The swells out at sea have been too high the last week, as high as 15 feet off Bodega, so I have been staying away from the water. The last few days have been windy, but the waves were calming down and it looked like the wind would be mild today. Even though the swells were 8 feet high at 4:00am (the best data I could find at 6:00am), they were down from 10ft and I figured they would go down more. Even if they stayed 8 feet, I would just paddle around Gualala Point Rock, take some pictures, and head back.
The last time I landed at Gualala Beach, it was a very nice day with mild waves. I landed on the end of the beach and paddled up the river to the Visitors Center to meet my car. This time I thought I would try going the normal trail to the beach. But it was asphalt, so I first walked down it to see how long it was. It was over a kilometer, asphalt all the way, with sloping grass borders so I wouldn't be able to slide the kayak. When I got to the beach, the waves were rough. I walked up to where the river was trickling into the ocean, and the waves looked a little better there. Even though paddling down the river would add three kilometers to my trip, I decided to go that way again.
I carried the kayak down to the River Picnic area and got in the water. There was some wind blowing upstream, but I just looked forward to having some help on the trip home. When I got to the ocean with the kayak, the waves were still pretty bad. I had to try 5 times before I made it into the open sea. The first time I almost made it, but did not get underway and straightened out in time to make it over the next wave. It rolled me under the kayak and drug us both back up the beach. The sandy beach has a steep drop-off, and the waves were breaking as soon as they came to this. I had no place to stand on the other side of the breakers, and had to wait for waves to be just right. Obviously I didn't predict that too well. The next 3 times, I lost control of the kayak in the breakers, and it went back up the beach, sometimes by itself and sometimes with me in tow. Charging into the waves doesn't take much energy, but controlling the kayak does. The breakers that I stand through grab the kayak and jerk me back, taking a lot of work to overcome. If I'm still waiting for another wave to break, the previous one returns and swings the kayak around in front of me. If I don't slog out of the way and pull like crazy, the next breaker will pick up the kayak and slam it into me with tremendous force. Every time I failed, I had to rest for 10 minutes to recover from the effort and to build up my nerve again. I tried approaching the water with a Zen-like attitude: I would relax and let the kayak go where it wants, (but just hang on and stay out of the way). That didn't work either.
One day I will try tying 50 meters of line to the kayak: I'll swim out past the breakers and try pulling the kayak over them to meet me. On the 5th try, I made it and got underway. The safety line from paddle to kayak went under one leg, over the other, down under the kayak and back up the other side to hold down one end of the paddle. But there was just enough play to paddle over the next wave as it was thinking of breaking, and the rest was easy. I paddled down to Gualala Point Rock, a big rock that I described on the milder trip past here. This time I got some good pictures for the upcoming Web Page, so you will one day be able to see what it looked like from the kayak. One of the deep rectangular cracks in this rock had a little patch of sandy beach at the end of it, and a harbor seal rolling around in the water just off this beach. He would go under on the larger waves, so I don't think I got his picture. The waves were too rough to go in-between the rows of jagged teeth that I went between last time. It was also too rough to go all the way around, because of a row of smaller rocks between the big rock and Gualala Point that had waves breaking over them. There was calm water behind these, where I paused and then went all the way around the big rock to head back.
The wind had picked up, so I made slow progress, but got back to the beach eventually. When getting in the water, I had chosen a place to attempt a landing, where it looked like the waves broke for a longer distance than my entry point. As I approached, I would occasionally hear a big wave slam into the cliff on the far northern end of the beach. This would make a sound like a cannon shot that I could hear and feel through the water. I think the waves hit that cliff before the beach, so this would give me a little warning that larger waves were coming. I chose my wave to ride in, but it broke too late and I missed the ride. I saw the water start to go back out and the next wave come in, so I bailed out on the ocean side of the kayak. To my surprise, I stepped off into water that was only a meter deep. The wave broke around me without even knocking me down, but the kayak turned sideways to it, pulled strongly to shore, and broke the safely line. When I investigated later, the line had slid up the bow line rope it is looped around, and abraded itself in half. So this still wasn't a fair test of the tensile strength of my 500lb test line. I walked up the beach without getting my face wet: A good landing, by definition.
The paddle back up Gualala River was uneventful, although the wind had died down and was not much help. After towing the kayak back up the trail to the car, I drove down the coast and stopped at all the beaches I have taken off or landed from and took some pictures to go with the descriptions of previous trips. Most of the beaches had mild waves that I would have had absolutely no problem paddling out through. But Black Point Beach was Murder again! It made my morning troubles at Gualala Beach look like a tempest in a bathtub. The breakers were starting way out to sea, so 3 or 4 sets of breakers over a meter tall were always on the way in. I walked out into the breakers a little way, still in my farmer john wetsuit without the jacket, but wearing the flotation vest JUST IN CASE. I tried to take some simulated drowning pictures to go with the Black Point Beach Disaster story. But I didn't push it.