Maryly and I are about to leave for a kayaking trip in Costa Rica, so I will not have an more opportunities to play with my new river/surfing boat for three or four weeks. Although it was late in the day I decided to try out Salmon Creek Beach again. The sky was partially cloudy, the tide low, the swell at sea had dropped to 7 feet around noon but risen back up to 10 feet when I made it to the coast around 5:00 PM. The big waves were breaking far out from shore and there was a lot of choppy/soupy water close to shore. The sun came out from between clouds and convinced me to try it out.
I put on an insulated dive skin, a 6mm farmer john wetsuit, booties, a paddle jacket, PFD, ear plugs and a helmet. I dithered about using a modern "sport paddle" or my Greenland style paddle. In rough surf the Greenland is not supposed to be a good choice because it doesn't have the surface area of a modern paddle for bracing into the water. However, I feel more comfortable about my roll with the Greenland paddle so I decided to try it out in rough conditions. I carried my boat down to the edge of the water.
The waves calmed down for a minute after I got in my boat and I had to knuckle-walk the boat 20 meters before I found water deep enough to paddle into. I paddled over some mild spilling waves and headed out into a 100 meter wide band of noisy white water. I turned sideways to some of the larger waves and braced into them to get rides most of the way back to dry sand. I got several rides sideways on the waves close to shore but never managed to truly surf there. I did notice that the Greenland paddle sank too easily in the waves. I found myself almost instinctively sculling a few strokes and this kept the boat from going over. My confidence was good enough for heading farther out.
About 50 meters out I came across a mild place where the waves calmed back down and reformed. The large waves were breaking and kicking up sand farther out so I deduced I was in a deep channel between the shore and the shallows of the outer break. I think this was a local phenomena caused by a rip-current running out and depositing sand in the shallow area.
The rip current was a good place to sit and catch my breath but not a good place to catch a surfing ride. I could see waves breaking north and south of me but they usually petered out when I tried to ride them in. I think I was subconsciously gravitating to the safe areas in the water and avoiding getting into trouble. So I moved a little farther south where the waves looked a little rougher. Here I discovered that waves were refracting around some underwater feature and zipping into each other. Two waves would cross at an angle and break larger than expected. As I was side surfing on one wave it crossed another like this and smashed me over.
I waited for the water to calm down and started internally debating how to roll back up. When the water stopped trying to take my paddle away from me I moved it into an extended position to do a Greenland roll. But then I worried that rough water might pull the extended paddle out of my hands. I moved the paddle back to the centered position. I started to think about which side I should come up on. You should try to come up towards the waves because they will help lift the paddle up. But by then I had been underwater for what seemed like quite some time. I did a C-to-C roll with whichever end of the paddle was farthest forward and came up to gasp for breath. Another successful "combat roll"!
I paddled back out and managed to get one interesting ride facing down the waves. I was on a wave that had been refracted a little south so it pushed me THROUGH several other waves. These waves diagonal to me were not breaking but the nose of my boat would plow through them and out the other side. My face would slam into the water while the boat was half way through and I would be blinded for a few seconds. When the ride petered out I decided to turn north and get closer to where I launched and where there were no diagonal waves like this.
But every time I made a little progress north, the rip current and the diagonal waves would push me back south again. So I let one of the waves give me a ride back up onto the sand for a rest. I got out and sat on my boat for a minute. I considered getting back in the water but the sun was lost behind the clouds on the horizon. I carried the boat back to my car. Despite only spending 20 minutes in the water I was still changing out of the wetsuit when it got too dark to see without a flashlight. Next time I'll start earlier!