Coronado Island Circumnavigation
Sunday's Memorial Day weekend 14 nautical mile paddle launched from Shelter Island in San Diego Bay. Paddlers included Henry & Kathy Pilcher, Ken Fry, Lee Shurie, Duane Strosaker, Dave O' Connor, Dave Houser, Mike Brown, and Dennis Hyndman. Dave H. drove the farthest coming from Long Beach. Lee also lives in LA County but he spent the night in Orange County and caught a ride with Ken in the morning. Dennis and Mike, locals from San Diego, had a short drive. The rest of us drove down from Orange County. Dave O, though, traveled the farthest as he flew in at midnight from a three-week work trip to Shanghai, China, which was on top of a three-week work trip to Canada. Duane drove him down as he was still on China time. He had a great paddle and stayed awake the whole time!

We paddled first to Point Loma to view the Old Point Loma Lighthouse and two wrecked sailboats lying in the rocks. Conditions were calm with overcast skies making it a nice cool day. We passed a couple of submarines docked near Pt. Loma but didn't investigate, so we'll just have to do that on the next circumnavigation trip.

From Point Loma we crossed the entrance to the harbour and headed to the high-rise condos near Hotel Del Coronado. Luckily, with our early morning launch we saw few boats and no ships while crossing the entrance. Also, the seas remained calm and there was little wind.

We beached in small surf with no carnage south of Hotel Del Coronado between the high rise condos and the guards manning the fence line of the navy base. Carrying and/or rolling our kayaks, we traversed the beach then crossed (actually jay walked) busy highway 75 to the boat launch on the bay side. From there we paddled under the very high bridge that connects the mainland to Coronado Island. We stopped for an early lunch within a couple of miles of the bridge and enjoyed our sandwiches outside in the sun.

Dennis, who paddles often in the bay, lead us across the harbor to the mainland side while we maneuvered through the heavy boat traffic. We then followed Dennis between pilings, through small rock openings, and around secret passages to finally emerge next to the Navy's Midway aircraft carrier which is open as a museum. Under the watchful eyes of the ship's security, we continued paddling by other boats and ships open to public viewing.

By now the wind had kicked up and of course it was a head wind as we paddled hard across the bay back to our starting point. We sighted numerous planes through the San Diego skyline as they took off or landed at Linbergh Field.

We returned to Shelter Island at 1:00 p.m. after having started our journey at 8:00 a.m. with an hour off for a lunch break. It was an easy drive home as traffic was light on an early Sunday afternoon. Great day of paddling for all of us. Please check out Duane's photos.

Kathy Pilcher

Submitted on May 29, 2005