Maryly and I are going to the Sea of Cortez in Baja in a few months, and Maryly wants to bring her Tsunami X1 kayak. But she has not found the time to become comfortable paddling this long narrow boat yet. So we went out on a practice run in moderately difficult conditions so she could get some experience. The Emeryville marina is on the east side of the San Francisco Bay where the wind has a long stretch of water to fetch up waves. The wind was not very strong, but there were some waves to paddle over and brace into. Maryly practiced paddling in different directions, into the waves, across the waves, with the waves following her.
Since the conditions were fairly calm, we decided to paddle down to where the Bay Bridge starts out over the water towards Treasure Island. When we got there, I wanted to peak around the other side of the bridge and look into the Oakland Estuary. But Maryly was uncomfortable under the concrete roadbed of the bridge with the sounds of traffic over our heads. She said that it made her think an earthquake was going to happen and drop all those cars down on her head! The earthquake managed to not happen while we were there, but we turned back to the marina anyway.