Finally, Dave Houser landed and we realized it had to have been his car. The participants today were Dave Houser, Paul Chang, John Ernst, Peter O'Sullivan, John Peterson, Patrick Martin, Chris Wood, and myself. There was a slight marine layer and some small dumping waves when we launched. If you were careful, you could get your boat into the water and wait for the right time to head out. Several of us did get a refreshing splash as we launched because we thought we were still between sets when the first larger waves of a set would appear. I went slightly airborne, but Patrick gets the airplane award. His boat almost came completely out of the water as he crested a breaking wave on the launch.
As soon as we got underway, we noticed some dolphin playing in the surf. We watched for a while, but they stayed away. We headed out towards Pt Dume and the marine layer got progressively worse. At one point Peter mentioned he wanted to take the outside while the rest of us stayed within a 1/4 mile of shore. Soon it was becoming difficult to see Peter.
Suddenly it looked like he had company, so we decided to join him and see who the other paddler was. Unfortunately, it wasn't Peter. It was two kayak fishermen on SOT's paddling in.We looked to the right and Peter was waiting for us. We all joined up with him except for one paddler who decided to keep going in a different direction into the fog. We lost site of him for about 30 minutes when the fog started to lift and he saw us and joined back up. During our break there was a discussion of staying with the group if you are on a group paddle or telling the other paddlers that you are going to leave the group.
We saw numerous jellyfish including some black ones. Sounds like the biologists need some geography lessons since they predicted they would get to San Pedro today.
We all played around the one mile buoy for a while at the point and watched the seals.One big male kept looking at the 2 skin boats with us. He must have been thinking those skins looked like Aunt Sally. Then it was time to go play in the rocks at the point. Paul was the only one wearing a brain bucket, so he kept playing right in the middle of the rocks. For someone who has paddled for about nine months, he has really come a long way. Most of us were expecting him to dump, but he handled it extremely well.
Then it was time to paddle to Paradise Cove and land and stretch our legs. Dave found a spot free of swimmers and headed in. Just as he landed, a friendly lifeguard came and grabbed his boat to help. We then landed the rest of the group one at a time without incident. Several of us swam a bit when we discovered a deep hole. One minute we wee knee deep in the water and the next, we were up to our necks.
John Ernst had gotten there before us, because he did not want to play in the rocks. After waiting quite a while for us, he headed back on his own. The life guard told us that John had left and this was the first time, I've ever had a lifeguard be so friendly to kayakers. He was impressed with the skill of the group and the safety concerns we showed about landing en mass at a swimmers beach.
Launching from the steep beach was easy and we were finally off. We had a nice tail wind and following seas the whole way back. We got to do a lot of surfing, and Dave earned a new nickname - Crash Houser. It seems he was surfing a wave parallel to the shore when someone who was standing on a surf board and paddling it with a canoe type paddle, decided to catch a wave. With Dave closer in on a wave, I would have thought that surf etiquette would have given Dave the wave. But No,- this guy actually ran right into Dave. Fortunately nobody was hurt and no boats or boards were damaged.
When we got back to Blocker, the waves had picked up and only one or two managed to land straight in.The rest of us all came in side surfing, except for Paul who still needs a little more practice landing in dumping surf. I guess it proves that no matter how good a paddler you become, you still have to pay your dues to the surf gods.
Steve Holtzman