It was an early day for me because my wife was undecided about going yesterday because of the weather forecast for rain. By her own admission, she is a fair weather paddler. Since I didn't want to load her boat if it wasn't going to be used, and I also didn't want our boats filling up with rain water ( we haven't needed cockpit covers before), I chose to load this morning and then make the 1 1/2 hour drive up the coast.

When we arrived, it was drizzling, but I was surprised to see that we had 13 boats and 14 paddlers. Wayne and Hadley Horodowich joined us in a double that they were paddling together for the first time. They certainly handled it with less fuss than my wife and I were ever able to do when we owned a "divorce boat."

The tide was extremely high when we launched and as a result, the 2-3 foot surf was dumping. My wife took one look at it and said there was no way she was going to make it out in one piece. Wayne helped launch her and voila, she was out past the breakers without a splash. Thanks to Wayne, Steve #2, Gregg K, and the others for helping launch the rest of the group.

Once on the water, we headed west and found that we were picking up a slight tail wind. The surf was reflecting back at us and it made for some interesting conversation. Nobody was able to paddle a completely straight course. First the boats would try to turn into the wind, and then they would turn towards the beach. We paddled at a fairly good clip but nobody carried a GPS to determine actual speed or mileage. Estimates ranged from 5 nautical miles each way to 2 1/2 nautical miles each way.

Patrick, who was paddling his brand spanking new CD Extreme on its maiden voyage, referred to a previous trip log and said it was 9.6 NM round trip. By the time we reached the turn around point, the rain was really coming down and we were all completely wet.

Wayne and Hadley, left about 10 minutes before the rest of the group because they had other commitments. If it was anybody besides Wayne and Hadley, I would have insisted that we accompany them-- But Hadley is an accomplished paddler and Wayne..........well that doesn't even have to be answered.

We then started paddling back to Refugio, About 5 minutes later, I saw a tandem and thought, we couldn't possibly be catching up with Wayne. It was Ralph and his niece Cindy, paddling out to meet us. We linked up and they paddled with us all of the way back. On the return, about 1/2 of the group decided to up the pace - so we let them continue on their own. When the rest of us were about a 1/2 mile out, I received a call on the radio that the 2-3 foot surf was no longer dumping since the tide had dropped about 4 1/2 feet since we launched and we had a nice spilling surf. I was extremely proud of my wife because she does not care for surf while in a kayak and this was only her 2nd attempt at a surf landing in her closed deck boat. She made it look so easy I was worried that I would be embarrassed by capsizing, but I too made it in without having my boat and I coming in separately.

After drying off and changing clothes, most of us drove to Santa Barbara for a lunch at one of SB's well known Mexican Restaurants.

All in all a great day on the water and paddling in the rain only added to the fun.

    Steve Holtzman