Carpinteria to Butterfly
Today Mike Bode and I discovered that the rest of the paddling community must have had good reasons for not wanting to paddle with us. But since that didn't bother us much, we went ahead and had a pretty good time on our own. We ended up laughing a bit more than normal since we didn't need to worry about offending anyone. At least offending others was not a concern until I sat down with the intention of cranking out this trip report. So in the name of legal disclaimers and good manners I hereby do declare than anything said in this trip report is totally bogus and devoid of any truth unless it got in by accident.

We started out with a little wind chop which sped our trip to Butterfly Beach in Montecito. In spite of the fact that we were busy gabbing the whole way, we made the 6 nautical mile trip in about 2 hours.

Our landings at Butterfly Beach became a bit more interesting when we discovered camouflaged attack rocks hiding in the surf. Looking at the beach from the ocean we couldn't see the rocks. But just when we were complimenting ourselves on how well we were riding the surf, these rocks jumped out of the water and tried to bonk our boats. But due to our spectacular surfing skills and superb dumb luck we both made it to the beach without hurting any rocks.

The tide had gone out a bit by the time we were through ogling the babes strolling the beach (actually the babes were being pushed in strollers by their parents). When we saw how many rocks were waiting for a second chance at us, it was almost enough to convince us to carry our boats back to Carpinteria. But since neither of us had a lick of sense, we went ahead a launched out boats through the mine field. Again a little skill and a lot of luck got us through the surf without so much as giving a rock a headache.

Mike had his new VHS radio on, and from time to time the Coast Guard would send out a message which was garbled with microphone feedback. The responses they received were even more unintelligible to us. But at one point we clearly heard the Coast Guard ask "Are you in danger?" The best that we could decipher, the response was something like, "I'm not in as much danger now as I will be when my wife's boyfriend finds out what I did with his boat."

One story led to another and before long we had managed to talk our way back to Carpinteria City Beach. Along the way we had managed to handle everything that the ocean had thrown at us, yet we were still craving a bit more excitement. So, just as we were about to land through the surf, we chanted, "Neptune is a ninny." Well that bit of blasphemy stirred up enough surf to make things interesting. We made it through the surf going sideways, backwards, and every direction except forward.

At the end of the day it was unanimously agreed that a good time was had by all who attended today's paddling event. And there is a good chance that we may not be banned from paddling at Carpinteria unless the city gets hit by a tsunami.

Patrick Martin
Moorpark, CA

Submitted on April 3, 2005