I have been unable to go paddling for ages with my friend Roger Lamb, so we arranged to meet at Bodega Bay for another exercise paddle. Maryly Snow came along to get some more practice with her new Tsunami X1 boat and I came in my little sit-inside Pirouette to get some practice surfing in it. We launched at Campbel Cove and paddled out through the jetty. Maryly was thinking that she wanted some more surf practice like we had in Mendocino recently. But the sky was dark and overcast and the waves were dumping on the long stretch of Doran Beach. We paddled along this beach looking for someplace that was better for surfing and never really found one. We watched a group of catamarans launch for some sort of race around the bay.
Roger and I braved the dumpy waves and managed to get a few short surfing rides. Roger caught some good pictures of me doing this. I was trying surfing with my wooden Greenland style paddle to see if there was a way to use it in surfing conditions. Because the waves broke so close to shore I would ride the wave in and then paddle like mad to try to get back over the breaker before I got stranded in the sand. This meant that I was often facing out to sea while still moving backwards. This is something I have heard you should get good at: surfing backwards. I'm terrible at it so far and this means the boat broaches and flips upside down on me. In the shallow water my helmeted head banged down several times into the sand. You may think landing on a sandy beach is preferable to landing in rocks, but my neck was sore for weeks. Sand is not an adequate cushion to land on off of a wave. And this is why some kayakers prefer reef surfing where the water is deeper.