I tried to talk Roger Lamb into going to Stillwater Cove, but he had just come back from a long road trip and wanted to go someplace closer to home. So we went to his favorite exercise paddle spot, launched out of Doran Park and paddled around Bodega Head and back. I surprised Roger by meeting him at his favorite launch spot, the boat ramp inside Doran Park. As I drove down the length of the park I saw three guys getting in the water at the beach. All three of them were in sit-on-top kayaks, and the last guy leaving the parking lot had a Tsunami X15, a hard-shell kevlar sit-on-top that I used to lust over. Our eyes met as I drove by but he had to hurry to catch up with his friends, already in the water. As I waited for Roger by the boat ramp, two kayaks went by in the channel of the harbor, heading out the jetty. Both were sit-insides but one of them did not have a spray skirt, not a wise thing on the ocean. But a busy day for kayaks at Bodega!
Roger and I launched and paddled out the jetty a short time later. Outside we saw no sign of the boat without the spray skirt. But we could see the three sit-on-tops out where the waves were breaking around Bodega Rocks. We headed out to see what they were up to. As we approached we watched one of these guys get a wild ride in a breaking wave. When the wave passed, he was out of his boat but soon swam back to it and jumped back on for more. This was the closest thing to surfing we saw them do, but we were not there earlier. Roger paddled a little farther out and got a very nice ride around the edge of the rocky shelf. He says that it was completely an accident, but I told him he showed those guys how to do it right! I waited around a little farther from the rocky self. At this time of the tide, I could see a flat shelf of rock just under the water. The waves were not large enough to surf out in the deeper water away from the shelf. They were breaking steeply and violently over the rock. The only way to get a ride would be to put yourself right on the edge. Literally, in the pocket with the wave chewing up the rock on your right side. Turn too far that way and you get ground up in the white water. I only managed to set up correctly once, and then was too afraid of the rocks to stick it out in the pocket. I turned too far to the left and the wave let go of me. Before that happened I got a few seconds of a great ride and figured I had enough. Roger and I headed off around Bodega Head and the surfers headed back to the beach.
We paddled the usual route out around Bodega Head, past the Bodega Marine Laboratory, and on to Mussel Point. At this point the waves started rising up and threatening to break all around us. As one rose up steeply past Roger and we both turned to paddle over it, I told him “Just don’t get surfed backwards into me!” But we managed to climb over every one and were OK. Although the wind was calm, I was surprised to find that we made very good time when we turned and headed back towards the bay. The following waves gave us more of a push than I expected. When we got back to Bodega Rocks, we paddled over to try our luck at surfing again. But the tide was lower and catching rides was harder than before. Instead we paddled around behind the rock and discovered that we could paddle out over the back side of the rocky shelf. The big waves at sea broke over the outer edge and lost most of their energy. We were able to paddle over all the breakers in the middle of the shallow area, but still couldn’t get a ride when we turned around and tried to surf back to deeper water.
The tide was still going out so we had to work a little to paddle back up the jetty and up the channel to the boat ramp. Nothing we can’t handle and soon we were putting on dry clothes and driving to Lucas Warf for a clam chowder lunch.