This year our family reunion was held at my sister Margie’s house in Templeton, in central California. This is near San Louis Obispo Harbor where I have kayaked before. My sister asked me for advice on what ocean beach to take the entire family to. I checked the weather, looked over the maps in my WEB page, and chose the Hearst Memorial Beach behind San Simeon Point. This beach faced south and was protected by a point sticking straight south. The mild swell at sea was coming from the normal northwest and we would have calm water. When we got there, my boogie boarding nephews, Jeremy and Todd, were disappointed. They said the waves weren’t big enough and didn’t even bother to put their wetsuits on at first. Later they saw me having a lot of fun surfing in a kayak and decided the waves weren’t so wimpy after all. They put their wetsuits on and played in the water as well.
I took Margie’s husband Scott out in my Frenzy kayak and gave him a lesson in bracing and side surfing. He did very well on the first few waves, (with my assistance) and got successfully side-surfed back up onto the beach. After I went to get my kayak to join him, he started falling over more often. Everyone was amazed when Scott managed to hold onto one wave that rolled me over. Almost the entire family was lined up in beach chairs watching, and were apparently very amused with the “floor show” that Scott and I put on for them. When Scott got tired of getting dumped my nephew Mark, who has never been in surf before, took a turn. He is very tall and could only put on the bottom half of my 3 millimeter wetsuit. So when he got knocked over by a wave on his second try, he was cold, disappointed, and ready to quit. I convinced him to try a few more times closer to shore, and got him to successfully side surf two more times without getting any wetter or colder. The next day he spent a lot more time in the kayak on a lake and had a much better time.
Before lunch I paddled down the beach an out San Simeon Point to go exploring. I had landed on a little beach here once before that had a dead tree hanging down over the water from the cliff, and this tree was still there. There were also a few small caves that I had never been through, and I backed into several of these in the mild conditions. I told Margie when I left that I probably would not go around the point, but I could not resist going a little farther.
The mild six foot swell was focused by the point and some large looking waves were breaking on the open ocean beaches. I was reasonably far from shore when a rouge wave came and rose up over a shallow spot I had not noticed. I tried to turn into it but was too close and got knocked over as this wave broke over me. On this spill, and a recent one at Limantour Beach, I have noticed a difference in my attitude about being in the water. I find myself more relaxed about it, just holding my breath and relaxing my limbs and waiting for my flotation to get me back to the surface. In the past I was a lot more tense about being under water, flailing and swimming and trying to figure out which way was up. Fortunately, the shallow spot was a local effect, and the wave calmed down again before heading to shore. Because of this it didn’t try to surf the boat out of my hands, and I had plenty of time to get back in and paddle farther out to sea. I turned back soon and discovered that I was actually quite a distance around the point and it took me longer than I expected to get back into the calm water in front of the beach.
I made it back late for lunch, but everyone saved me some BBQ'ed chicken and sandwiches. After lunch I got back in the water with the little Frenzy kayak and had some great surfing rides. This beach has a long fishing pier that no-one was interested in swimming or surfing near. However, the beach started to get crowded and I was unwilling to surf my kayak near the swimmers in the water. So I was slowly pushed closer and closer to the pier. I found one advantage of this was that I could see the large waves rising up against all the pylons. I was able to see them in time to start paddling early as they approached. On most of these large waves I was able to get up to speed and catch a surfing ride before the wave broke. Usually I couldn't quite keep the speed up and the wave would start to pull ahead of me as it broke. But as it broke it would slow down and I could paddle to catch up and ride straight down the already broken water. I could usually keep the boat pointing straight to shore and this late in the process of breaking the wave wasn't steep enough for the nose of the kayak to go under. So I would accelerate and zoom ahead of the wave for a while. Eventually I would slow down and the breaker would catch up to me, so I'd turn sideways and brace into it, getting another ride up the shallow water practically to dry sand.