The rough seas finally calmed down at a time when I could go out, 7 foot swells on Friday and predicted to drop to 6 feet on Saturday, according to the Coastal Marine Forecast. My dad was staying over for a couple of his volunteer meetings in the area, and I talked him into driving up to Mendocino County with me to further The Quest. Dad had to get back for a 10:00 AM meeting, so we left at 7:00 AM and drove up Highway One in two cars. Unfortunately, there is a lot of construction on this section of road and we got stuck waiting on every one-way red light. It took us an hour and a half to get to Gualala, when I had promised dad it would only take an hour. We left a car in the parking lot of the Gualala Point Regional Park. My original plan had been to drive north from there in one car exploring the coast and searching for a place to put in. With barely enough time for dad to return, I cut short the 20 kilometer trip I was thinking about, and pulled into the Anchor Bay Campground. This is a private campground with a beach. It was full of stored campers and people living in their campers, which usually depresses me. But the camp hostess was very nice, waving the $1 day use fee (and the $1 parking fee since we were not leaving a car), so my spirits were lifted. I dumped all my equipment out of the car and dad abandoned me on the beach.
After getting dressed for the water and stowing everything in the kayak, I plowed over some mild waves and headed north towards the Fish Rocks. Before I got very close, thousands of sea lions lining these rocky islands started barking at me . I decided to turn and follow the shoreline and go visit them after they had more time to get used to me. The waves were even milder than predicted, (5 foot swells) and I went very close to shore and behind lots of rocks. Starting in Anchor Bay I figured I should go north for a while before I started south to get back to my car. My goal was a long narrow point of land, called Havens Neck, that has a tree-covered knoll on the end of it. This took me 2 kilometers north of my starting place, then 10 more kilometers down to Gualala. I paddled around the head of the point, and ducked in behind it to land on a small hidden beach on the north side. Then I launched over the waves again and headed around the point and back towards Fish Rocks.
As I had paddled past these two big rocks on the way north, I noticed some fantastic carved arches on the east rock. So I headed straight for this one hoping I could go under one of these. But the topology magnified the mild swells and created huge pounding waves right where the rocks were the most interesting. By the time I got to the other end of the rock the waves calmed down and I was able to get close again as I turned and started around the south end.
The other side of this rock, and all edges of the protected west Fish Rock, were lousy with sea lions. I had planned to travel between the islands and around both of them. But the seals looked nervous at my approach so I aborted that plan and decided to keep my distance. The water in this area was full of them as well. I paddled within a few meters of several playing pairs of sea lions, and they usually noticed me in time to splash and zoom away. As I surfed over a submerged rock, I realized I was on a collision course with one large male. I splashed the water with my paddle and he dove noisily out of the way, to come back up behind me barking in indignation. My path took me past several larger pods of seals and I hoped to get some close-up pictures of them. However, with so many pairs of eyes to notice me with, the pods always swam off before I got very close. One pod of seals took great umbrage to my presence and started following five meters behind me, all barking at the top of their voices. It was not quite loud enough to be painful but I decided to give them the satisfaction of having driven me off: I paddled directly away from Fish Rocks at full speed.
I cut back across to a large rock south of my launching spot and started paddling down the coast. In some places I got to paddle close to shore and in others I was driven away by large breaking waves. In a few places I chose to take risks: Risk of getting a face full of cold salt water, or risk of banging up the bottom of my kayak. I wasn't wearing my wetsuit jacket or my helmet, figuring I wasn't planning anything that risky. I came to a large sandy beach named Cooks Beach on my chart, but this was one place that had extremely large breaking waves even on this calm day. Just past this beach, behind the next pair of offshore rocks, was another smaller beach. Although the waves were pretty rough between the rocks and the next point, they calmed down close to the sand and I made an easy and safe landing. I noticed that my decision about where to land on the beach was not based on how calm the waves were. The primary reason was to arrange a nice photograph in the slanting rays of the sun, even though that was the roughest part of the beach.
This smaller beach was tucked in behind a point named Bourns Landing and as I started back around the point I saw evidence of another dog-hole port: Iron rings and links of chain imbedded in the rock. I passed a very narrow inlet and imagined a small boat actually sailing in there, with cables holding it away from the rock on both sides. Then I checked my chart and discovered that this inlet turned and came back out, making a small island close to shore. If I had known that I would have paddled through there! Instead I went around the long way, came back out the inlet, and completely looped the island.
Another kilometer farther south I found an incredible tower of wind-carved rock. It was made out of horizontal layers of rock that looked stacked on top of each other, with several different towers extending 20 meters out of the water like fantastic Dr. Seus chimneys. The waves were breaking violently onto this, and continued breaking the rest of the way to shore. There was no way I could paddle around this rock, so I satisfied myself with pictures from all the off-shore angles.
Just past this fantastic rock was Robinson Point. The chart showed another rock/island just offshore, and I hoped that the water would be calm enough to paddle through the channel. It did not look good. Large waves rose up just before the corner of this island and broke all the way to the cliffs in front of the channel. There was a large flat rock at water level in front of the channel, however, and this tended to extract most of the energy out of the breakers. It looked like the channel would be navigable if only you could get past those large breakers. I paddled as close as I dared, trying to get a look through the channel. It turned and I could not see all the way through to tell if there were other problems inside or on the other end. I decided not to risk this one and turned to go around Robinson point.
Apparently I was wrong about "as close as I dared" and a set of large waves rose up. I managed to plow over the first one, but in the trough of that one I saw what the problem was. There was another expanse of flat rock a little ways offshore. The second wave fell onto this rock into the trough of the first wave and broke into a two meter near vertical wall of white water rushing towards me. I tried to paddle into it, to plow over it, but it was too much. I started to hold the paddle over my head (the instinctively stupid thing to do) but remembered in time to turn it back beside me and try to brace with it. I'm going to have to practice plowing into bigger waves at Salmon Creek until this becomes second nature. As a result of this maneuver I managed to hang onto the paddle when the wave tossed me over backwards and tumbled me under.
The wave tumbled me around for what seemed like a short time compared to my last experience like this one. It did rip open both Velcro pockets and suck everything out. This time the camera, sunglasses, and watch were all on short cords, so they all stayed close by. I only lost some sunscreen and the charts I had laboriously traced the evening before and stored in a zip-lock bag. I came up in a field of white foam with no kayak in sight. I pulled on the paddle, and discovered that it wasn't attached to anything. So perhaps all those home made leashes were not so bad, I just keep stressing them too much. I looked farther and farther afield and could not see the kayak anywhere. A few more large waves arrived and the first one tumbled me under. I tried punching through the next one but had trouble doing this with the life vest on. Finally I saw a glimmer of blue plastic, the kayak had been surfed all the way to shore. I started swimming towards it.
The "shore" here was a near vertical cliff of rock. The kayak had managed to find a little triangular pocket in the cliff, a large crack floored with half-meter rocks. It was banging around, right side up, in the surf between these boulders. When I tried swimming towards this the current pulled me a little to the left and I found myself facing the vertical cliff. The waves calmed down and I tried swimming back to the right and towards the shore. But before I got there another set of large waves came in, and I felt uncomfortable close to shore. The waves went through several cycles of large and small sets. When they were big, I tried (without much success) to swim back out and push through them so I wouldn't get banged up on the cliff. When they were mild I tried (with slightly better success) to go the other way towards shore. Then I tried pushing backwards into the waves with my face towards the cliff and my feet between me and the rock so I could cushion the force with my leg muscles if I got slammed into it. This got me close to shore faster and during a calm set of waves I scrambled over the last boulders and tried to climb up above the wet water line.
The water line never ended and I discovered that I was climbing up a slick area with water dripping down the cliff. I calmed down and scrambled sideways into the pocket where the kayak was resting. The cliff was a lot less vertical near the waterline than it had looked so this was not a great feat of mountaineering. The boulders in the big crack sloped up above the waterline and I was able to pull the kayak and myself up out of the highest breakers. I was completely unharmed but trapped in a little triangular chamber. Truly vertical walls rose up on all sides of me except the side with the large breaking waves.
The kayak was also intact and I still had the paddle in my hand. I had decided to abandon the paddle close to shore (I do have a spare this time in the kayak). But just as I was scrambling out of the water, it drifted back up to me so I had scooped it up. I had not been wearing my helmet (in the kayak, in case I decided to do something risky) or the jacket of the wetsuit (it was a warm sunny day). My arms were tingling from the cold but I was not shivering (from the cold or reaction to the close call). My arms and legs were very weak and rubbery from the exertion and the stress. I opened up the kayak and got out my picnic lunch and a windbreaker to cover my arms. I went to sit in the sun on a spot just out of the crack. I didn't particularly enjoy the sandwich, but ate it mechanically (with lots of Gatorade) to start replenishing the energy I had expended.
When I felt stronger I took everything out of the kayak and turned it over to drain any water out. There wasn't much. I examined the hull for cracks and found none. I have put so many scratches on it in the past that finding any "new" scratches was impossible. The kayak was in perfect shape, and my thanks go out to the designers of this boat and the formulators of the flexible plastic material. I turned on the scanner of my marine radio. Inside this big crack in the rock I could not pick up the weather channel, but I heard a fishing boat talking to someone about the nice catch they had. I considered hailing them and asking them to advise the Coast Guard of my situation. But watching the waves, I began to suspect I could still get myself out of this.
I sat in my sunny spot and watched the action. Waves were still rising up and breaking noisily into the corner of the big rock just south of me. But the white water lost a lot of energy breaking over the flat shelf of rock in front of the channel. Between the shelf and me the water got deeper again, and even the largest breakers calmed down and looked survivable. It would probably not be difficult to slip over the boulders into this soupy water and escape into the channel behind the rock. I still could not see into the channel and did not know if it was navigable, so this was paddling into the unknown. North of me the big waves broke all the way into the cliff. If I got caught by one of those it would surf me back into the cliff and I would be in the same, or worse, position I was in now. Every once in a while things calmed down, these breakers disappeared, and I could paddle out to the right and safely get to the open sea. But picking the right time would be difficult. I decided to put on my helmet for a rocky passage, my wetsuit jacket for another dunking in cold water, and head left into the channel between the cliff and the big rock on Robinson Point.
First I gave myself another fifteen minutes to recover some strength, put on the jacket and helmet, tie the paddle leash back on , and re-pack everything in the kayak. Then I dragged the kayak over the boulders and stumbled into the water again. A few large waves came in, and I tried to hold the nose of the kayak up over the breakers. I have learned that this can be very tiring on the best of beaches. As the kayak tugged me back and forth in the surf, my shins and knees stared banging into boulders under the water. I did more damage to myself than when swimming to shore. I took to heart the lessons I taught myself at Salmon Creek Beach: It is far easier to sit in the kayak in soupy water and paddle over the breakers (risking a face full of cold water) than to stand in the breakers and get your arms bruised by the kayak (and your legs by the rocks in this case). I scrambled into the kayak and paddled over the next few breakers.
This did work out OK, but I was sort of trapped near shore: I could paddle over most of the breakers, but I was afraid to turn left and go behind the shelf of rock because I didn't want to be caught sideways to a breaker. They all looked too big to turn into so I gave in, trusted my observations about the shelf, and just went for it. A breaker came over the shelf and grabbed the kayak but it only surfed me a few meters sideways before petering out. I was right! Step two accomplished. Next was to paddle into the channel and find out if it was really was navigable. Half way down the channel there was a jumble of rocks sticking out of the water. I waited for a wave to come in and glided over them without even getting another scratch on the kayak. Then I found a dent in the side of the channel that I could stop in to catch my breath out of harms way for a minute. The final step is to get back out the other side, but I still couldn't see from my resting space, and it might be just as bad as the surf I had left behind.
When I caught my breath, and when the cramps in my arms had relaxed, I headed out the last ten meters. At first it looked fairly easy, but as I cleared the channel I saw another shelf extending out on my right. A wave broke over this and pushed me sideways. I tried to power out through the rest of the channel, which extended underwater through this shelf. But then a rock appeared in the middle of the channel! A wave broke over this and threatened to tip me over backwards. I barely managed to plow over it. I shouted at the waves: "You can't do this to me again! I won't! Let! It! Happen!" I vectored right to get around the rock and managed to plow over the next breaker as well. I kept shouting and plowing over several more breakers and suddenly found I could relax. I had made it safely out to sea.
When I turned to the left the Gualala River was only a kilometer away from me. The whole scary part of the adventure happened just a few hundred meters from down-town Gualala. They could probably hear me shouting from the buildings at the top of the cliff! I might have realized this earlier, if my chart had not been sucked out of my pocket and drifted away when I first tumbled into the water. I calmly paddled up to the mouth of the river, calmly slid ashore with no problems. Paddled up the river to the picnic spot where I landed the last two times here. The trees do not have their spring leaves yet, so the sun shone through the branches and warmed me as I changed into street clothes, then carried everything in two trips up to the car.
