I drove down to the Bay Area with the intention of filling in another section of my Quest. If the swell at sea was calm I would do a section of the San Mateo County shoreline near Pacifica. If the open ocean was rough I would do a section of the San Francisco Bay, perhaps the Oakland Estuary. The sky was overcast with a chance of rain, but the swell and wind were mild. I set my teeth on the open ocean and drove down the coast. Maryly Snow came along but wasn't sure if she really wanted to go under these conditions. We stopped at the fishing pier on the north end of Pacifica where I landed once with Max. The beach was dumpy and didn't look like an inviting place, even if we could have found a parking space. There is a three kilometer section of coastline south of this pier that I have not seen. Our next stop was the Pacifica State Beach which is very popular with surfers. There were a lot of surfers in the water and it looked difficult to find a place to paddle out between all of them. Although the surf was mild we would have gotten wet and it didn't feel worth the trouble. We drove south and looked at the next few beaches, including the Montara State Beach, which all had steep trails leading down to them. Finally we found our way to the visitors center of the James V. Fitzgerald Marine Reserve which had a short trail to an easy launch behind a rocky reef. I decided to paddle here.
It started raining as we were suiting up and Maryly decided we should make this a short trip. I kept telling her that kayaking is a wet sport and rain doesn't matter. Wind, tides, and swell matter but a little more water from the sky has no effect on my enthusiasm. We rolled our boats down to the water on my strap-on wheels and launched into mild waves. There were larger waves breaking over the reef, but all these waves calmed down again before going under us. By traveling northwest at the right angle we made it out from behind the reef without having to brave any large waves. North of the reef we were able to get a little closer to the shore again.
We paddled past the Montara Light House Youth Hostel and looked into the beach. I have been planning on a kayak vacation at this Hostel and was interested in how their beach looked from the ocean. It looked OK for a landing, but I would probably get wet launching from there, even on this relatively calm day. North of the lighthouse we passed a bunch of private houses with a few trails leading down to fishermen on the rocky shore. We saw one house for sale back above the marine reserve for $1.6 million. I found a little notch in the cliffs that looked like it stayed calm and we could have paddled in for a landing. But we moved on. We looked at the Montara State Beach and talked about the landing and launching possibilities here also.
The original plan was to just go on a short paddle to the lighthouse and turn back, but we kept going to the next point and the next. After a while it seemed reasonable to keep going until we filled in a six kilometer section of my Quest. I had paddled down from Pacifica State Beach to Devils Slide in 1996 and had never come back to finish more of the San Mateo coastline. If I don't do it now it may be another two years before I come by here again. When we got to Devils Slide we were glad we spent the time because that section of the coastline was very attractive with steep rocky cliffs and a few caves carved in them. Maryly was surprised when I didn't go into one rocky crack that she thought looked inviting. When I refused to go inside she decided to stay out as well. Later I went into one cave but Maryly didn't follow me in, even to get out of the rain.
It had sprinkled on us a few times earlier in the afternoon, but never very serious at first. About the time we got to Devils Slide it started raining continuously. Under a helmet with a visor I'm happy out in the rain, but Maryly was not so sure. To me being out in the rain is a perversely attractive thing to do. I'm breaking a taboo that my mother instilled in me long ago: "Stay in out of the rain"! It feels a little wrong, like taking a shower with your cloths on. It feels a little sinful to be reasonably warm and conformable in these conditions, like soaking in a hot tub outside on a stormy cold day. Never-the-less, we worked hard to quickly paddle straight back to the marine reserve and get back into dry clothes. Putting the boats back on my car, I opened the stopcock on mine to let the water out but there was none. Water leaks in around the hatches when the boat is plowing through surf, bracing into waves, or knocked over upside down. The fact that the boat was dry inside underlined the fact that we had found a calm ocean paddle on a gray overcast day.
Offshore for most of our trip we saw a strangely shaped "island". When the island moved slowly north across the horizon I assumed it was a ship piled high with containers. Several days later we heard about a mysterious oil spill found off the San Mateo coast that was killing birds. Coated birds and globs of oil started coming ashore at all the beaches we passed on this day. Eventually the slick started coming ashore at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve! I wonder if the "island" we saw was actually the culprit of the mysterious oil slick.