Like the day before the wind and waves helped push me along and I had no trouble making the distance disappear. But after I passed Oxnard I was suddenly socked in by a thick fog. Apparently the navy has an airstrip here and I started hearing a loud sound of fans blowing that I couldn't figure out at first. Eventually the fans turned into prop driven airplanes and they took off one after another and flew overhead. In the fog I could hear them but not see most of them. Above my head was a circle of blue sky but loud as they were I only saw a glimpse of one airplane as it flew over.
The fog got thicker while I ate my lunch south of Oxnard and the airstrip. The ocean is apparently shallow there and the southern swell rose up to be noticeable. In my circle of fog I would see the horizon suddenly rise up, roll under me and disappear on the other side. Soon I would hear it pound down on the shore. One time when I drifted close enough to shore to see the waves break, a pod of bottle nosed dolphins leapt out of the back of a wave just as it broke. I expected the southern swell to come at very long intervals, but these large swell would come three at a time six seconds apart with a short pause then the next three. I moved farther from shore and began to worry that the southern swell had picked up.
In the fog my GPS was not a reliable guide. It pointed straight over the shore to my expected landing place around the next point. I steered by the sound of the breakers, angle of the sun until it disappeared into the fog then by the angle of the brightest sky sparkle on the water. I had been out too long to turn back to Oxnard, especially with the wind and waves against me. If the swell was too big to land at Leo Carrillo I did not have maps out for the next section of coastline and did not know how far I would have to go to get to a safe harbor. I figured that I could crash at Leo Carillo and abort the trip there. In the thick fog and wind I started to get cold and stopped to put on my paddle jacket. But then I suddenly came out of the fog bank, the wind died down and so did the swell. I must have paddled out from on top of the shallow area south of Oxnard.
I came around the point to Leo Carrillo State Park in a better mood. I had asked a surfer friend if this was a big surfer beach, since it was at a south facing point. He had assured me he didn't think it was one. But when I arrived there, WOW was this a popular surfer beach! 100 board surfers were in the water, guys in wind-surfers and traction kites were zooming way out and chasing the southern swell in for rides. I looked at the first break and wanted to ride it in, because it was close to the access road where it would be easy to roll my kayak to the campground. Unfortunately this area has several exposed rocks close to shore. In my Coaster I could dodge them, but I didn't know how this fabric boat would behave, so I moved down the beach. I found out later that the first area is forbidden to all kayaks. On the other side of a big offshore rock was the largest collection of board surfers, I can't land through them. I moved past them and considered riding in, then turning and working my way back up the beach in front of the breakers to get to the road. But as I considered this two huge southern swells came in and I barely backpedaled over them. I gave up on the easy access and went down to the middle of the cove where the waves where mildest. I found out later this is called the Beginner Beach. Landing here required that I unload my kayak, haul it and all my gear up a flight of stairs to the Pacific Coast Highway, reload all my gear and roll the kayak across the highway on wheels to get to the campground.