auto Body in Santa Rosa, among his many other talents. He got his canoe for free because it had one end smashed in, then he repaired it himself and painted it in an aesthetic two-toned color scheme. When Julie and Brian picked up the canoe, he told them that he hated the color scheme, and had scratched it himself on purpose to generate a reason to re-paint it. I think this was just Keith's way of telling us to treat it like it was our own and not worry about messing up his paint job.
We all met at Johnson's Oysters at 9:00 AM in the morning. The seats in the Kevlar canoe are on the bottom, which puts your center of gravity practically under water. Very stable. The open-topped canoe has seats practically on the top, way out of the water and very unstable looking. Julie cannot swim and was worried about being on the Estero, so we let them use our Kevlar canoe while Marty and I started out in Keith's canoe. There is a muddy beach behind the oyster company that they let canoes and kayaks launch from. I had anticipated a muddy launch and brought my neoprene booties so I could wade around in the mud and assist everyone else into the water. We were soon off and paddling past the first oyster racks in Drakes Estero.
As we crossed the middle of the Estero, we saw a swirling kettle of birds over by the opening to Creamery Bay (one of the side channels of the Estero). From a distance we could hear turns calling out as they dove into the water. Down lower we could see larger birds, gray pelicans, flapping heavily and diving into the same water. And on the surface we could see the snaky necks of cormorants. High above them all were a few ospreys turning and occasionally diving into the melee. Apparently there was a school of fish over there, and these four species of bird did not mind sharing the same spot of water to collect the bonanza.
A little while later I saw a large white bird flying away from us towards the ocean. I though it had black wing tips, and the only bird I could think of that it could be was a white pelican. We had not seen any of these yet this year, but that is what it turned out to be. We saw several more on the water, but they flew of towards the ocean before we got very close. When we got near the ocean ourselves, we saw them a little closer where they were standing on an isolated sand bar.
The closer we got to the ocean, the less muddy the water became and we could watch crabs and small fish in the shallow Estero water. Just as we got to the last turn before the ocean, Marty and I saw a shark in the water. It was probably a 60 cm leopard shark, but the surface of the water was not smooth enough to make out the spots. Marty and I tried to follow it around some rocks, and it swam over to where Brian and Julie could get a look at it. Having two canoes chase it was too much, and it shot off in the direction of the ocean. Its nice to intimidate a shark sometimes instead of worrying about the reverse.
I was a little concerned that the water would get too rough for canoes before we could paddle across to Limantour Bay. From a distance it looked like the waves were breaking into the opening of the Estero across where we would want to go. But I know that this can be deceiving. Sure enough, when we turned the last corner, there was an isolated sand bar between the breakers and an expanse of calm water full of kelp. The sand bar was here all the white pelicans we had chased across the bay had ended up. All across the bay we had also scared harbor seals off of shallow spots, and there were some on this sand bar as well. Fortunately, the birds and seals felt safer here and did not leave when we appeared. We turned and paddled across the kelp bed.
This turned into the highlight of the trip, because we found we could tide-pool into the shallow water off the edge of our canoes. There were lots of rocks to avoid, but they were covered with small sea anenomies that cushioned collisions with the canoes. This was convenient because my navigator in the front seat was distracted by the view and kept forgetting to look for rocks. The water was crystal clear and there were starfish everywhere, different kinds of anenomies, and little fish darting around.
We landed on an isolated beach just past the kelp bed. The beach was also protected by that sand bar from the waves and was a mild and safe place to land the canoes. It did make me feel naked to make a landing on an ocean beach in an open topped canoe with no canopy, no enclosed airspace, and no wetsuit. This beach terminates in cliffs on both sides and has no easy access. We could see people on the Limantour Spit who walked up from Limantour Beach in the south. And people could walk down from Drakes Beach in the north. But none of these people could cross over the water to our private beach. There is a hiking trail, called the Sunset Trail, that comes most of the way to this beach inland from the road. If you scrambled around the point or found a trail over a ridge you could get here. Because of that trail, we dubbed this The Sunset Beach.
While we were eating our picnic lunch, a group of sit-on-top kayaks came by and landed on the other end of the beach for their own picnic. A little bit later a fabric double kayak came by and paddled around the corner and up Limantour Bay. A canoe came down from Limantour Bay, paddled past us, and went back up the way we came. They must have gotten a much earlier start than we did and were on their way back. When another pair of kayakers appeared, Brian commented "This kayaking thing is getting awfully popular". This has worried me, and I am generally relieved that most of the places I kayak, I rarely see one other kayaker. But there are places that are so crowded with kayaks, like Monterey Bay, that I refuse to go there any more.
The original reason for this trip was to go explore the marshy water of Limantour Bay. But we had not started early enough, didn't want to overtax our beginner paddlers, and didn't want to push the weather. I expected the afternoon wind to whip up soon and make the return trip difficult. So we agreed to head back after lunch. Marty and I had discovered that Keith's canoe was very stable, even though the seats were so high off the water. So we switched canoes with Julie and Brian for the return trip. We started back through the kelp bed and did another tide pooling pass in that clear shallow water. The tide had been coming in against us as we paddled out, and had turned during lunch and was going our against us now. Poor planning, but you take what you can get. We didn't want to get up earlier and didn't want to risk the afternoon wind later. The tide going out did mean that the swells coming into the kelp bed were even milder than before.
We headed across the middle of the Estero towards the oyster beds. If we had been careful, or if we had boats that required deeper water, I think we could have followed the sinuous path of a deeper channel through the water. But we just paddled in straight lines and went over very shallow areas. In one of these, Marty saw a puff of mud rise up near us, and pointed it out to me. We figured that someone, maybe another shark, had just swam away from our approach. Then we saw the skate (manta ray, sting ray, whatever) that had stirred up the bottom. I pointed it out to Brian and Julie, and the fish seemed to react violently to being pointed at. It took off again, stirred up another puff of mud, and headed towards the other canoe. When it realized there was another canoe in its path, it panicked and really took off. It flapped its "wings" so violently that the tips splashed out of the water on every up stroke. Then it zoomed away and escaped from us into deeper water. Once we saw that one skate, Julie discovered that you could see them everywhere in the shallow water on the rest of the trip back.
Despite my worries that I might overtax the beginner paddlers (this was about a 15 kilometer round trip), Brian and Julie set the pace on the trip back. They are both in great shape from all the bike riding they do. The Kevlar canoe felt a little sluggish compared to the kayaks I have been spending most of my time it. I felt like I was really pushing to keep up with the other canoe some of the time. Marty helped paddle from time to time and spared me the embarrassment of being left behind. We were a lot later than I would have preferred, arriving back at 4:00 PM, but the afternoon wind was milder than I feared it would be. So we made excellent time and had a pleasant trip back to Johnson's Oyster Company.
