The weather has been pretty bad at sea lately. The swell has not been large, but the wind has been strong and non-stop. Even the usual pattern of the wind calming down at night has been missing and the wind blows day and night on the ocean. Since the swell is low, I hit on the idea of getting some rough water practice at Salmon Creek Beach. I called up Konstantin Gortinsky and talked to his wife Linda. I told her that I was suggesting that Konstantin meet me to play with his Pirouette river boat at Salmon Creek. Using the word “play” made me self conscious. I felt like a little kid asking my friend’s mother if he could come out and play. No, Konstantin cannot come out and play. He has too many chores to do this weekend.
I went by myself. Roger Lamb and I had a pretty miserable experience in the middle of Salmon Creek Beach quite some time ago. At the time we had considered moving to the north end of the beach where the creek empties out into the ocean. The underwater delta of sand might create a larger “soup zone” and make the beach easier to launch from. I decided to finally try out the north end of the beach. There is a parking lot at the north end and I carried my Pirouette down the steep trail to the beach. I launched just north of the first rock at the end of the beach. Although this is normally a popular surfing beach and this was a sunny weekend, there were no surfers in the water at all.
There was a small soup zone here and I was able to get into water deep enough to paddle without plowing into the breaking waves right away. I sat there for a few minutes and then sprinted over calm sets of waves to get out into deeper water. This worked well and I was able to get past the first set of breakers every time without any problems. But farther out was another set of breakers over the edge of the sand bar. I paddled into this only once and got beaten back. For the rest of an hour I stayed between the shore break and the outer break and didn’t try to get back out again. There was plenty of rough water to play with in the middle.
When I turned back from the outer break a wave picked me up and started to surf me. I was unable to hold onto it and the boat broached and slipped back up to the top of the wave. But another wave climbed sideways along this one, grabbed my boat and surfed me backwards. I fell over (without my nose plugs on) and started thinking about rolling back up. The boat apparently surfed a long distance because the water stayed rough for what seemed like a long time. I tried rolling up once, failed and decided to try rolling on the other side. But when I pushed the paddle over onto the other side of the boat I encountered a lot of resistance to moving it over there. I figured this meant I should be rolling on the other side so I switched back and tried a second time. I was able to get my head out of the water for a half a breath then fell back down. On the third try I came up, probably because the wave had finally calmed down or let me slip over it.
After I came back up I noticed that the visor of my helmet was missing. The Velcro had pulled off in the strong current under water. I surfed close to shore and went south behind a big rock and looked around for the visor. I didn’t see it and had trouble paddling back north into the wind. So I landed and went for a walk. Two kids had found it 200 meters away from where I lost it. Their dad says they were worried when it washed ashore because they wondered if the person who lost it was still stuck at sea. They were glad to know I was OK and to give it back to me.
Back in the water I fell over one more time and rolled back up on the first try. It occurs to me that I am most confident of my roll when I have my Greenland paddle in my hands, but I have been paddling with a fiberglass paddle since Baja. I used the fiberglass paddle in Baja because it was lighter and I thought it would be less tiring on long days. So my Greenland paddle stayed in the truck in sunny hot Baja for two weeks and I wanted to seal it with penetrating resin before getting it wet again. But I have several other unfinished projects that need sealing so I have been waiting to mix the resin until they are all ready. So I keep leaving my Greenland paddle at home to stay dry and going out with my fiberglass paddle. In the rough surf I was acting as confident as if I had my Greenland paddle when I did not!
After an hour of getting clobbered by the rough choppy surf, five or six sprints back out over the first break, and only one good surf ride, I quit and went home.