I woke up at 2:00 AM to the sound of the high tide waves booming into a hole in one of my near-shore rocks. The noise was there when I landed here yesterday and I thought it was cool. I could feel the booming through the ground as well as hear it. It didn't keep me awake, however, until I started wondering about my beach. Large waves could suck the sand out from under me. Or trap me here unable to get off the beach. Are the waves larger than last night? Is the cannon fire louder? My marine radio died last night partway through a weather report. I have to assume that the forecast from the morning before is still correct. Conditions should remain about the same as they have been for the last few days. I finally dozed off again.
In the morning I looked at the beach and the waves, no change and no problem for launching. Which I did through the same old three foot swell with a mild breeze from the east. As I was blasting through a wave and getting salt water on my face I thought I saw an offshore rock spout like a whale. I ignored it. But as I paused outside the breaking waves to re-adjust my straps the rock rose up in a different place and spouted again. It was small, perhaps only 15 meters, a gray whale in-between the offshore rocks! I got perhaps as close as 10 meters from it but was afraid to get too close. It would come up and spout a few times then dive down and disappear for a while, as you would expect from a foraging gray whale. But it also spent a lot of time hanging head down with just the tips of it's flukes sticking out of the water. I worry about the grays that decide to hang out in places like this. There may not be enough food to sustain them here until the next migration and this little guy might be sick or starving.
I paddled north and stayed a reasonable distance from shore so I could see the outside of the big rocks that I went way inside of a day or two ago. I found no big caves in the offshore rocks like White Rock south of the Klamath River. I also kept my eye pealed for whale-spout and didn't see any until I started across the long stretch of beach south of the mouth of the river. There is a rock far out from the river and several spouts appeared around there. I headed for the rock and got reasonably close to a whale heading south. I wanted to keep going north so I let that whale go and looked for the spouts I saw going in the other direction. I hung around for a while, paddling fast when I saw the whale spouts then pausing and letting the wind blow me a little south when the whale dove deep. I finally managed to catch a few pictures of the flukes coming up before a deep dive and figured that was good enough. Then I turned north and headed towards the rocky shore north of the river mouth.
I went through the "best sea cave in Del Norte County" again of course and lingered under the overhang for a while. Around the corner from this I saw a few harbor seals sleeping on a rock. Even though it was a violation of the marine mammal protection act I glided as close as I could to the seals and sculled even closer to see if I could get into harpooning distance. I got very close and took a few pictures before the auto-wind camera noise woke one of them up and all three of them galloped off the far side of the rock. I laughed and told them that they were definitely harpoon bait. When they popped up to look a me from a safe distance I told them they would be float bags or seal-skin boots if I was a real kayak hunter.
Behind the seal rock was a beautiful little beach with high tree-covered cliffs on the north side. I landed for a rest and an early lunch before continuing on. While I was eating lunch the clear sky was suddenly socked in by a bank of fog that blew in from the north. I figured that there was no chance of getting any more good pictures this day, so I put my camera away inside the boat. Without a camera to protect I felt unleashed and "went Tsunami" through the rocks close to shore. I paddled as close to the cliff as I could find passage and took chances with the waves breaking in-between the rocks. I had a lot of fun and felt in control and confident of my ability to handle whatever the waves threw my way. But as I approached the Redwood Youth Hostel the fog lifted again and the sun came out. I took out my camera again to get some pictures of the nearby rocks for Chris, the manager of the Youth Hostel.
Once the fog lifted the early morning wind also completely disappeared and I had glassy smooth water. It was only 1:00 PM and the Hostel would not open until 4:30. If I landed I would just look at the water and wish I was out there, so I kept going. There is a rock at the next point north, only two kilometers away, that I had paddled around on an overcast day on my way down here. It is called Footsteps Rock and I thought I might get some good pictures of it while the sun was out. This turned out to be well worth the time, as this rock was very interesting. The main rock was a large ball of stone that had exfoliated some large pieces over a long period of time. Many of these pieces were still lying in the water where they fell, and you could imagine picking them up and putting the rock back together like a gigantic 3D jigsaw puzzle. There were new cracks forming in places and I could imagine the crash and the waves that would occur when they broke off into the water. Like calving glaciers but on an even longer time scale.
As I was playing around Footsteps Rock and going between some of the fractured pieces, the northwest wind came up to 15 knots like the day before and the ocean was covered with whitecaps to the horizon. I had planned this day perfectly and only had to let the wind blow me back to the Hostel, then make a surfing landing over the rocks before the tide went out and exposed them all. The water looked rough and uninviting for the rest of the day but I could sit on a picnic table and look contentedly at the water while I sorted out my equipment and waited for the Hostel to open.
I considered trying to arrange a ride to do the next 25 kilometers of the trip from Stone Lagoon to Trinidad Harbor on Monday or Tuesday. But I had just done some long days and I had completed my goal of doing all of Del Norte County so I decided to drive south and goof off for the next few days.
