I spent a long time exploring the caves and arches in Gunderson Cove. I stopped at Cuffey Cove and landed at the beach where I have camped before. My plan was to find a nice beach as far north as possible. This would have been a nice place to camp, but it was early in the afternoon. I figured if I could not find a better place than this I could fall back to here and get up early in the morning to paddle to Van Damme Cove. My plan was to “Ninja Camp”, sometimes called Guerrilla Camp, Gorilla Camp or Stealth Camping. I would find a small beach to camp on, set my tent up after dusk and take it down at dawn. This was complicated by the tides, which were about the highest of the month. One of the places that would have had plenty of room above the high tide was the mouth of the Navaro River, about half way to my destination. But Navaro has a campground and that means there are rangers to enforce the no camping on the beach rule. Also the swell was dumping on the south end of the beach and that would have made landing and launching wet and miserable. On the north end of the river there was a narrow beach with a better protected landing but less room above the high tide and a lot of visibility from the campground. I marked this place in my mental map. I could come back here if necessary.
This pattern repeated as the day progressed. I found small beaches I could camp on in several places. On the south side of the Salmon Creek Cove, on both sides of Albion Cove and in Buckhorn Cove. It was interesting to paddle up this shoreline looking at it with a different purpose than normal. Of course I also looked for all the caves and arches and went into every one I thought was safe. There was a beach on the north side of Albion that was so perfect that I landed and even cleared out a flat spot for my tent. The sun came out while I was doing this and blessed the spot. But it was still a few hours until dark so I calculated how far north I could go and still get back in time. But I kept finding other places farther north and re-calculating my turn-back time. Eventually I found the perfect spot when I was only a mile from my destination for the next morning.
What I found was a small cove just north of Buckhorn Cove. This place was protected from the swell by a string of offshore rocks. There was a huge log beached on one end of the cove that had been there long enough for gravel to pile up behind it. This made a perfect spot to set my tent up above the high tide. The log was also the perfect place to hide my gear from visibility. Even my kayak fit back there. I cooked myself dinner and sat around reading for an hour or so before setting my tent up in case it was visible above the log. Then I stayed up until after high tide to make sure I was really above it.
Because I had found a place so far north and with such good cover I allowed myself to sleep in late the next morning. The high tide the evening before translated into a super low tide in the morning. The little cove I was camped in was half empty and the only water that made it in was so full of kelp that it rose and fell like a pool of oil when the waves tried to make it around the rocks. I broke my fast, broke camp and headed north. I had the time to poke into all the caves, including Mikes Cave of Doom. Inside this cave I found an abalone divers float. It has obviously been there a while, was full of kelp and had a short piece of broken off rope hanging from it. I called out in case its owner was nearby but no-one answered my shout. So I acquired a new piece of diving equipment.
When I arrived at Van Damme Beach my brother Ralph was already there. Ralph and his wife Renee suited up and followed me back south to the Cemetery Cave in their sit-on-top kayaks. I had told Ralph about this and he wanted to see it. The swell was a little bit rough and the low tide made it difficult to land on the beach inside this cave. Ralph managed to land there, but Renee and I didn’t even bother to try. Ralph definitely had to go inside any cave named “Mike’s Cave of Doom” so we went and paddled into that one as well. Then we landed on a beach near Cemetery Cave and went abalone diving. Close to shore and in shallow water both Ralph and I found our limit of abs.