The weather was beautiful although the water quality was patchy hear and there with murky brown water then clear water to oil spots, which is a common occurrence at Carpinteria from natural speepage on the ocean floor. After a few breaks of rolling, chating, and seeing what looked like the Red Barron flying overhead, we passed the tragic La Conchita mud slide site, which from our perspective revealed just how large and dangerous that slide was. Continuing onward towards our rounding destination-Mobile Island, Arco Island, Rincon Island, Bush Island (it's owned by the Bush Oil Co-not sure if it's the same Bush...) and the last name given to it-Biological Hazard Island from a UCLA lab that was located there conducting "experiments", was a topic of discussion as well as my question to Patric where he lived and how do you get there from Carpinteria, which he somehow thought I was asking him how to get to where he worked from Carpinteria, which led to much confussion, at which point Patric proceeded to tell me how he got to Carpinteria from where he lives, so, I think I'm still not sure where Patric lives or if Patric lives at all by this point! And the wind wasn't even blowing today! Approaching the "Island" we began to pass by the many Brown Pelicans perched there-a mixture of juveniles and adults soaking up the sun paying us no attention. I never grow tired of seeing these amazing birds during our paddles...
At first the group thought we might land somewhere on our return to get out and stretch but we decided to mush onward and were rewarded with a pod of slow moving Dolphins, nearly in the surf zone coming very close to Peter and I, skyhoping and doing some peculiar lying on the surface/flicking their tales behavior. I never get tired of seeing them either.
We picked up the pace a little getting nearer to what looked like a surfing competition at Rincon Point. Those guys where having some great runs. One of them told us we just missed seeing a Gray whale heading up coast! Oh well, you know how that goes...
Getting closer to Carpinteria we were drawn into a neat little rock garden area where Peter and Steve saw a Seal mother and her newborn pup when we realized from a group of seal guardians? up above on the bluff were protesting our innocent trespassing into a protected Seal rookery. We didn't know it at first what they wanted or were saying, enticing us to go further into the rookery until we could see two Stop signs they were holding up, then realized the blunder we had made at which point we high tailed it out of there! Then we passed a string of "keep Out Seal Rookery" floats making us really look like we were giving the sport of sea kayaking a good name! Oh well,these things happen...
We finally got back to our launch area, sore butts and backs, after 14 miles, and all landed with out incident only to be greeted by....you guessed it....THE LAW. He was a nice enough fellow from the Dept of Parks and Rec who just wanted to get our end of the seal rookery "disturbance". I told him it was Peter and Patric's fault, and gave him their addresses and phone numbers. For good measure I also gave him Paul Jonason's name and # since he never showed for today's paddle when he said he would.
JUST KIDDIN'. The lawman turned out to be a really cool guy who even expressed an interest to join us on a paddle sometime! He used to guide in Alaska and wanted to get back into paddling. We need a lawman to fill Mike Brown's vacant post in our neighborhood. All in all a pleasant day finished off with a satisfying meal at "The Siam Elephant" restaurant where Peter and Patric, for their punishment,treated the rest of us to lunch.
Just kidding again...oh how I wish it were true!
John Pee