I scheduled this as a BASK trip announced in their calendar. One guy, Kendal, said that he was coming but griped that BASK trips never get started on time. He bet a nickel with Joan that we wouldn't launch before 1:00 PM. We met at 10 AM and I though the nickel would be lost. Eight or nine people signed up for the trip, but only five showed up in Jenner at the meeting spot. Roger Lamb showed up early and talked to the man running the Jenner Visitors Center. This man saw Roger's kayak and mentioned that his own son has paddled all of the Marin, Sonoma, and Mendocino coastline in a kayak. Roger corrected him, "No, there is still an 8 mile section of Mendocino that Mike Higgins has not paddled yet". Then he introduced himself to my dad. My dad volunteers to run the visitors center and didn't know I was meeting a bunch of other kayakers here to drive north. With slow camper-vans on Highway One and one-way lights at the construction sites, it took us 45 minutes to drive to Fort Ross, then another hour and a half to shuttle cars back and forth. We ended up launching around 1:20 PM and Kendal won the bet.
In the process of shuttling cars, Joan got a look at Goat Rock Beach where we were planning to land. It was very rough and full of surfers (a bad sign). Large waves were coming in behind Goat Rock where the northwest swell should not be able to get. I guessed that there must be a southwest component to the swell. I've heard surfers talking about keeping track of swell from the south because it makes for great surfing in places like this that are normally not good spots for it. We saw a surfer tossed into the air while trying to paddle back out to sea. Another reason to suspect that the ocean is rougher than I expected. Joan also didn't like to paddle in thick fog like this and decided to back out of the paddle. When we got back to Fort Ross there were whitecaps to the horizon and the normal northwest wind had started up already. I had planned this trip north to south so the wind and waves, if they came up, would be going in our direction.
Several people expressed concern about one guy, Craig, who was a relative beginner and was in a short (nine foot) Frenzy kayak. I have done trips like this in my Frenzy and I had talked to him before the trip. He has taken a surf launch class and paddled out of San Francisco Bay around Point Bonita. But this trip would be longer than anything he had done before. When Joan and I got back to Fort Ross, Craig was paddling around the cove with Kendal and Joan suggested a surreptitious way to test Craig's skill level: We waved at him to come in for a landing to talk to us. Then we watched carefully to see how he handled the landing in the relatively calm waves at Fort Ross Cove. Craig didn't watch the waves as carefully as Joan thought he should, didn't brace at all when a wave broke behind him, and made a poor landing. He volunteered to back out of the trip before I had to bring up the subject. I offered to take him side-surfing in a soupy beach to get lots of bracing practice the way I learned.
So when we finally launched there were only three of us. Kendal, Roger Lamb, and myself. Roger and I both had diving equipment in our boats so we could do some abalone diving. Roger had watched me abalone dive in Mendocino last year and was eager to try it out. As we paddled out of the cove, I went between the cliff and a rock through some rough water. I had pointed this gap out to Craig and told him that was the kind of kayaking we planned to do and felt obligated to demonstrate it. Roger didn't follow me through and Kendal paddled his hand-made wooden boat way around it.
We paddled behind the Fort Ross Reef and Kendal started pulling ahead (a pattern that would repeat all day). I warned Roger about the shallow water here. A little farther south than I expected a large wave rose up in front of us and threatened to break. I went over it a second after Roger, and an identical wave sneaked up behind me. We were apparently right in the middle of the shallow area and waves were refracting around the reef and going past us in both directions. The wave that came up behind me surfed me past Roger who was not in position to catch it.
Kendal found a small float in the kelp a little while later that had a line going down to the bottom. We rafted up and managed to pull it up to see what was attached to it. We had several hypotheses to test: A bag of poached abalone? A crab trap? It felt so heavy I even suggested we were pulling up the body of a drowned abalone diver. When it finally got untangled from the kelp it turned out to be some sort of fishing "thingy". A short piece of PVC pipe weighted on one end with two tuna fish cans wired to the other end. Covered with fishing hooks on short leaders. Kendal did not like the thing and wanted to remove it from the ocean. But once it came off the bottom we started drifting too close to shore. We dropped it to scatter and paddle back out to sea.
Ahead of us we saw some huge waves rise up and break far from shore. One of these looked like it broke for two or three hundred meters and continued all the way to the cliff. These huge waves looked like the seven meter tall "dump truck" waves Jamie and I saw rise up and break over the coral reefs in Kauai on a rough day. Something was causing the waves to focus and rise up to monstrous heights ahead of us, probably a shallow spot. I had never seen anything like this here before. We talked about it and decided to get closer before we decided to go around it. I thought that these waves were past a rock I call the "Half Way Rock" and thought it was way ahead of us. But before we even got to this rock the waves rose up large on our right. These didn't break and they calmed down before getting to us. I though that these were not the large dump trucks we saw before, but Kendal said this was the spot. We never saw anything more like them in front of us, however, so Kendal must have been correct. We did see some large waves break behind us a little later, so our timing was just good. Since these waves were closer than I though they were, they must not have been as large as I thought they were either.
With a following wind and the usual NW swell, we made excellent time and came by my secret abalone diving spot after two hours of paddling . Kendal had pulled way ahead of us and didn't notice when Roger and I slowed down and approached the shore. I tried blowing my whistle and waving my paddle at him. While I wasn't looking at Kendal, Roger saw him look our way and raised his paddle. Roger swears he saw Kendal react to this. We paddled closer to shore behind some rocks and looked at the situation. The beach here was milder than the water we had been paddling through, as I expected. But the water was full of sediment and still a little rough for diving. Roger and I both made easy landings on the beach to look around, but Kendal didn't come back to join us. After a few minutes, I decided that we should launch and go find Kendal since the water was too rough and turbid to dive anyway. Roger really wanted to try abalone diving and said he was going to try it out if he had to feel his way along the bottom by his finger tips. I suggested that we try in one of the coves south of Russian Gulch Beach. One of those was bound to be facing away from the swell and would be reasonably calm. As we were getting ready to launch, Kendal finally showed up offshore and waited for us to come out and talk. I let Roger paddle out to do this while I went behind a rock close to shore and took a short cut to the next cove.
Around the other side of the rock was a small area with calm water close to shore. It looked like a great place to make a landing and try abalone diving under these conditions. I had tried diving here once before with no success and Roger was far out to sea talking to Kendal so I paddled on without stopping. But then Roger spied this spot and went back to check it out himself while I caught up with Kendal to talk with him. He was angry at us for landing even though he was the one who paddled so far ahead of "the pack". I didn't bother to try to explain this, I just warned him that we were planning to stop again on the other side of Russian Gulch Beach. He explained that his narrow beam boat took more concentration in rough water than either Roger's or mine and he had to focus on the waves and couldn't watch us at the same time. He explained that his boat was designed for touring and didn't turn fast enough to go behind the rocks close to shore. He wanted to just travel. It occurred to me that Kendal had heard about this paddle through the grapevine and may not have heard my description of the trip: "We're going to hug the shoreline and go behind every rock, into every cove and through every cave". As experienced a kayaker as he is, this is not really the type of thing he likes to do and perhaps he was the person who should not have come along. The water was a lot rougher than I had planned for and wewere not getting to go behind many of the rocks, so I figured we could try harder to keep up the pace.
When we got to Russian Gulch, however, Roger was intrigued by the rows of rocks sticking out from the north end. Roger and I had paddled between all of those rocks the last time we were here. But this time, Roger predicted that they would create a sheltered calm area behind them and we could land there and go abalone diving. My brother Paul and I have tried diving for abalone in this area before and never found a single one. But the water did look calm and a little less murky so I though we could give it a try. Roger got Kendal's attention and all three of us headed towards the beach behind the rocks. Roger landed first and did not have any problems. I looked over my shoulder and saw a large wave coming. I wanted to get away from several submerged rocks before this wave found me. The shortest path to do this was between two of these rocks so I headed that way. The trough from the came sooner than I expected and started pulling me back so hard that I ended up paddling in place. Kendal was ahead of me and shouted a warning. I shouted back, "I can see it! I can see it!". Actually I hadn't seen the wave since my first glimpse of it, but I could tell where it was and how big it was from the surge of the water pulling me back. The wave finally arrived and broke over one of the no-longer submerged rocks. I braced into it and managed to stay upright. The wave let me slip back over the top of it and didn't surf me to shore. Instead it grabbed Kendal's boat and surfed him to shore, tipped his boat's nose down, plowed it into the sand, and rolled him over. He rolled back up by pushing off the shallow bottom with his paddle and paddled the last few strokes to shore. I waited for things to calm down and made a more controlled landing.
Roger and I suited up for diving. I paddled my kayak out near the point and tied it to some kelp to use as a float. The water was very shallow under the boat and occasionally my feet would touch bottom. This is not deep enough to find abalone in my estimation. The kelp was a different kind than the bull kelp that I usually find abalone under. Roger swam out from shore to join me and we dove in the shallows a few times, then went looking for deeper water. Even in the deep water, the bottom was covered with very thick kelp that grew in short fronds. All the places I have found abalone have been almost bare of kelp, perhaps because they keep the vegetation trimmed down. I tried looking in cracks and under rocks but the short kelp would wave back and forth in the surge. It would drift in front of my eyes and reduce the poor visibility to black-zero. It would drift over my head while I was looking in a crack and block out the sun. I was nervous and paranoid about having kelp wrap around my head like this. Roger thought he saw one abalone, but couldn't find it again after he got my attention. After 45 minutes of this I called a halt to the diving and we went back to shore. Roger was not terribly disappointed to quit without catching anything because he had a lot of fun diving and exploring.
Since Roger and I had seen this area before, we did a better job of keeping up with Kendal for the rest of the trip. The water was too rough for the kind of rock gardening we wanted to do anyway. When we came around the corner to where we could see Jenner Beach, Kendal turned to go closer to shore. He was looking at an abalone diver's float in the water there. I though I could see the diver resting head-up next to it but forgot to ask about that later. Roger and I stayed out a ways so we could go through a cave in the rock here. A large wave rose up and went between all the rocks. It looked steep enough going under me that I feared it would break on Kendal and shouted a warning. He heard me and barely managed to brace into it. The wave surfed him fifty meters or so and I thought he was going to hit some rocks, but he held onto it and got the boat under control. He righted himself before the rocks, turned, and used his momentum to glide between the rocks as the wave finally petered out. Roger and I went through the cave when things calmed down and quickly caught up with Kendal.
Kendal asked directions for going to Jenner beach and straight to his truck. I said I would join him if he would give Roger and me a ride to our cars at Goat Rock. But Roger was adamant about going all the way to Goat Rock. Since my car was also there, I switched my plans to follow Roger, and then Kendal decided to go there as well, if I could give him a ride to his truck. Then he paddled at full speed and pulled way ahead of us towards Goat Rock. When we finally came around to the back side of this rock we were just in time to see him making his landing, which looked like it was a controlled one.
The waves were much milder than this morning: not breaking as far out, not as large behind the rock, with a large soup zone promising a smooth ride the last 100 meters. As we got to this soupy area, a large wave rose up behind us. I tried to surf the smaller wave in front of it but failed. Then the large wave broke well behind us and a wall of white water headed for shore. I let it catch me at a 45 degree angle and braced into it. I happily discovered that it was rapidly loosing energy and was easy to hold onto, then ride all the way up the beach. Roger also made a good controlled landing and sat on the sand for a few moments waiting for the next wave to carry him a little farther up the beach before he got out of his boat.