This is the trip around Point Reyes Point itself, and I had been looking forward to it for quite some time. I had scheduled it with my dad several times and had to abort it for weather or other reasons. This time, the waves were very mild, the tides were mild, there was no wind, but the sky was overcast. Three out of four is not bad, I have to take what I can get. Point Reyes Point is a row of cliffs and rocks that points east and west. The west end is the most extended point on Point Reyes National Seashore, and the east end points into (and helps protect) Drakes Bay. Extending north from these rocks is beach and sand dunes, the south side plunges into the Pacific ocean. My plan was to get in the water 3 miles north at Point Reyes Beach South, and paddle 8 miles around the entire double point and into Drakes Bay. That beach and a private dock in the bay are the two closest places to access the water near the point. We drove to the beach kind of late, getting there by 9:00am. Starting late wasn't a problem this trip, the waves and wind had stayed mild all day the last few days. Also, a late start gave the sky a chance to clear up, (which it never did). Driving to the beach I worried about getting through the breakers, since this is supposed to be one of the roughest beaches in Point Reyes National Seashore. It looked pretty rough when I paddled to here without landing a few weeks earlier. from Point Reyes Beach North. But when we got there on this day, the waves were so mild that there were places on the beach that didn't seem to have any breakers at all! I got in at one of these spots with no problems.
The first 3 miles of the trip was past the last stretch of sandy beach before the point. When I got to Point Reyes, the exposed rocks on the cliff were stained red by that lichen I have seen before that makes the cliffs look like they are bleeding. Going around the point, the waves crashed into the prow of the park and rose way up above the 3 foot swells out at sea. One place that I almost paddled through turned out to have a submerged rock. The waves would hit the point, and bounce back in time to combine with the next wave coming in over this rock and rise meters up into the air. And these were mild waves! As I went around that and came into sight of the lighthouse, dad bellowed down at me from above. He had driven ahead and climbed down to the lighthouse to watch me go by. He ran around the lighthouse area like a kid, shouting and waving at me from each new vantage point, and later from several overlooks farther along the edge of the cliffs. As I came around the point, I found a rock covered with a colony of murres, the little birds that look like Penguins that can fly. It must be breeding season for these birds, I saw several colonies on rocks and cliffs that were each larger than the total number of murres I have ever seen in all my kayaking so far. When I came near, they all started clucking and calling and fanning their wings, making a cacophony of noise. I stayed a reasonable distance and they did not get upset enough to abandon their roost.
Around the point and heading away from the lighthouse, the waves calmed back down and I came to a rocky area that had a narrow channel between the cliff and the rocks. It was possible to paddle behind most of these rocks, occasionally getting zoomed along by a larger wave that made it through. There were a few harbor seals and sea lions on these rocks, including one Stellars Sea Lion who was sleeping with head and tail tucked under so you couldn't tell which end was which. Next to the Stellars was a very young, very small, sea lion that was a creamy color with dark brown flippers, tail, ears, and stripes along the eyes. It looked like a Siamese-cat-colored seal. I assume it was juvenile coloring with darker wet or stained areas. This young one saw me coming, and kept looking to the sleeping adult for guidance. I tried to drift close enough for a good picture, but 'dad' woke up and looked at me. He didn't seem too upset to see me, but I turned away. Then three other darker lumps of brown rock that I had not noticed, suddenly woke up and turned into alarmed, barking sea lions. The barking convinced the big Stellars to jump in the water. I heard his barks echoing between the rocks for a while afterwards. In one calm patch of water behind the rocks I found a dead sea lion floating in the water. As I paddled around him, there was one angle where the shoulders and flippers looked disturbingly like the shoulders of a human in the water. This rocky area finally produced an arch I could paddle under about halfway down from one point to the other. Then the cliffs got less rocky, and the shore had little sandy beaches along it.
These beaches were covered with hundreds of small harbor seals. They were extremely shy, and even when I stayed 200 meters away from shore, they would panic when they saw me and charge into the water. So many harbor seals would try to get into the water at once, that I saw a cormorant get practically tossed into the air by the press of bodies. The largest of these sandy beaches had a bunch of elephant seals hauled up on it. I would guess that they were females from the size, but there were a few smaller ones sparing in the surf. Perhaps these aggressive ones were young males. From this beach on, I kept finding elephant seal heads sticking out of the water near shore. Each head also had a few flipper tips sticking out of the water a few meters away, but I could not tell how big they really were under the water. They would raise their snout out of the water and make a booming snorting noise from time to time, which would echo around the rocks and cliffs. Sometimes I heard this noise close to me, but never saw the animal that was making it.
About this time, I ran out of film and decided to paddle a little farther from shore. This close to Drakes Bay, I could always save some of the shoreline for exploring on another trip. The rocks near the east end of the point were covered with tens of thousands of cormorants (and only thousands of pelicans). The water was almost black with cormorants, which is pretty hard to do since only their heads are visible out of the water. As a cormorant takes off, his wings slap on the water with a sharp clapping sound. When hundreds of them take off at once, this sound turns into a roaring sound that seemed vaguely familiar to me. Finally I got it: it sounded just like a crowd of people clapping. These cormorants were even more shy than the harbor seals. Most of them flew off or jumped in the water before I was within 300 meters of their rocks. Then the ones in the water took off when I went past the rock.
Dad had been running around telling people that his son was going to paddle past in a kayak! So by the time I got to the south end of the point, the group of Dutch tourists at the end of the Chimney Rock Trail probably felt like they were members of the family. We waved, and when I met them in the parking lot later, they congratulated me on making it safely. Around the corner into Drakes Bay the water became almost dead calm. There is an amazing boat house here, with railroad tracks for pulling coast guard boats in and out of the water from the enclosed garages. I don't think it is used any more. Next is a small private dock, where I landed. There is a gate a few hundred meters up the road that is normally locked, but dad found it open this afternoon, and I did not have to haul my kayak up to the National Park parking lot. On the way home, we stopped at Johnson's Oysters, of course, and had an oyster cocktail. I also bought 2 dozen oysters for a BBQ on Friday.
