At a BASK meeting in San Francisco, I met a kayaker who turns out to live in my own neighborhood. Konstantin lives in Occidental and he asked me if I often go kayaking on weekdays. I suggested that the two of us should meet one weekday morning for surf launch practice at Salmon Creek Beach. We arranged to meet at the beach on Friday morning when the low tide would help make the soup zone milder. The whole week the waves had been mild and we expected more mild water. My dad was staying with me through the weekend and came along to watch. I called my nephew Jeremy and took him along to go boogie boarding. The fog was heavy around my house but it cleared as we approached the ocean and opened up into a beautiful morning with sunny beaches.
I have been doing surf launches without the wetsuit jacket lately, but the last time I went to Salmon Creek Beach I still wore the jacket. This time, especially with bright morning sun, I tried just wearing the nylon jacket over the farmer john even though I planned on getting wet. As a compromise I put on a pair of 2 millimeter neoprene gloves. This turned out to be more than enough insulation. Konstantin, when we met him in the parking lot, was putting on only a "shorty" wetsuit. He would be wearing a sit-inside kayak and did not plan on making a wet exit. He launched first and I followed his lead. We paddled out over all the breakers on the first try and made it out to sea. Konstantin then paddled a few miles north up the coast and back to "warm up" before he got wet and cold, while I played in the surf to keep my eye on Jeremy.
I seem to have passed some cusp point in the process of learning to surf. I managed to catch many of the waves before they broke and got some fantastic, exhilarating, high speed rides on the waves. I only got knocked out of the kayak once on my way in and held onto the kayak by the paddle leash. I hooked my elbow over the paddle to make it more difficult to pull the paddle away from me. But the leash is designed to slip up the bowline and hold onto the kayak by the prow. This (usually) causes it to turn and ride through the waves nose first where it pulls with the smallest possible force. This worked well for me this time. Most kayakers I know say that a paddle leash is dangerous in surf, so I recently tried surfing without one. I notice that surf-board surfers are all leashed to their boards. My opinion is that the safety of keeping my boat nearby and keeping it from running away and into people near shore is worth the slight risk that the cord may try to strangle me one day.
When Konstantin came back from his exercise paddle I was on shore talking to my dad. I watched the other kayak carefully to see if I could pick up any surfing tips. Konstantin did a great job of carving at a sharp angle across the wave faces. I think this is a difficult angle for my boat to hold because its round bottom rotates too easily while moving. Later I tried really digging in with the paddle as a rudder and did a little better job of controlling the angle that I carved across the waves. As Konstantin came close to shore that first time, we watched as the nose of his boat tipped down in the shallow water and dug into the sand. He pitch-poled over and disappeared underneath the breaker. Dad asked what a sit-inside-kayaker does in a situation like this. Konstantin demonstrated the answer by rolling his boat back up with an Eskimo roll and paddling back out into the waves. I got back in my boat and followed him out through the breakers again to hear his version of the story. He says this is only the second time he has ever been pitch-poled in his boat. His is a hand-made owner-made wooden boat but he is not worried about breaking it. He says that the process of getting pitch-poled is a lot more gentle than you would think from watching it happen to someone else.
We both surfed back towards shore and out again a few more times. But after only an hour on the ocean, Konstantin had to leave. My dad got tired and had to go sit down in the car. And Jeremy said he wouldn't mind if we left now. Everyone is quitting on me! While dad walked back to the car, Jeremy loaned me his boogie board and I tried out the waves in person. I have seen people in Kauai who were actually surfing with a boogie board. What Jeremy and I do in the surf here is not the real thing. We walk out into the breakers and wait for a large wave to break right in front of us. Then we throw ourselves towards shore using our legs and the breaking wave to accelerate us instantly up to the speed of the moving water. The flotation of the boogie board keeps you riding the edge of the white water. It may not be surfing, but it is still fun!