I scheduled another surf launch practice in the BASK newsletter, and talked to a lot of people at the last meeting who said they were definitely thinking of coming this time. But then a series of storms came and scared everyone away again. I was determined to show up anyway to see if anyone else was there. So I left an hour early and drove all over Sonoma County until I found a way past the roads closed by flooding. I ended up only 10 minutes late and sat in the parking lot behind Lawson’s Patio Café to wait. I brought a magazine to read and sat there for almost an hour without seeing any other kayaks. Then I decided to go home before the rain flooded any more roads and prevented me from returning.
Before I left, however, I headed down to the beach to look at the waves. They didn’t look very rough to me. NOAA was reporting only a twelve foot swell nearby and the sandbar was working better than usual, breaking the waves and allowing only very small breakers on the beach. Another kayaker arrived as I was turning around, a new BASK member named Bill who had chased me down. He had arrived early and parked on the other side of the Café. We had not noticed each other for the last hour. He was eager to get into the water, so I we drove down to Lawson’s Landing, dressed to get wet, and launched into the water. As we were just about to launch, a woman ran out from the store there and hit us up for another $5.00 (on top of the $5.00 each we paid for day use) for a “launching fee”. I know kayakers who launch here all the time, and don’t get dinged for this. They must have decided to try and extort another $5.00 from every kayaker. OK, that’s the last time I spend any money here.
The wind was blowing strong from the northwest and it was still raining. We had to work hard to make headway around the spit and start up the beach. But the rain soon stopped and the wind slowly died down until we forgot about it. Even the water on the ground had time to run off and later in the day I was able to take the direct route home without worrying about flooding on the roads. Bill had brought his dog with him and she had a great time following us along the beach. This dog was fearless in the water and would jump into the ocean from time to time. This worried me a lot because I imagined the dog getting swept up in unexpected (to a dog) tidal or rip current. The dog would follow us along the beach for a while and then jump in to swim out and meet us. Of course we would keep moving so the dog would find itself far from shore and far from us. Then it would swim ashore, run along the beach to catch up, and start over again. Every time it came ashore I wondered if one of the people on the beach would try to “rescue” it for us, but this never happened either.
Near the end of the spit we found a shallow area where waves broke a reasonable distance from the beach. Everywhere else the waves were very mild and only broke right against the sand. This was because the offshore sandbar did an excellent job of absorbing most of the energy of the twelve foot swell on this day. We could see and hear the big waves breaking, but only the smallest portion of that energy reformed and made it to shore. Bill was a novice in a kayak with only a few lessons. He had a very poor brace and no roll for his sit-inside kayak. This meant he ended up in the water quite a few times. He also had no way to attach his bilge pump to his boat, so he gave up on doing a paddle-float rescue and just planned on staying in shallow water and swimming for shore each time he fell out. After a few rides in our shallow spot we paddled up the beach looking for a better spot. We found none, so after traveling most of the way to the town of Dillon Beach we went back to our shallow spot and played there.
Bill put up with my words of wisdom to try and improve his bracing and side-surfing skills. I also tried to teach him to read the water. I pointed out one place to him and warned him that the water was shallow there. But he cut too close around it and was knocked over by one larger than usual wave breaking a little farther from shore. He was trying to use a sweeping brace to stay stable in the waves. This involves swinging the paddle forwards or backwards along the surface, angled to generate an upwards force. I think this might work well in calm water, but not in choppy breaking water. I tried to get him to do a brace where you slap the water, especially over the top of a wave as it approaches. Bill wanted to know if the techniques I learned for a sit-on-top really applied to a sit-inside. I wasn’t sure, but told him that I had learned how by reading books written for sit-insides.
During the day Bill did get a few good side-surfing rides, but he spent most of his time on shore trying to launch back out into the water. I told him my idea that bracing and side surfing are best learned in a sit-on-top because you get more practice in the water. After one long stay on shore he managed to launch only to get knocked back ashore almost immediately. He turned to me and asked to have that theory about sit-on-tops explained again. I let him try mine out for a while.
He offered to let me try out his boat. It occurred to me that I have only been in a sit-inside one other time, and that was in a creek, without a spray skirt, just to see what it felt like. So I put on Bill’s spray-skirt and tried it out a “real kayak” in real water. Sitting trapped inside a boat looking at the breakers I noted that there are probably better places to try things out for the first time, but I let Bill push me into the fray. The boat, a “Sea Lion”, felt a lot less stable than mine when just sitting upright in it. My toes were pressing down on the stirrups and my knees were pressing up on the deck from inside. After a few minutes of this I could feel muscles in my calf start to complain about this. The seat back is very low and provided less back support than I am used to. I had to lean forward and soon felt that in my stomach and thigh muscles. Just like the sorness from the time I tried out a Tsunami X15 boat. If I ever get a sit-inside I’m going to have to work back up to spending long periods of time in it. But a few weeks of time in a boat like this would probably flatten my stomach and make my pants fit better.
The lack of stability gave me the feeling of having too much control over the pitch of the boat. But it sliced out through the waves. The smart thing to do would have been to go only a short distance out, then turn sideways and try bracing into a small breaker. But my insecurity in this new boat drove me over the waves until I was well past all the easy breakers. Instead I had to turn sideways and wait for a big wave to break farther from shore. When this happened I found the definitive answer to Bill’s earlier question: All the bracing techniques I learned on a sit-on-top DO APPLY to a sit-inside. I was able to brace into a breaker and easily side-surf to shore. In fact, the boat turned faster than I expected and started surfing nose down off the wave. I let the boat spin around and braced on the other side. Then when the wave started to let go, the boat turned back until it was almost nose onto the beach as it landed. Bill was VERY impressed until I told him that all those turns were not actually done on purpose. I launched two more times and side-surfed back. On the last trip I overcompensated and fell into a small breaker. Then I had to let the boat drag me sideways up the beach on the sand until I could extricate myself from the narrow coaming and the spray skirt. Enough new things for one day.