From Honeymoon Cove we could see up a long stretch of low shoreline called Bahia Vaporetta. We all thought it would be a good idea to cut across this and shorten our day by a few miles. We didn’t check the mileage and this turned out to be a six mile crossing and no fun at all. Lucy O’Brien lagged way behind the rest of us and became a spot on the horizon. She started thinking about how much food she had in her boat and whether or not she could finish the trip alone. We finally grouped up again where the bay ended and the shoreline became interesting again. Everyone agreed that even an uninteresting shoreline would have been worth the few extra miles and would have been preferable. In the last mile of the low shoreline of the bay we could not find a good place to stop for a break. Instead we landed on a cobble beach between two cliffs. The fact that we were able to land there gave us hope that we would find a camping beach when the time came.
Our float plan showed us camping 12 miles up this coast, so we agreed to paddle 10 miles and then take the first good beach we found. Before the 10 miles was up we saw one or two possibilities and this fueled hope a little more. After the 10 miles was up we saw a few more possibilities but we started getting picky. Some had steep cliffs behind them that might drop rocks on us. Others had large cobble that would make landing and launching difficult. We kept some of these in mind as fall-back spots and said “Let’s look around one more point” after every point. Just as we approached our original 12 mile goal, John Somers found a beautiful beach. It was made of gravel that went way down below the low tide level, it had one berm right at the high tide line and another one a foot or so higher for camping on. The upper berm wasn’t very wide before running into the bluff, but there were several areas separated by dikes that totaled more than enough tent space for us.
It was approaching full moon and the tide that night was a high one. Around midnight I woke up to the sound of waves crashing near me. They always sound closer, louder and larger than they really are so I tried to ignore it for a while. Eventually I looked out and saw waves occasionally spilling over the top of the first berm and washing a little water down into the dip where the kayaks were lying. Tide charts for the specific area we were in are not available and we had to make do with data from the other side of the Gulfo. So we only knew the time of the high tide to the nearest hour or two. Is it still coming up? A few of the larger waves dumped enough water over the first berm to fill up the dip and float the kayaks which started banging into each other. John Somers and I jumped out of our tents and dragged the kayaks up between the tents.
John went back to his tent but Don Fleming got up to check out the situation. In one spot between the two berms there was a flat shelf of rock and this acted as a ramp, surprising Don by letting one wave slip some water up near his tent. Don decided to take his tent down and move it away from the water. Through all this Lucy was sound asleep around a dike on another section of the beach. Don thought it would be a good idea to warn her about the tide and tell her to get ready in case she had to move her tent. Lucy woke up enough to listen to us, but her tent was several feet farther from the water and she felt safe enough to go back to sleep.
Don and I sat in our folding chairs and watched the water until after 2:00 AM. When the tide was obviously on the way back down again Don set his tent right back up where it had started. I woke up Lucy to tell her it was safe to go back to sleep. Then we all managed to do just that.