I was driving north from Berkeley to work and then home this day, so I had several options on where to stop to kayak. I considered going out to Point Reyes Point, since I have been planning a long trip around there soon, and I could do a short trip around one end of it. But the day was overcast, and the point sounded too picturesque for this day. On this dreary day, I decided to do the short run between Point Reyes Beach South and Point Reyes Beach North. There shouldn't be much to see, and this would cut 2 miles off the paddle around Point Reyes Point next trip out here. I drove to the south beach, figuring to go north and turn around, but when I arrived, there were no rest-room facilities. I needed to go, so I drove the 2 miles back to the north beach where I knew there was a rest-room. Once I was there, I got in the water and did the route backwards.
The waves looked a lot rougher than the 2 to 3 foot swells I have been seeing in the NOAA data all week. I pulled the kayak south a few hundred meters over the sand to a place that looked like a calm notch in the breakers. I did two aborted attempts to get started, when I lost control of the kayak and got tangled up in the safety line. The first time this happened, I rushed to untangle myself before a breaker came to jerk the kayak away. The second time, I didn't have time to untangle, so I relaxed and sat back into the breaker. My suit and vest made me so buoyant that when I let my feet come up off the sand, I zoomed up the beach at the same speed as the kayak and the cord wrapped around my foot didn't try to pull it off. On the third try, I got into the kayak and out to sea. There really was a calm notch in the breakers here and it was an easy access.
This was another 2 mile stretch of nearly identical beach, but even on a trip like this, there is always the wildlife to watch. Several flotillas of brown pelicans skimmed by. I saw a kelp head in the middle of nowhere and wondered how it got to this long stretch of sandy beach. As I got closer to it, I noticed that it sort of had two lobes, and it had harry eyebrows pointing up and back towards me. It was a harbor seal facing directly away from me, and I was zooming up to within 10 meters of it. I expected him to panic when he noticed me, but I guess he knew I was coming, because he just disappeared quietly. A little later, something splashed off the left side of the kayak, and I looked down to the impression of a large thin flipper and a trail of bubbles going down. I started to hypothesize that I had seen a fish jump, when a "murre" (a little bird that looks like a streamlined penguin that can fly), popped out of the water 10 meters away and beat a noisy retreat. He must have come up next to me and dove away in a panic. And then there was always the fishing boats to watch. One particularly annoying party boat, with megaphone, seemed to follow me down the beach and back. Point Reyes Beach South was just another section of sandy beach, with parking lot. I didn't see a good place to land or take off from here, but I didn't spend much time looking. I'll find one when I have to launch from here.
When I got back to Point Reyes Beach North, my notch in the breakers was still there. I hit upon the idea of paddling into the notch, and then turning parallel to the beach and paddling into the shallower water in front of an already broken wave. I reasoned that this would make for a longer, milder, ride than getting caught between a wave that is just starting to break and the edge of the deep water at the end of the notch. But I kept heading closer and closer to shore in the notch, while trying to build up courage to turn into a breaker on purpose. Eventually, I ended up only 20 meters from shore and figured I should just go straight in. I rode one wave most of the way in from there, but braced too hard into the breakers and slipped back over the top of them. Another wave broke behind me, so I stepped out into waist deep water and let the kayak get pulled the rest of the way up. A fairly successful landing.
Resting up the beach a ways, I looked back out the notch in the breakers, and saw that all two dozen boats I had seen in the last 2 hours of paddling had congregated just off shore here. There were so many, it looked to me like there was only 10 meters or less between each boat, and they should be clunking into each other. Why were they all here right now? Did they follow me here, or is my notch a good place to catch fish?