The reason that I was unable to teach in the BASK skills clinic this year was because I was on a SCUBA dive trip with my brother that weekend. The clinic was two days long and I almost could have made it for the second day. Since the surf weekend was in the Half Moon Bay area, I did drive up to see if I could connect with the group on the second day. Exactly where they would be was to be decided at the last minute after considering the weather. The first place I thought to look, El Granada Beach, was the place they had chosen. They had formed pods of kayakers the previous day and I didn’t seem to fit into any of them. I had only my little river kayak with me and the students were learning to handle their long touring boats. So I played in the surf for a while and stayed out of the way.
The beach was a good choice for the class under the conditions of the day. The swell was mild and most of the waves broke pretty gently. I waited around for the larger waves and tried to get some rides. I got more than my wish with one very large wave! My kayak fell down the face of this wave, plowed nose first into the sand, flipped upside down and I was dragged head down through the sand up the beach. During the lunch break someone joked that there would be a demonstration of kayak surfing by Mike Higgins. When I described my wild sand-eating ride, one of my friends (Albert Wang) suggested that he would pay extra to see me take THAT ride again! Despite rolling in the ocean to try and shake the sand out, I found it packed a centimeter thick in my hair under my helmet two hours later when taking off my gear!
My right elbow, which I had injured on the American river some time ago, was hurting. So after only a few hours in the water I decided to continue home and give my elbow a rest.