By the time I hit Camarillo, the fog was so thick I couldn't see more than 100 feet in front of the car. It cleared as I drove north but the most visibility we had all day was about 2 miles.

At Gaviota, everyone except our trip organizer showed up. We carried our boats to the water and Peter O'Sullivan, John Ernst, Patrick Martin, Chris Wood, and I got ready to launch. We watched a man and his son on 2 SOT's come in for a landing in the knee high surf. The son, who was about 9 years old, did a pretty good job bracing. Unfortunately he lost it just before reaching the shore, and his father had trouble too, both of them capsized on the same wave. They came up laughing as they dragged their boats onto the shore.

Peter was launching just next to me and as he started to go, I heard a loud crack. Peter, a.k.a. Brutus O'Muscles, had just snapped his paddle shaft while trying to push off from the shore. Peter apparently does not know his own strength and no one in his right mind should challenge him to an arm wrestling match. Fortunately he came prepared and had another paddle in his vehicle. A good lesson learned, on future paddles more of us will carry spare paddles. As it turned out, Chris was the only one with a spare paddle in his boat when we launched.

John and I were on the water waiting and Patrick and Chris both launched without incident. As Peter finally came out we noticed something was wrong on the pier. Two fishermen were holding one of their friends by his ankles and were desperately trying to haul him back onto the pier. Then we noticed that John was in his kayak below them, rolling and thrashing about like a hooked marlin. Eventually John managed to free himself from their fishing line, retrieved his wayward hat from the surf, and paddled over to join us. Although John claimed that he didn't see the monofilament fishing line that entangled him under the pier, we were suspicious that he was really going after a free sushi snack. The three fishermen are probably still talking about the huge 18' red and white fish that got away with their bait.

Finally we started to paddle and I realized that my flare kit and tow rope were still in the car. Patrick said not to worry, he had a tow rope and wouldn't feel all that comfortable with paddlers shooting flares around him. In spite of the fact that it was foggy and there was a gale warning for the afternoon further out in the channel, we pushed on. We paddled with the 10 knot wind that was blowing, but against the swells. Close to shore the conditions were fairly clam with one foot swell and flat water near the kelp beds just as LOLA had predicted.

Chris was trying to get a free ride by drafting 6" behind Patrick's boat when all of a sudden, I heard Patrick call out to me to see if I could paddle back and unstick their boats. I started paddling the 20 feet backwards and rafted up in the middle of the two stuck boats. Patrick's rudder cable was jammed onto Chris's boat and I managed to free it. The two boats were still joined though because Chris's bow is much higher than Patrick's stern so Patrick's boat was just sort of sitting on top of Chris's bow. Chris's homebuilt wooden kit boat really has a lot of buoyancy in the bow and I couldn't push it down. I finally was able to lift Patrick's boat up with the help of a swell. Where's Brutus O'Muscles when you really need him? Both Patrick and Chris are still saying it was the other guy's fault.

We did see two whales about 150 yards away. We tried to get a better view of them, but they dove deep and left us in the dust. After about 4 1/2 miles, we came to a beach and landed for a snack break. Four boats made beautiful straight in landings and I made a beautiful broached landing.

After a snack, I was feeling really warm and removed my paddling jacket. We then launched and as I sat on the beach waiting to go, a larger (3 foot?) wave came in and started pulling me out. I was going to pour it on but then I remembered that waves travel in pairs and I decided to see if he had a big brother. Sure enough, there it was. I back paddled and it broke in front of me. Unfortunately, kayaks don't float on foam so all of this soupy white water came over my deck, soaked my chest, and gave me a face full of cold water. So much for being warm. Note to self, when paddling through white water, smile with your mouth closed.

We paddled back and at one point I had a sea lion just following (trying to decide if he could breed my boat?). When we arrived back at the beach 5 kayakers made beautiful straight in approaches without getting wet..

So to sum it up, We started in the fog without our trip leader, broke one paddle, got caught in fishing line and capsized, ignored the gale warnings, forgot our flares, tangled two boats up with each other, but we did see a couple of whales, and most importantly, as usual, we had a really wonderful time.

A collaborative effort of Patrick and Steve