Around this point we could see Goleta Point which is where the University of California at Santa Barbara is located. Between Coal Oil and Goleta point there is a large housing tract that we assume is student housing. The cliff here is eroding and several of the houses are hanging over the edge. Does this make the rent more or less expensive? It was apparent that someone had spent a large amount of money trying to prevent these houses from falling into the ocean. Caissons had been drilled all the way down to bedrock for the foundations, but then the cliff had simply eroded away from around them, exposing the concrete as multiple towers still holding the house up. Now the ocean will start work on the concrete caissons and wear those out from under the houses.
Around Goleta Point we found shallow water with great surfing waves. In the middle of the week there were no surfers on these when we came by. I managed to get a little bit of a ride but the round bottom of my touring kayak could not hold onto the wave. Even though I dropped the skeg down, the boat rotated into a broach and slipped over the wave. In my Coaster I could have edged and turned and stayed on the wave longer!
We were starting to regret the impending end of the trip so we stopped for a break to stretch out the day a little longer. We found a section of Goleta Beach with some small caves in the cliff behind the beach. A group of young boys came down the beach past us while I was taking a picture of our kayaks on the sand. They saw what I was doing and one of them told his friends to stop and not run in front of the camera. I was impressed that someone so young had already learned to be considerate of others. So when a woman came walking down the beach a minute behind the boys I asked her if she was related to those kids. I told here that they seemed like good boys and complimented her for raising them so well.
We launched and paddled past more long sections of sandy beaches, interrupted by points that had outcroppings of pure asphalt sticking out of the bluff and sagging in the heat of the sun. At lunch time we stopped at Santa Barbara Point even though we were almost close enough to paddle in for the final landing of the trip. Then when we paddled around the corner of this point we found we were inside a “swim only” zone. Fred and John turned and went out around the buoys, I cut across the zone. We paddled along the breakwater that protects the harbor and then had to paddle around a long sand spit off the end of the breaker. After backtracking quite a distance we could turn right onto the public boat ramp that was directly in front of the parking lot where Fred had left the car.
We bought a few minutes of time on a faucet to wash off our gear and then I rolled my kayak on wheels up to a nearby motel for the evening. I was meeting my brother at the harbor the next day to go on a diving trip. We had landed a day early because we had good luck with the weather and had never used up our layover day. Fred was anxious to drive home and get back to work but we had time to go out to an early dinner before he and John drove home. I spent the extra day in Santa Barbara pedaling around town on a bicycle, catching up on some of my email, doing a little shopping and lazing about reading.
Fred did a calculation on the map and tells me that I have only 250 more miles of the California coastline to complete my quest. On this trip we were often anxious about getting caught camping on the beaches where we landed for the night. It can only get worse as I go farther south and go past Los Angeles. Sid Taylor, who has paddled all of California twice, has almost convinced me to not bother doing this last 250 miles. However, instead of getting bummed by the development of the coastline, I have decided to take advantage of it. I’m planning on continuing the quest. Since it is impossible to camp on the beaches then I’ll just do the trip from one beachside motel to the next. When I get to San Diego I’ll stay in a motel for two nights and do a day trip to the Mexican border and back. I’ll use Amtrack to shuttle my kayak back to Santa Barbara where I know the train station is a few blocks from the boat ramp and parking lot.