Rite of no passage

We must have looked at this thing for 10 minutes before giving up.
It looks straightforward enough in the picture, but there was a hole in the middle that dried out and water moving more left to right than middle-aged hippies.

In search of the perfect put-in

Belaying boats somewhere south of Pt Lobos

Kelp crabs pinch hard

as I learned from this little guy.

Which reminds me of a joke:

Q: Why does the ocean roar?
A: You would too if you had crabs on your bottom!

Back-ups to back-ups

My wife never bargained for this. Kayaking only came later, after we'd wed. Because of that I've always felt a special need to play it safe. With a wife and kids, I'm not allowed to die. So I put a lot of stock in redundancy--I want at least three reliable rescues--in case something goes wrong. First is a drysuit, second is a roll. Because that isn't 100%, my go-to back-up rescue is a paddle float roll, virtually impossible to miss. If all else fails, there's VHF and flares, my last line of defense, to help ensure that Daddy walks back through that door.