The Coastal Conservatory has a fundraiser every year to make money for the restoration of the Cabrillo Lighthouse. They time this to take place during the migration of the gray whales and have activities revolving around whale watching. Lots of volunteers are needed to give tours of the lighthouse and to direct traffic for parking cars. If you sign up to do grunt work like parking cars they let you stay the night in one of the old lighthouse keepers houses! BASK organized a large number of people to come up and do this over the weekend and I signed up to help. The plan was to have enough people so nobody had to work both days. We would spend one day playing on the ocean in our kayaks and one day working for our room and board.
I looked at the forecasts before I left and saw that a storm was supposed to arrive on Monday. The Navy WAM forecasts of waves predicted that the swell at sea would get worse on Sunday, so I volunteered to play Saturday and work Sunday. I felt a little guilty about this, but it worked out OK. Almost everyone else volunteered to work Saturday and go home early on Sunday. So there were barely enough people to help out on Sunday and I felt like I did my fair share.
Roger Lamb and I carpooled up together, shared a room, and worked the same schedule. Since my kayak was on his car, we went kayaking together. Bill Steiger, BASKs reigning weather expert, told us that the current storm system would produce winds from the south all day long. So Roger and I planned a trip that involved paddling into the wind in the morning and letting it blow us back to our car in the afternoon. In this prediction Bill was entirely correct. He also predicted (as did the National Weather Service) that it would not rain until Monday. Unfortunately for the Cabrillo Lighthouse open house, this prediction was incorrect and it did rain all weekend. This prevented a lot of people from visiting the lighthouse but it didn’t stop Roger and I from getting in our dose of kayaking.
We drove north to a small bay called the Caspar Anchorage. There were practically no waves and we easily slipped off the beach into the ocean. We hugged the shoreline and headed south. If we stayed behind the rocks going around the points we could avoid going very far out to sea and avoid getting into the wind and larger swell. One point, however, had a group of large sea lions on it so we did go the long way around to avoid spooking them.
When we came back in towards shore again there was a small cove with a sandy beach and mild water. We spied two young girls hanging on the side of the cliff near the beach. One of them was near the top of a ridge and the other was part way up and having a difficult time. We couldn’t decide if they were having fun or were in trouble. We nicknamed the beach “Damsel Beach” for the damsels in distress. They didn’t call out for help and there wasn’t much we could have done so we paddled on. That evening at dinner, two teenaged girls (who were staying in the lighthouse keepers house with their dad) recounted a story about getting stuck while trying to climb a cliff. I told them we saw two girls on a cliff and we exchanged “So that was you!” with each other. For the rest of the weekend I referred to them out loud as “The Damsels”. Working as a “greeter” at the parking lot the next day the damsels came walking out of the woods. Soaking wet from the rain but heading off into another adventure. A hardy couple of girls.
Soon after leaving Damsel Beach we came to Point Cabrillo. This point has four or five deep “fjords” winding into the cliff that Roger and I have been in before. We were able to easily paddle into the first two fjords on the north side of Cabrillo point. Whale watchers waved at us from the top of the cliff next to the lighthouse. We tried to work our way around the point behind the rocks to avoid a long trip around the rough water off the point. We made it most of the way around the point but saw some large waves break across the next gap. Roger decided to go the long way around and I agreed. To make it past the last rock and farthest breaking wave we had to go a kilometer out of our way.
Once out from behind the protection of the point we found that the swell was coming almost directly from the south. The last few hours we had been paddling in the protection of Point Cabrillo and didn’t realize how rough the ocean really was. With rough waves pounding the shore we were unable to get close to the cliffs to work our way into any more fjords. Roger didn’t see anyplace ahead of us where we could even land for lunch, so we turned back to have lunch at Damsel Beach.
I had brought my parafoil kite with me to see how well it worked as a kayak sail. I took it out to see if it would give me a tow from the wind. The kite was difficult to launch in the gusty wind near the surface. Once it got wet the water made the material stick together just enough to prevent the wind from inflating it. But I finally got it up and hooked it to the boat through two brass hoops on my bowline. This allowed me to pick up my paddle and steer. The kite only stayed up for ten minutes or so and it didn’t seem to pull very hard.. If I paddled I could move the boat fast enough to relieve the tension on the string and stall the kite. I’m not convinced the boat would have moved just as fast if I had simply let it turn sideways and drift with the wind. But it was fun to fly a kite in such a unique location. Several people watching from the shore saw the kite and asked about it later. At first they thought there was a third kayak, or a sailboat behind us. But Bob Stender has been talking about bringing a parafoil to Baja and he recognized what I was trying to do.
On our way back to Damsel Beach we came to a cave that I had considered on the way out. It had a channel in front of it with access between several offshore rocks. We had avoided this area on the way out, but I decided to try looking into the cave. It was not very long and had light shinning down on a rocky shore on the other side. I was hopeful that there was enough water back there to turn left and continue behind the protection of all the rocks. I went into the channel and sat watching the waves in the cave for a while. Roger decided to follow me in just as a large set of waves arrived. The waves rose up on some shelves of rock and spilled sideways, pushing Roger sideways until he almost smashed into the side of the channel. As soon as he got in, he turned around and paddled back out over another pair of large waves.
I rode out all this excitement farther in the channel where things were not as rough. I watched a big wave break in the cave, then figured this would not happen again for a while after a big set. So I paddled into the cave while Roger watched from out at sea. The cave was a disappointment. Boulders were piled up on all sides of the exit and prevented me from continuing into the cove. So I turned back and rejoined Roger on the long paddle around the point and into the beach. The damsels were no longer stranded on the cliff when we got back and it had started to rain. We landed for lunch and sat against the cliff to try and get out of the worst of the rain. Then we launched and continued north exploring the back side of a point we had skipped on the way south.
We decided to cut across the opening of Caspar Anchorage and then follow the shore back to our launching spot. The southern swell was breaking over some stony reefs on this point. The waves would rise up, break over the reef, and then tons of water would pour off it in all directions. We stayed well away. The rain really started to pour down hard and it had interesting effect on the water. The hammering of the rain seemed to smooth out all the high frequency ripple on the tops of the waves. The splash from each drop merged into a misty haze just above the surface. The effect was a paradoxically smooth look to the water on a rough day. As we turned to follow the shore the waves actually did get milder because the south point of Caspar Anchorage started giving some shelter. Eventually we were able to go between the rocks and paddle behind the stony reef that looked so scary from the other side.
We continued towards the beach weaving between the rocks and avoiding some small caves that looked too rough. We were able to go close to shore and get our fill of rock gardening again. Part way into the cove I spied a shelf of rock covered with mussels. They were too far up a shallow slope to paddle close to them. Instead I tried a “seal landing”, paddling with a large swell as it slopped up onto the shelf and left me high and dry. I had enough time to jump out and pull the boat up higher before the next wave. Then I was able to walk around and carefully select a dozen or so medium sized mussels for the pot luck dinner that evening.
When we got to shore we tried to paddle up Caspar Creek but discovered it did not stay deep for long, even with rain runoff water in it. We did see a strange bird sulking in the water of the creek. It looked like some sort of grebe, but it held its head and neck low to the water like it was trying to hide from us. When we got too close it jumped out onto the beach and ran along the creek. Its body looked a lot longer and thinner than I thought grebes were constructed. Like a lot of deep ocean birds its body was so long and its legs set so far back that it could not easily stand up or walk on land. Even flapping its wings for balance it kept falling over and sliding on its keel. I think it was a sick or injured bird that was hiding in the creek to recover until we came along and inadvertently chased it back into the ocean.
Back out to the beach there was a bunch of kids surfing boogie boards in the waves near shore. The waves were much larger than when we launched, and the kids were screaming and whooping it up, having a great time on a rainy miserable day at the beach. Like kayaking, surfing is a wet sport and the addition of a little rain does not make a difference. The waves broke, calmed down, reformed and went close to shore before breaking again. I managed to ride a long distance to shore and had the wave break harmlessly under me as my prow slid up the sand.