After my dive trip I wanted to rush back north to stay at a friends house and get up early to join a BASK trip around San Pedro Point south of Pacifica State Beach. All in all I did a lot of rushing around this weekend to get to all the fun things on my schedule. It will be a relief when the Memorial Weekend is over and I can relax at work again! When I got to the beach the wind was howling from the north and there were three dejected looking kayakers standing looking out to sea. They were right on the edge of aborting the whole trip.
We spent an hour hemming and hawing and waiting for one guy to show up an hour later. (He had planned on showing up after the rest of us had spent that hour shutting cars down to Princeton Harbor). Then we finally decided to just paddle south around San Pedro Point and find out what it was like there on a low tide like this day. I charged out over the surf and discovered that all my friends were taking a lot longer to get ready and psyched up to hit the waves than I thought they would. While I was waiting I got a couple short but fun rides in the surf. This is a popular board surfing beach but the wind had discouraged them as well.
Finally everyone was ready and we paddled south past Shelter Cove and up to San Pedro Point. This is a large interesting rocky island just barely separated from shore by a row of rocks. At low tide there was only one channel through these rocks that a kayak could have slipped through. But that channel had seals hauled out on both sides of it and we decided to go around rather than bother them. The decision was made to keep going to Montara Beach before turning back, so we continued south and went behind a smaller rock in front of the next point. Between the shore and this rock the waves reflected back out and the water got very rough with large chop. I reveled in it!
We discovered that when we got to the other side of San Pedro Point that the wind turned around and came from the south! Later when we returned the wind turned around north of the point and came from the north again! Generally the wind was never much of a bother and we probably should have done the whole trip as planned and paddled down to Princeton Harbor. Montara Beach, where we turned back, was one third of the way to that original goal.
When we got back to Pacifica State Beach for our landing the surf had calmed down a lot in the short time that we were gone. Most of the kayakers paddled straight in for a landing while I held back waiting for a surfing ride to shore. John Somers came up last, passed me on the right and headed for shore. The large wave I was waiting for finally arrived and it was bigger than I had bargained for. I chickened out and didn’t try to “take the drop” as the board surfers call it. Instead I let the boat turn to the right and braced into the wave as it broke on me. The wave picked up my kayak and side-surfed it toward shore with me barely holding onto my brace to stay upright. I was in poor form and out of control. My boat turned shoreward a little bit and picked up speed, side-surfing towards John. I shouted at John to look out. When he didn’t react I shouted louder and louder and shouted “Watch your head!” as the nose of my boat unerringly headed straight for him. He turned just in time to see me as my kayak tapped him on the back of the helmet and finally pulled back off the wave and back into control. John was OK but I’m still embarrassed to have created the situation.