We left the truck behind the Old Mill Restaurant and launched into San Quintin Bay. On previous trips I have noticed a difficult period of time, when you get to the put-in for an expedition but you can’t launch until the next day. During this time you can’t pack your boat because you need some of the camping equipment for the last evening before the launch. I call this the “neither fish nor fowl” period when you aren’t quite a car camper any more but you aren’t a kayak camper yet. Jumping from the truck into the kayak and launching in the evening like this solved the problem very nicely in my opinion. . Loading the boats and arranging to have someone watch the truck took three hours and we didn’t start paddling until 5:00 PM. Now we are fish!
The evening paddle was beautiful but clouds came up and blocked the sun early. The same clouds blocked the moonrise that we had planned on for paddling into the dusk! We landed behind the spit near the opening of San Quintin Bay. From here we could see a tall navigation light out on the end of the spit and a fleet of fishing boats anchored nearby. The sand on this spit is made of 20% mineral sand and 80% bleached dry eel grass. It was soft and comfortable to sleep on for our first night camping. During the night the dark clouds rained on us and my old lightweight tent leaked a little bit. I had assumed I would be camping in dry sunny dessert Baja and that this tent wouldn’t be put to this much of a test!