Although Dave has paddled in San Diego several times, I have never had a boat down there. We met at my hotel and decided that we wanted to paddle near some of the Navy submarines if we could do it. We arrived at Shelter Island and basically followed Rob Mohle's trip SD4 from his book Adventure Kayaking, Trips from Bug Sur to San Diego. We launched from a very steep beach at Shelter Island. The boats were a little bit tippy balancing on the beach at the stern with the bows trying to float away, but we launched without incident. Dave waited for me because I had mentioned that I had just adjusted my foot pegs and he remembered the incident at a CKF practice session where someone had not adjusted their foot pegs and it created a major problem.

After a moment , we were off. We carried on a conversation with the crew of a sailboat that was motoring out and we were passing. They asked if we could get the beers cold for them when they finally arrived. There were a few sea lions and a lot of pelicans for the nature part of our trip. The water was calm and there was about a 3/4 knot ebb tide that would change to a 1.6 knot flood in about 3 hours.

We paddled past a submarine in dry-dock that had a big shroud over the propeller. I guess the Japanese didn't get all of the secrets of it when they sold them to the Russians. Continuing on to Point Loma, we turned East and paddled to the Coronado Hotel. As we were looking for a good place to land that would have an easy portage to the other side, we noticed that although we were parallel to the beach we had drifted very close in and in fact were in the surf zone. At about that time, a 3 1/2 foot wave (Dave insists that it was at least 10 foot) started to break a little further out than Dave was. He braced into it and managed to stay upright. I was about 10 feet further out and the wave broke right on top of me getting my face and chest rather wet. Thank goodness we practice bracing a lot, because I found that my instinctive brace really does work.

We then landed without difficulty on the very flat beach and walked to the other side. We decided that it really was a little too far to comfortably carry the boats (next time we'll pack our wheels in the boat) so we walked back to our landing spot and launched through the mild surf. We both got a face full of water because the beach is so flat that you have to paddle through 3 or 4 broken waves before you get past the surf zone and both of us just got clobbered in the face as our bows knifed through one of them.

On the way back we decided to see if we could get a little closer to the subs without getting chased away or shot so we paddled to within 50 yards of the shore. Just as we passed the 1st sub with the shroud on its prop, we heard a ships horn and had to wait as a nuke attack submarine backed out of it's pen with the help of a tug. A 2nd tug came out to help turn it seaward. We were no further than 50 yards from it when we stopped paddling to let it get past us. The crew was standing on the deck and there were about 4 people standing on top of the conning tower.

All of a sudden, my old military training came back and I threw a crisp salute to the ship. One of the people on the conning tower returned it. We then noticed a small harbor patrol boat with its blue flashing light coming at us slowly. I thought they were going to tell us to move but Dave thought they were just watching the sub. He was right. They waved and continued on. We then paddled past a destroyer, an UNREP ship, and a small ship that was either an ocean going tug or a mine layer or sweeper. At that point we noticed a high speed naval boat coming towards us. It was Naval Security and they really did check us out by slowing down and talking to us. After hearing very American voices, they wished us a good day and sped off.

We then returned to Shelter Island and I have to take back the kelp award from Mike Brown from last week. I beached the nose of the boat on the sand, but the stern was still floating in about 3 feet of water. There were 2 women and a man launching and we said hello and they all watched me very gracefully pop my skirt, slide my butt onto my rear deck, and as I tried to get completely out of the boat, they watched my leg turn to rubber and I promptly fell getting my leg completely wet right up to my shorts. So much for grace.

We then loaded the boats and headed back north.

    Steve Holtzman