A long time ago I paddled down the south end of the Mendocino coast past an amazing little cove called Iverson Landing. The shore is very rugged here with lots of little coves in the rocky cliffs that have sandy beaches at the ends of them. That first paddle past here I had run out of film and vowed to come back again one day. I scheduled this as a BASK paddle in the newsletter and a reasonable number of people sighed up. Especially considering that this paddle was quite a ways north of most BASK trips.
I drove up the day before to make sure we got a campground. I had wanted to camp at Anchor Bay, but that private campground was full of abalone divers. So I drove early on Friday to the Gualala River Campground. This is a Sonoma County park with first-come-first-served camping. I expected some of the RVs parked there to leave but none of them did and I had to take one of the walk-in campsites. This turned out to be a nice little campground right next to the Gualala River. The short walk from the parking area was no problem for a bunch of hardy kayakers.
Friday morning I paddled down the Gualala River and jumped over the spit to paddle in the ocean. The wind was uncharacteristically blowing early in the day. I went north for a short paddle and then let the wind blow me back to the river. As I was landing and starting up the river I saw a wind surfer setting up his sail on the north side of the river. The increasing wind looked like it would give him a good ride. Sure enough a few minutes later I looked back down river but was surprised to see the sail zipping across the open ocean! I was apparently not the only person crazy enough to go out there on a windy day.
I returned to the campground to find that two other BASKers had arrived. After dropping off their camping gear they wanted to get their boats wet so we paddled down the Gualala River together. The wind had increased and made it a difficult paddle down river. We got out to look at the ocean but the wind had whipped up the waves and made us decide not to try a launch into the ocean. We let the wind blow us back up the river to the camp. That evening everyone else who had signed up for the trip arrived and we went out to a local restaurant for a fish-and-chips dinner.
I have planned a series of these weekend trips in Mendocino County. The plan is to get a campground and invite people to take their time driving up Saturday. Then go on some interesting paddle Sunday, finishing early in the afternoon so people can drive home. This makes it a little easier to justify the long drive for some people. The main event of this weekend was to paddle from Bowling Ball Beach south to Anchor Bay. We got up early Sunday and left some cars at Anchor Bay and shuttled all the boats up the coast. Bowling Ball is the beach that is a state park but has no signs on the road. Instead two enormous signs warn everyone to “Park Facing South Only”. So I have re-arranged the words in my head and always jokingly referred to this as “Facing South Only (State) Park”.
We all launched over some mild waves and headed south. At the start of the day the sky was dark and overcast, but it cleared as the day progressed and we had sunny weather. I knew that this coastline was riddled with small rocky coves and wanted to turn into every one. On some BASK trips I feel that I should keep other people out of trouble by not leading them into rough places. But somehow I felt this would not be a problem on this trip. Sami Iwata was along and is an expert paddler. Blair Hansen was in the BASK Novice Clinic last year and has been on some challenging paddles recently. I watched her calmly paddle in choppy water and brace over waves and knew that she was developing into a great paddler. The rest I didn’t know as well, but figured they could follow us or stay offshore and out of trouble on their own.
I had a great time getting myself out of trouble several times. In one place, we tried to go close to shore between the rocks in shallow water. I was in the lead looking at one narrow gap in the rocks when Sami shouted “WAVE” behind me. I looked over my shoulder to see a wave already breaking in the shallow water. I didn’t have time to turn into it, so I backpedaled as fast as I could and successfully plowed over it tail first! My boat flew up and slammed down on the back of the wave as I shouted triumph! I figured that the water was likely to be calm for a few waves, so I immediately shot forward again and turned through the narrow gap I had been studying. Later we were lined up to go between a larger gap between two offshore rocks. As I started through I felt that sinking feeling that means I am in the trough of a big wave, then my boat pulled backwards and the tail started to tip up. I almost instinctively leaned back quickly, something I have learned from kayak surfing at Bolinas. I was leaning back so far that I stood on the foot-pegs and my helmet tapped the rear deck. The wave picked me up and shoved me forward. The boat dropped down the face of the wave and would have buried the nose in the trough if I had not been prepared. My boat shot forward out between the two rocks under control and then settled down as the wave relaxed in deeper water. Everyone else paddled through without a large wave to shove them and didn’t have the exciting ride I had.
I called this trip the Iverson Landing paddle because I intended to stop in the cove by that name for lunch. But we made it to Iverson Landing early and paddled a little farther before lunch. Then we paddled to Fish Rocks earlier than expected as well. So we spent a little time attempting to go between these two islands before heading back. The tide was low, however, and there was a sandy spit between the islands so we could not paddle through. The shores of the island were covered with sea lions, as I expected, and we didn’t want to upset them too much. So we kept our distance and continued on to the nearby Anchor Bay beach where some of our cars were parked for the after-trip shuttle.