Roger and I arranged to meet again for the "regular" Tuesday evening paddle at 4:30 PM. The evening before I had gone ice skating and had fallen forward onto my arms. I stood back up at the time and continued skating, but that evening my shoulders and upper arms started to hurt. By Tuesday afternoon I could not raise my elbows as high as my shoulders without a lot of pain. I always bring painkillers like ibuprofen on kayaking expeditions for emergencies, but I have never needed to take them, until now. I took a small dose several hours before meeting Roger and then told him I might be taking it easy. I also told him that ice skating is a dangerous sport, and I was going to stick to surfing rock gardens from now on!
We launched over some pretty large waves and headed out. We paddled out to the arched rock at Goat Rock Beach first and looked at the rough waves washing through the arch. During a calm set of waves we both went through and continued south. The waves were much rougher this time than a few weeks ago when we did this same section of coastline. We went behind a few rocks only to notice a large wave breaking around and past where we had just been! This convinced us to be a little more conservative, or at least more careful with our timing.
I told Roger that I was going to keep up with "Rogers Rule" and do 6 practice rolls in the kayak, but they were all going to be extended Greenland rolls which are much easier on your arms and shoulders. He asked to see one, so I rolled the kayak over and came up on one side and then the other. Roger noticed that while I am doing these rolls, my arms stay bent with my elbows close to my body and my hands holding the end of the paddle near my shoulders. This is called "the box" and is considered the safest way to hold your arms when bracing in rough water. It is safest because you are least likely to injure your joints with everything held in close.
When we got to Wrights Beach we decided not to paddle past it to The Hogback at Duncans Point. Instead we paddled only half way past the beach to go around a large offshore rock we had avoided last time due to a pod of harbor seals hauled out in the area. The harbor seals were all gone, probably washed off the shallow rocks by the rough waves. We turned back with my arms already aching more than they should be. As we paddled back towards The Arch, Roger slowly pulled ahead of me as I nursed my shoulders and took it easy. I wanted to go through the arch but figured I should avoid it this time. Roger turned towards the arch and that did it! If he was going to have fun in the arch then I was not going to miss out! It can't get too bad in there can it? This is a large arch, ten meters tall and ten meters wide. As I approached the arch I saw two large waves wrap around the end of the rock and slam into themselves in the middle of the channel. The next wave was a little smaller and I figured I had just seen "all three" waves of a large set and the water would be calmer for a while. So I immediately started in.
There are wave theory reasons why big single waves will have a slightly smaller wave in front and another behind it. So it is a pretty good bet that large waves will come in threes. But there is nothing preventing a chain of more than one large wave from happening, with a slightly smaller wave before the first and after the last large one. Many people claim that the ocean has a pattern. Surfers used to claim that every seventh wave was a larger than usual one. This is definitely not true. As I started into the arch a wave larger than I expected rose up behind me and started surfing me through. It let go before meeting itself in the middle and breaking. I thought "This isn't so bad" and figured that I could paddle over the middle section, where the waves wrapped around to hit themselves, before the next one arrived. But as I started paddling faster to do just this, my boat moved backwards. I got that sinking feeling that means the trough of a big wave is arriving. That sinking feeling is one part fear, one part actual falling as the trough of the wave drops the boat down, one part the feeling of the boat being pulled backwards as the water cycles back into the wave, and one part fear as you realize what all this means.
I glanced over my shoulder and decided that the wave was steep enough that it was going to break before it got to me. Experience has taught me that in times like this the wrong thing to do is to paddle like mad and try to get away. You cannot. Instead the correct thing to do is to stop paddling so hard and concentrate on pointing the boat in a direction you would like it to go. I was near the left wall of the arch and didn't want to get surfed up against it, so I turned the boat slightly to the right. The wave broke and the white water slammed into me. The boat turned right and sideways to the breaker then side-surfed halfway through the arch. Lying sideways I could not see the other half of this wave wrap around the rock but when it met my half of the wave it slammed into the bottom of the boat and spun me around. I was unprepared to suddenly stop and the paddle I was bracing on started to sink. I considered letting the boat fall over so I could roll back up. I should have started sculling but instead did an ungraceful jerk with my body and sliced the paddle back to the surface. I slapped the paddle back down and was able to brace the boat back upright again.
I found myself only slightly more than half way through the arch and facing the way I had come. Another large wave was coming, so instead of taking the time to turn around I backpedaled and exited the arch moving backwards as fast as I could. Roger was watching all of this, but he says that he could not see me inside there for a long time. He was starting to think that he would have to go back in there to rescue me. My arms, especially my right arm, had taken a little too much stress, so I was happy to head for the beach.
As we approached the beach I chided Roger for almost running into me the week before, and told him that he should head in first, and I would catch a different wave. A large set of waves came in and I was happy to wait them out. Roger wanted to get the landing over with and took one of these waves. The wave dumped on him but he was able to brace into it and ride it all the way to shore and way up onto the sand. He was very happy with the landing and said he liked taking the large ones because the smaller ones land you so low on the sand that a big wave can come in and hit you while you try to get out of the boat. I had learned my lesson about sets having more than three waves, and waited for the large set to truly calm down. One large wave after another came by until I lost count! But finally I saw what turned out to be the smaller one at the end and I headed in. I made a calm landing with no problems.