The evening before when I landed at this beach it was low tide and I had to work my way through rocks and shallow water. After getting settled I checked the tide tables to make sure my tent was above the high tide in the middle of the night. That was no problem, high would only be three feet higher than my landing, but the low the next morning would be three feet lower than the "high low" I landed in! I might not be able to launch at all when the tide was three feet lower. Rather than move to a less rocky beach, I decided to deal with it in the morning. This worked out well as I found one narrow channel of sand to launch out through the rocks.
After the launch I had twenty minutes of fun rock gardening before passing Moonstone Beach and starting 26 kilometers of boring sandy beach to get to Humboldt Bay. At first I saw a few dolphins but they abandoned me and ho whales followed me to help me pass the time. I paddled towards the farthest point of land I could see and managed to resist looking at my watch but once every hour. The last landmark I picked was a power plant I came abreast of by lunch time. To my great pleasure I discovered that I could just see the arms of the Humboldt Bay Jetty from there! So after lunch I had a target to paddle towards. The jetty got closer, then I could hear the fog horn, next I crossed in front of the southern breakwater, and finally I was attempting to surf the waves into the harbor. It took another hour of paddling to get into the harbor, past the Coast Guard Lifeboat Station, and on to the campground. I landed at 2:00 PM, an hour sooner than I had hoped!
