My brother Ralph and I managed to get together to go kayaking on this Friday just before Xmas. The swells at sea had been calm (under four feet) for days but the weather was threatening to get worse soon. We left a little after 9:00 AM when Ralph had dropped his daughter off at daycare. I decided to take us to Duncans Landing because it was close to home and wouldn't tax the brakes on my van, which need some work soon. The waves were reported mild enough that we might be able to go through the crack in the Hogback. The tide was predicted to be fairly high, but I wanted to keep my eyes open to collect some mussels.
When I left home the air temperature was very cold and uncomfortable. I figured changing into the wetsuit would be a trial. However, when we got to the top of the cliff the air felt much warmer and getting into the suits was not a problem at all. The old trail down to the beach has finally been repaired and we each carried a kayak down to the sand in one trip. The swells were as mild as predicted and the waves behind the point were even milder. Ralph sat down in a Frenzy kayak in the sand and waited for a large wave to pick him up. As a result, he managed to paddle out to sea without getting his feet wet. This was an advantage, since he was wearing wool socks under an old pair of sneakers. I waded out into the waves and sat down in my kayak in my usual way.
We paddled around the point to look into the crack in the Hogback. A gust of wind blew my felt hat off and then it was too cold and wet to put back on. I had my helmet stored in the kayak, so I took that out and put it on instead. I felt a little guilty wearing all that protection while Ralph was bare headed. With four foot swells the crack was in fact very passable and we paddled back and forth through it several times. We waited around for a larger waves and managed to get a few exciting rides while we were in there.
The tide was high this morning and going out. I wanted to try collecting mussels and worried that the water would be too high for this. However, as soon as we got in the water I stared seeing a stripe of mussels on every rock. We stopped behind one rock and I tried pulling them off with one hand while holding the paddle in the other. This didn't work very well. With only one hand I couldn't effectively paddle and the waves would soon carry me away from the mussel I was working on. Eventually I found that the best approach was to paddle close to a rock, drop the paddle between my knees, grab hold of the rock with both hands, then hold on with one hand while pulling out mussels with the other. The surge and the rise and fall of the water tugged and pulled on the mussels of my gripping arm. This eventually made my arms sore in a way that feels like it might have been very good stretching exercise.
Ralph enthusiastically joined in and tried collecting mussels himself. He zeroed in on the biggest ones and managed to find a monstrous one that was seven inches long. He also found the time to pick a few while in the middle of the crack in the Hogback. Ralph doesn't have a fishing license so he was probably violating fish-and-game regulations even though he turned over his few mussels to me. I pulled out my fishing license and displayed it on the back of my life vest so at least one of us was completely legal. Ralph enjoyed the idea of mussel collecting enough that he is planning on getting a license in January.
South of Duncans Landing there is an area with lots of rocks in the water. We paddled a ways down this area looking behind the large rocks farthest from shore. The swells were a little too large to allow me to hold on and collect many mussels. So we went closer to shore where we were sheltered a little from the waves and found collecting a lot easier.
I tried something I have been curious to do for some time: I got out of my kayak and climbed up onto an isolated rock in the ocean. Ralph held onto my kayak and paddled out of sight a few times, making me feel very isolated. There are a few rocks I have looked at and thought about climbing from the kayak. Usually I don't have someone to hold the kayak when I'm thinking about this. This time I had a mission: to try collecting mussels from a stable position. Many of the large mussels we had seen were barnacle covered and did not look very appetizing. Sitting on this rock, I climbed down close to the water until I found an area where the mussels were uniformly medium sized and clean enough to consider serving them in the shell. I found that once you have managed to pry one mussel out, the surrounding ones get easier and easier to remove. I tossed the mussels into Ralph's kayak then climbed down until I was waist deep in the waves. Ralph pushed my kayak towards me on a rising wave and I scrambled over the nose. I slithered on my belly to keep my center of gravity low and managed to get back into the seat without falling off.
Paddling back towards Duncans Landing we found a little inaccessible beach with two houses above it on the cliffs. We stopped here to stretch our legs for a minute and look around. There was a large rock just off shore, and it had a row of the very large mussels on it. I walked out through the shallow waves and picked several of them without any of the hassles of collecting from the kayak. But I think the best ones were collected while sitting on a rock offshore.
When we got home I left the largest trophy mussel and a few smaller ones with Ralph. He cooked them with dinner that evening to try them out. His daughter Kira is only three years old but has very adventurous taste in food. For example, she immediately wanted to take home and eat a crab the first time she saw one in the market. So we predicted that she would love mussels, and this turned out to be correct. Ralph says he didn't enjoy them as much as Kira did.
I steamed a handful of mussels for dinner that night in Berkeley, a variety of sizes to see if the large ones were tougher or less flavorful than the small ones. The really large ones tended to be a little tougher than the rest, so I'm probably not collecting any more of them. They were also a little daunting to eat when that large: You can see a lot more of the details of their bizarre and alien anatomy, more than you would care to know about the food you eat. Marty cooked the rest of the mussels by steaming them and serving in a wine sauce. We brought them to the family Christmas dinner Saturday afternoon, where they were enjoyed by a few people, like my dad, but avoided by others.
