Lovers Point/Cannery Row

In the mood

I was talking to someone on the phone today. He wants to get together to buy a paddle. Fair enough, but I told him I'd already be on the water by then. Well, when would I be finished? I don't know, I tell him, I feel like paddling all day. All the way to Moss Landing. Just put in and go.

Love is a new kayak

And so we're back together again after all these years. Like a salmon returning home to spawn, to me this "is kayak", it's imprinted on me, I am coming home. This is the first boat I paddled with Steve Scherrer so long ago. A Tempest 170. I finally found one for cheap (in candy apple red, my midlife crisis boat). Sure there's no skeg, sure it's missing a toggle or two, is badly battered and bruised. But this is a boat with character. This is a girl I can grow old with. I can surf and roll and camp out of her all at once. This gal can do it all.

Black oystercatchers

A cool, calm day, overcast, and flatish. There was no one else on the water. Virtually nobody. So, bored, I entered a small rock garden to play. Rounding one rock I looked up and what should I see not ten feet away but a pair of black oystercatchers working the wrack. I was sure I had flushed them I was so close. But they stayed, more interested in limpets than me. What a treat to see such a majestic bird go about its business. Must have sat there for ten minutes just watching. Photo from the aquarium (their captive kin).

Tide pooling

at Coral St

Thanksgiving

In 1983 I broke my neck. I was asleep in the back seat, the driver
was asleep in the front. I survived that crash and narrowly escaped paralysis. Life changed dramatically enough, though, as it was: It taught me that death will always catch you off guard. And to be appreciative for what we have.

Express egress

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I opened my e-mail Sunday to find that a friend would be on the water in 5 minutes. Well, there was no way that I could catch him, but I could head him off at the pass! So I jumped in the car and was off. Fifteen minutes later I was on the water paddling on a course set to intercept. Along the way I bumped into friends I almost never see, up ahead on the water. Then surfed the steamers rounding Hopkins. That's always a treat. Played in the rocks by the aquarium. But no friend. Unless he got a late start, he should have been there by then. But then, no, wait, there he was in the distance! So we played a bit more in the surf at McAbee Beach. Toyed with the idea of meeting our death rounding the rock under Fish Hopper, but rejected that idea. And then the rain began. That's what I miss most around here. We just hung out rafted up and chit-chatted, as the wind slowly blew
us out to sea. Then the skies opened up and it really came down. We parted company and each went our separate way, assaulted on all sides.

Up close and personal

Found this little guy out by Five Mile Buoy and phoned it in. Turns
out to have been a release. Taken in as a pup and released 7 years
7 months ago. No tags when we found him, but the people at SORAC recognized him at once. Seemed happy that he made it so long.
Little known fact: waterlogged sea otters are heavy!

Objects may be bigger than they appear

We were there for only a few minutes before things started happening. Rafted up for a short break, when all of a sudden here come whales from the north, headed straight for us, maybe 100 yards off! Grey whales steaming south. We were right in their path. Breach, breach, breach, breach, then they disappeared, four of them. They are supposed to be at peak right now. Then they appeared again, this time surfacing right in front of us about 30-50 feet out. So close you could see them clearly, six this time. Fluke! That pod dove deep and we never saw them again. The next pod (4-6 animals) came up right in front of us as we had just turned to leave, headed back in. The first popped up half a boat length just off the port side of the paddler ahead of me, who practically soiled his pants. The most beautiful mottled pink and grey--two nostrils. Smell that breath. Then off to the right a full glistening fluke that somehow I missed. Ooo's and ah's. Something to think about on the way home.

Goodbye, old friend

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/scz/boa/1756373430.html

Winter of my discontent

A blue moon on Thursday, perigee on Friday, perihelion on Saturday with an 8.7 ft exchange, and what have we got in California? Rain. You'd think to an Oregon boy it wouldn't matter, but a full moon with cloud cover just isn't the same.

And so this is Christmas ...

Heard a Beach Boys riff on the radio today. It's hard to get used to the idea of Christmas in California. It's hard to get used to the idea of a Christmas without snow. Particularly when you've got friends where it's 32°. Hard to imagine kids who think this is normal.

Size matters

I was camping with the kids at Big Sur, trudging down the road past site after site, when my daughter
(age 5) asked, "We have a big tent, right Daddy?" "No, actually ours is kind of small." "But it's bigger than THAT one, isn't it?" "No, I think it's smaller."
She so wanted our tent to be big. Where we fit into the grand scheme of things--how we compared--was important. The fact that it's under 3 lbs. (a fact Daddy is quite pleased with) of course meant nothing.

Old man and the sea

The first surprise was the weather. The sun broke through and we found ourselves sheading a layer of clothes. We saw the tiniest crystal-clear jelly fish, like pulsating glass grapes. Paddled in close all the way up to Hopkins, where we darted outside to avoid seals, then back in again into that stormy 'room'. Couldn't have been more than a foot deep. Long green surf grass, pink encrusting algae and snails. An otter lay in the shallows and watched not twenty feet off to our right, chewing and looking on, utterly disconcerned. Then, paddling out the Northwest side we hopped over rolling incoming waves. To stretch out the day, on our way back we paddled out to bouy number 4, covered with lazing tawny sea lions. Where do people from Monterey retire to? How do you upstage this? Every cloud has a dark patch too.

Frogger

Nothing can get my heart racing like crossing a shipping channel. You get out the chart and read off the course: 3 miles across, 2 of them in shipping lanes, north bound and south. That's 40 minutes in shipping lanes. 40 long minutes. I must be in the wrong sport!

The calm before the storm

... SMALL CRAFT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 8 PM PDT THIS EVENING THROUGH LATE TONIGHT ...

... GALE WARNING IN EFFECT FROM LATE TONIGHT THROUGH TUESDAY EVENING ...

Columbus Day out on the bay. Absolutely calm in the lee. The shimmer of cat's paws touching down. Followed the shore up to Hopkins where I slowly, steadily, cautiously wove my way through
the rocks without flushing a single cormorant or brown pelican that looked on--or that I presume looked on, since I wasn't making eye contact. Four young sea otters were diving and basking and feeding in the shallows beyond. Making my way up the alcoves between Hopkins and Lovers Point I came across willets and black turnstones, a silent pair of black oystercatchers, and a drab grey robin-like bird I had never seen before--a "surfbird"--working the rocks.

Mystery solved

From the undeveloped site on Blake Island, you follow the path about a hundred yards to get to fresh water. When I rounded the corner the sun was just going down, a string of moored boats bathed in golden light. As I walked I could hear the whine of rubber on rumble strips in the distance, eighteen wheelers on I-5, no doubt. But how could that be? Here I was looking west, with an island between me and I-5, five miles away. There had to be another source, so I started looking around. It didn't take long to discover that the din was coming from the bushes themselves--it was bees!

Pусское ущелье

Mendocino II

Just as my interest in kayaking was beginning to flag, along came Mendocino. Again. What a special place. Each capsize a christening. It felt good to be on and in the water again. Peter, the friend who invited me along, got video--azure blue water with a powerful blow hole set against "crapotis" (messy clapotis). Until I can download it, here's a picture of Roger Schumann going over Disney backwards (!). (Check out the sea palms!)

Downtown Seattle by night

I really came to appreciate the network of WWTA sites on my trip. What a great idea.