The novice kayakers were spending an evening or two in classroom sessions each week that I was not able to attend. One of these sessions was a short version of the Expedition Clinic which was followed by a weekend camping on Tomales Bay. I was assigned to be an assistant instructor again and got to come along on this camping weekend. One of the nice things about being an instructor is that the novices are required to plan and bring all the food for the weekends. So I had a very light boat to paddle up the bay.
We had an uneventful paddle across the bay (a navigation and ferry angle exercise) and up the beautiful west shore. We were hoping that the "Swing Beach" would be empty but another group of kayakers had already taken it over. This was not unexpected and we moved on to Avila Beach which is more exposed and less desirable. We had this beach and the grassy valley behind it to ourselves. But before we landed the novices were put through some more exercises, practicing towing each other and more rescues. A few of us paddled out to the end of Tomales Point looking for someplace to surf but all the breaking waves ran into the rocks where we didn't want to get smashed. We went across the mouth of Tomales Bay and found the waves over the sandbar off Dillon beach were ideal for surfing. There are a series of sandbars under the water and waves break over each one. If you caught and held on to a wave just right you could continue riding it to the next break and the next, getting a ride for hundreds of meters!
The next morning John Dixon got up early to go surfing in the water over the sand bars. He put a human measure on the waves. The novices watched him as a speck zooming down the waves. By breakfast time John was back in camp out of his wetsuit and into dry cloths. I was impressed, not with the surfing, but with the idea that once into my wetsuit I don't have to stay damp and uncomfortable all day. I keep saying that getting back into the cold wet slimy wetsuit is never nearly as bad as I imagine it is going to be. John seems to believe this strongly enough to get out of the wetsuit just for breakfast. I'll have to try this.
After breakfast the novices got to decide individually what they wanted to do in the morning. Several of the instructors wanted to go surfing so we volunteered to lead any novices who were interested. The rest of the novices and instructors would go on a paddle out and perhaps around the rugged end of Tomales Point where I had gone the afternoon before. When all the dust had settled it turned out that only one novice wanted to go surfing! So we had four instructors (Dave, Ken, Bart and I) to one student for this exercise.
We paddled across the mouth of the bay and into the waves breaking over the sandbars. Our student, Rich, got different advice from each of us. After he had spend a while on the edge of the sandbar failing to get any rides on the waves I gave this advice to him: Paddle back and forth in waves as big as you dare and don't try so hard to get a ride. You will discover that, as wild as the water looks, you will be able to maneuver in almost any direction you want to WITHOUT getting a ride. This will give you the courage to move to rough water and larger waves until you get into water wild enough to give you some fun rides. Rich admits that my advice was useful (and so was the advice from everyone else). Because he was so conservative his first time trying to surf, Rich never ended up falling out of his boat and never needed a rescue. But several of us instructors did! One of these times Dave was out of his boat with Ken assisting him get back in and me standing by a few meters away. Bart, who was standing by on the other side, decided to come around to my side. He failed to follow the first rule of kayak surfing and got between us and a large wave. The wave grabbed his boat and surfed it into me. The nose of his boat clipped my right arm, went under my left arm, and pulled my paddle out of my hands on it's way by. Bart fell over after going over the prow of my boat but then rolled back up. When the wave and kayak passed I was still upright and able to paddle with my hands over to get my paddle back before the next wave. Afterwards it occurred to me that the thing experts tell you to do in this situation is to fall over away from the out-of-control boat and let it ride over the smooth bottom of your kayak. Then roll back up.
After our late morning surfing we met the Tomales Point group as they came back from their trip. In camp we finished packing, loaded our boats and headed down the bay. After a stop at Hog Island for a snack we crossed back over to Miller Park were our cars were parked. Close to my car, a dry towel and clean clothes I got bold enough to practice rolls in the cold Tomales Bay water. I showed Bart the resting brace and he was quickly able to do it himself. He is an instructor for Outdoor Unlimited at UCSF and has taken the American Canoe Association IDW class (a prerequisite for becoming a certified kayak instructor). But he had never seen anything like the resting brace and was tickled to learn how to do it.