Since we returned from Baja, Don Fleming has apparently been too busy to go kayaking, and he said that he was getting paddle fever. He planned a trip around Angel Island in San Fransisco Bay for Saturday or Sunday. I told him I could not come on Saturday because of my Bird Rock trip, but if he ended up doing it on Sunday I would come along, which I did. I found out that he also did the trip on Saturday, launching from Schoomaker Beach and was doing it again Sunday launching from Horseshoe Cove just for variety.
A bunch of people showed up for this trip, including Joe and Mary-Marcia who had also been on the Baja trip. We paddled around Yellow Bluff and then went straight across the bay towards Angel Island. We made it there in a surprisingly short time, only 45 minutes. Turning to go up the west side of the island, we stopped at one of the state park coves for a snack and to use the restrooms. Then we continued up and around the north end of the island. Going down the east side, Don knew the best spot to stop for lunch and lead the way to a white sandy beach in the middle of the busy San Francisco Bay.
After lunch we paddled around the southeast corner of the island into a very strong wind. I hugged the shore and went behind all the rocks. Partially to try and get out of the wind and partially just for the fun of it. A point in the middle of the island lead me back out near my companions and I rejoined them to paddle in a tight group across the bay. There were hundreds of sailboats zipping back and forth across the wind and we had to paddle directly across the paths of all these fast moving boats. Traveling in a group made us a little easier to see and avoid. It took us two hours to make it back a distance that took 45 minutes the other direction because of the strong headwind.
Sami Iwata once told me that paddling into a headwind was a good time to work on your forward paddle stroke. I had taken a forward paddle stroke class from Jean Severinghaus just before the trip to Baja and still had it fresh in my mind. There are a lot of things to keep in mind while learning to do a really efficient stroke. Posture, trying to hold your upper arms in a neutral position and rotating your torso instead of the arm sockets, pulling the paddle out of the water early, keeping your forward moving hand high, etc. It is going to take me a while to get it all to work and to break some of my old self-taught habits. There is a large solution space in all these details and every once in a while I hit on a good combination. This happened one day in Baja, and it happened again on The Bay into this head wind. When I find the right combination it seems like I am only going through the motions of putting the paddle into the water but not working very hard at all. And yet the boat moves forward anyway and I kept up or even pulled a little ahead of my companions. So I had no trouble working against the headwind across the bay. When we got close to Yellow Bluff I held onto that solution space but started working hard. I zoomed ahead and made it into the harbor long before anybody else did. Later Joe asked me "What happened?" and I told him that I had decided to use up my reserve energy when I saw the shore looming close. He replied that he was using his reserve energy just to make across the bay at all. When I can reliably control this forward paddle stroke thing, its going to open up a lot of possibilities. Like longer trips and crossings to offshore islands.