After all the practice with the surf on Saturday, eight of us met again on Sunday morning for a paddle out to Bodega Rocks. This was actually a trip arranged by Maryly Snow who has been out in Bodega Bay several times but never felt comfortable approaching the rough water around Bodega Rocks. This time she paddled right up behind the rock with the rest of us. Then lead by John Sommers, she followed the rest of us as one at a time as we went over some rough water between two of the rocks just south of the main Bodega Rock. Doing this sort of risky rock garden play was one of the reasons we practice in the soup zone, and this was a good extension of the previous days work.
After rounding Bodega Rocks, Roger Lamb suggested that we continue out around Bodega Head for a while. The wind was coming up, the waves around the point were pretty intimidating, and the day was gloomy and overcast. Roger suggested that we paddle north for an hour into the wind. If someone got tired, we could easily paddle back with the wind and waves at our backs. I suggested that we land at the Berkeley Marine Biology Laboratory’s little cove, called Horseshoe Cove, for lunch. Considering the roughness of the day, I figured we would turn back before paddling the 3 or 4 kilometers to the cove, but everyone made it. This was a “watershed” weekend for several of the beginning and intermediate kayakers, who said they had learned a lot and never paddled water this rough before. While sitting on the sandy beach in the calm cove we were warned by a researcher that the beach was off limits and we should not have landed there. (But he let us finish our lunch). I’m going to look into this, because I have read the Fish and Game regulations about the Marine Reserve around the laboratory and I don’t recall any restrictions on the shore. I don’t think they can forbid navigation and landing below the mean high tide line. They do forbid crossing the private land of the laboratory, so there is no way for hikers or drivers to get to this beach, but we were navigating the waters of California as protected by the State Constitution.
Later Jon Sommers contacted the director of the laboratory by email and had a very civilized discussion with him. The director agreed that the constitution and the fish and game regulations do allow us to navigate the waters and land on the beaches. But he asked us to refrain from doing this because of experiments that they run in the waters and on the beaches here. Apparenly they survey the beach for life and debris on a regular basis and we could mess up their statistics. We all agreed to avoid this beautiful beach in the future, but reserved the right to land there in an emergency.
As we finished our lunch the sun came out and the wind died down. Instead of a challenging trip back with following seas, we had a very nice paddle with the waves decreasing dramatically while we watched. There is a shallow reef west of Bodega Head that Roger expected to get some scary surf rides from, but we paddled over it without even realizing we missed it until we were back inside the bay. John and Roger paddled close to shore and between the rocks behind the tip of Bodega Head to get their fill of scary paddling. Maryly paddled over near them while I hung back to respond to the trouble I feared would happen but fortunately never did. When we were a little farther into the bay everyone came over and paddled behind a few rocks in calmer water, so we all got our fill of rock gardening. Then we paddled across to the jetty and back to Campbell Cove for our landing.