Roger Lamb is back on his paddles again, but his broken ankle still needs to be treated gently. So when we talked about paddling, he said he could not risk carrying his boat long distances. Ad a result we agreed to paddle out of Bodega Harbor, which is Roger’s favorite paddle anyway! Roger invited Jeanie Bracken to join us and I invited Konstantin Gortinsky. Then as I was driving down Bay Flat Road I saw Hans and Carla getting ready to launch on the side of the road! They had rolled their kayaks down from Carla’s house and were about to launch on the side of the harbor. The timing was perfect, by the time they paddled across the harbor the rest of us were ready and suddenly there were six of us paddling!
The air was cold and the wind was blowing strongly from the south as Konstantin and I got ready to launch. The water was calm, the sky clear and I had hoped for a nice day paddling. The forecast was for the wind to be mild and come from the normal northwest direction. This storm wind from the opposite direction felt like it might put a kink in our plans. I put on an extra layer of fleece under my dry top. We paddled out between the arms of the jetty and grouped up to decide what to do. Roger suggested paddling into the wind and going south, so the wind would help blow us home later. Konstantin requested that we poke our heads around the end of Bodega Head and see what conditions were like farther out, then make the decision.
As we paddled towards the Head, the wind died down and the conditions became ideal! We continued north. I got warm enough that I was willing to do a practice roll in front of all the people watching for whales from the whale lookout at the top of the bluff. We saw no whales, but saw lots of California sea lions in the water. When we came to Horseshoe Cove in front of the Bodega Marine Laboratory, Hans and I were the only ones willing to poke our noses into the cove. This is where Jeanie had a bad experience in her kayak, and she was unwilling to get too close this time.
We continued around Mussel Point where some of us hoped to go surfing on Salmon Creek Beach. A large set of waves came in and broke around the point as we approached, convincing half our number to stay far from shore and forgo surfing. I had my usual problem of wanting to ride the waves so I paddled closer to the point, but not wanting to get in trouble so I stayed just out of reach. The usual result occurred, I did not get any rides from the waves breaking around the point. Closer to the beach the waves calmed back down. They didn’t break but they humped up tall and felt pretty powerful. They did not get steep enough to break until just before they slammed into the sand, so we gave up on the idea of surfing and turned back.