Until daylight wastings time starts and messes up our schedules Roger Lamb and I can continue our regular Tuesday evening paddle. We met at 4:30 PM and the local lifeguard come over and talk to us as we got ready to launch. I expected "rescue personnel" to hassle us about the small craft advisory and try to talk us out of going. I thought he would tell us the waters are dangerous (true I suppose) and strongly suggest that we should not paddle here. However, he was quite friendly and described a trip he had done paddling his rescue surfboard in the same area we were heading towards. I'll have to count this along with the other recent friendly park ranger I talked to in Humboldt County.
Our plan was to paddle quickly north past all the places we had recently seen two weeks ago. This got us into the "Jenner Coves", a series of beautiful little rocky coves north of Jenner Beach. We turned into these coves and paddled close to shore behind every rock we could. With eight foot swell offshore this was a pretty exciting thing to do and we felt like we were right on the edge. In some places we sat behind rocks and watched large waves roar in around us, then dashed out through narrow channels when the water was a little calmer.
I lead Roger into a cauldron I knew about that had a narrow arch leading back out the side. Although the water outside this cauldron is usually pretty rough, I knew that it was usually calm inside. So I paddled straight in and sat for a while waiting for a calm set of waves. Roger wasn't as familiar with this spot so he stayed out for a while. Just as he saw a calm set for paddling into the cauldron, I saw my chance to paddle out the side channel through the arch. Roger figured that if he was quick he could follow me through the arch and take advantage of the same quiet set. But the waves rose up again and he had a wild ride inside the arch, being lifted way up and dropped way down. Over my shoulder I watched him climb up a near-vertical looking wave as he paddled out of the arch.
Sooner than we expected Russian Gulch beach appeared on our right. We paddled past this sandy beach and decided to go through one more rock garden at the next point before turning back. Then we stayed offshore for a while and skipped all the exciting places we had just been through. When we got back to Jenner Beach we turned inshore just to go through one of the caves in the "Cathedral Rock" here. We practically surfed through the cave and came out into a calm spot behind the rock. The beauty of this location, especially with rough water all around us, almost brought tears to my eyes. I commented to Roger that we were so very lucky to be here. Lucky to have the location to go to, the time and skills to get here on this particular day.
From Jenner Beach we had a long paddle past Goat Rock Beach to get back to our cars. Roger suggested that we make it a little longer by going to the big arch south of Goat Rock. When we got to the arch, the waves looked really rough wrapping around the prow of the rock and crashing into themselves in the middle of the arch. These were conditions that I would previously never have considered going through this arch. But I was feeling very comfortable in my Coaster, and with a little good timing we zoomed through the arch, then turned around to zoom back through the rough water inside the arch again!
From the start of this trip Roger had been saying that he had already done his six rolls on Sunday and he really didn't need to get cold and wet again today. But as the end of the trip came into sight, he changed his mind and started practicing rolls. My nose plugs were broken so I had brought a pair of diving goggles along to keep water out of my nose when rolling. I put the goggles on under my helmet and did six rolls to catch up with Roger. Then I took the goggles off to improve my vision as we approached the beach.
When we were a hundred meters from shore I saw a largish wave coming up behind and decided to try to surf it up onto the beach. I thought Roger was waiting this one out and I would have the wave to myself. At first things went well and the wave took me closer to shore. But my boat slipped a little back on the wave and which suddenly got very steep. The boat fell down the face of the wave and the nose was buried in the water in the trough. I stood up on my foot-pegs and held onto my paddle bracing behind me on the left. The wave plowed me forward and the boat managed to rise up out of the water. Because I was bracing on the left the boat turned left and broached into the wave. I managed to hold onto my brace and ended up riding the wave sideways towards shore down near the bottom of the breaking water.
I looked up at the top of the wave over my head and saw THE TOP of Roger's boat coming towards me from the left! I assumed that this meant that Roger had been knocked over by the wave and his boat was out of control heading towards me. I leaned farther left as hard as I could to try to pull the nose of my boat left and to expose the bottom of my boat to Rogers. I let my boat fall over into the wave so my body was as far as possible from the collision. Roger was apparently still somewhat in control and managed to right his boat just then and turn to go straight down the wave. The first he saw of me was my boat upside down next to him as he took off down the wave and left me behind. Under water I lamented that I was getting salt water up my nose as I set up for a roll. But I could feel the wave still boiling around me so I waited a few seconds until things calmed down. Somehow I was aware that Roger had crossed in front of me and gone to shore on my right. I tapped the sandy bottom with my paddle sometime in the process of setting up so I knew that the water was shallow. Then I easily rolled back up, turned the boat towards shore and rode some small breakers up onto the beach. Another successful "combat roll" in the surf!