This was George Miller's first time out since his arm injury and he opted to paddle the harbor with his wife Carol and John Ernst and his fiancee, Julianne. Unfortunately, John had a patient with an emergency that caused him to run an hour late. So George paddled out with the remainder of the group until the pond and then he and Carol turned back. George was a little nervous about how he was going to do because his arm has been extremely weak. During lunch he told us this was better than the physical therapy he has been going to and that his speed was "pretty good". Next month, I'll bet he's doing channel crossings again.

The remainder of us, Peter, Kiran, Tim, Patrick 1, Patrick 2, Chris, Paul, Lee H, Mike K, and I, paddled out to the Hueneme Buoy and hung around there doing some rolls. Actually, the others were doing rolls and I was doing roll attempts. Finally I figured out what I was doing wrong and managed to find myself breathing air again. I did notice that on my first roll attempt, I was wearing my nose clip. That made it necessary to breathe through an open mouth. I even tried this technique under water until I got a mouth full of sea water. I didn't make that mistake twice.

Right after we left the CIH entrance, a 40 - 45 foot cruiser came out with a very large wake and passed extremely close to us. A quick look around insured that everybody had made it through the wake without any problem. Then we noticed that the boat had turned around and was coming back at us. We figured he wanted another try at trying to capsize a kayak. Fortunately, we won that round too and he never returned.

While we were at the buoy rolling, we noticed a very small juvenile seagull paddling amongst us. He (or she) was coming right up to our boats. All of a sudden from out of nowhere, a second one appeared. Patrick 1 finally asked who was pulling birds out of their boats.

We then set sail for what has become known as the O'Sullivan triangle. We paddled out on a heading towards Oil Platform Gail and wound up about 1.5 - 2 miles off shore opposite the power plant 3 miles west of CIH. We hung out there for a little while and then started to paddle back. There was a good 4-6 foot swell with an occasional larger one that was coming from directly astern of us. We all had a blast surfing these waves back to the harbor.

As we entered the harbor, we heard John calling George to ask where the rest of us were. George mentioned we were on the way in and we all met up for lunch.

Kiran was paddling his brand new Gulfstream for the first time. He traded his Sirocco in for it and this was the maiden voyage. We kidded him that he had to get the deck wet by either rolling or capsizing and wet exiting. If not by those methods, we all decided that he could get the deck wet by the rest of us following the ancient Inuit ceremony of removing the smells of the women who sewed the skins on the boat. He did look a little nervous, when Chris grabbed one end of his boat and Peter the other. However, he quickly caught on to the fact that we would never force anyone to get wet who didn't want to..

We all had a good time and really enjoyed our time on the water in the company of good friends.

Steve Holtzman

Photos by Peter O Sullivan and Paul Jonason

Peter Roll

Paul Scull