I scheduled an open ocean paddle for Sunday and invited people to drive up early and make a weekend out of it. Fred Cooper took me up on the offer and we car-pooled together on Friday evening. We arranged to stay at the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse and got up early to go abalone diving on Saturday morning. We invited everyone we knew in Mendocino County to join us and suggested to them that there might be abalone for dinner. If the hunt goes well.
Fred has never been abalone diving and wanted to try it out. I took him to Van Damme Beach where I felt we would be very sure of finding some abalone. I had only my fiberglass sit-inside Coaster kayak, so we would have to land somewhere and swim out to go diving. I have wanted for some time to go back to the area where I dove with MAX, the young guy paddling around the US several years ago. We launched at Van Damme and headed north with side trips into a few caves.
The area I wanted to dive in was a series of narrow channels behind the rocks. There are a few little pocket beaches between these channels but the first one had a couple divers on it already. The water was so calm they had come out in a canoe! The second little beach was at the end of a long notch in the cliff and had muddy water we would have to swim out through, so we kept going. Eventually we felt we had paddled too far and turned back to try a seal landing on one of the rocks.
In one of the narrow channels behind the rocks I had seen a shelf at water level. We paddled up to this shelf and climbed out onto it, then lifted our boats higher up on the rock above the rising tide. We sat on the shelf and put our diving gear on, then slipped into the water. I found a few abalone right away and lead Fred to the spot so that he could try his hand at catching one. He was unable to sneak up on them and pop one off before they clamped down too tight to pry off. We worked our way out of the channel and around a rocky cove. In the middle of the cove Fed was able to catch an abalone but it turned out to be undersized and he had to put it back. I was able to catch two legal abalone. We might have stayed longer and caught some more but the tide was rising and I saw a wave move one of the kayaks in the channel.
After a difficult time getting back in our boats with waves pushing is around, we headed south past Van Damme Beach. We went into a few caves, including "Cemetery Cave" and landed on a cobble beach for lunch. After lunch we went diving from the beach and I caught two more abalone. We returned to the Point Cabrillo Lighthouse as triumphant hunters with plenty of abalone to share for a big pot-luck dinner.