As we approached the entrance to Willapa Bay we started seeing breakers far out to sea. This was expected as several shoals are called out even on the USGS topographic maps, which usually don’t give much information about the water. We turned out to sea to get around the first one of these and met a crab boat out there. This big fishing boat was skirting the edges of the shoal and we saw them heel way over several times when they cut it close. The captain slowed down to ask us where we were going and told us to be safe. The crew told us that we had big balls to be out here like this and made appropriate hand gestures to add to the compliment. Roger Lamb told them “you too!”
We paddled straight towards a wave-powered foghorn buoy, which we figured was the outer marker for the entrance to the bay. Then we started turning towards land again. The long low sandy spit of Ledbetter Point slowly came into view. A huge current flooding into Willapa Bay started trying to push us sideways into one of the shoals and we had to keep turning more and more to the right to prevent this. Finally I told Roger I was making my turn and headed into the huge-looking breakers in front of the beach. After the first wild ride over the impact zone these turned out to be pretty mild and we surfed safely onto a low wide beach. We dragged our kayaks half way up between the high tide mark and a row of “Plover Reserve, Keep Out” signs. The beach had such a shallow slope that a large wave slopped water within 30 feet of camp at high tide. However the tides were finally getting smaller from day to day and the next high tide in the middle of the night was predicted to be smaller than the high we watched that afternoon. Our kayaks were very visible in the middle of acres of sand and beach so we figured setting up tents would not really increase the probability of getting caught camping here. So we set the tents up and were able to dry them and knock some of the sand off. The sky stayed clear to the horizon and we had a sunny afternoon and the third visible sunset of the trip.