I paddled out of Fort Ross State park and headed south. The tide was high so I was able to cut a corner by going inside the Fort Ross Reef. I soon approached and then made an easy landing on Lost Beach. I took my time unpacking, changing into dry clothes and setting up my tent. It just wasn’t worth the trouble to set up the hot tub just for myself so I left all the parts hidden where they were. As planned, I sat around all afternoon reading a book.
At one time during the day the sheriff’s helicopter flew by. They hovered just south of me for a while and I wondered if an abalone diver had come down “Cardiac Hill” and gotten in trouble. I grabbed my camera and went for a walk. The helicopter flew off before I had gotten half way but I kept going to look at something I had seen on my way by. At the bottom of a very steep cliff I thought I had seen a car down on the beach. Sure enough there was a VW sedan that had fallen down from the road 300 feet above. It made it all the way to the sand then hung up on the last few rocks and failed to roll into the ocean. It looked to me like this happened more than a few days ago but it might still be of interest to the sheriff. There was also the wreck of a motorcycle nearby and old rusted pieces of at least two other cars. Is there a particularly dangerous corner in the road up there? Or is this the place locals come to shove old unwanted vehicles off the cliff? I quickly returned to camp before more cars could fall on my head!
When I arrived in the morning the sky was overcast, but in the afternoon the sun came out and the sky cleared to the horizon so I had a great sunset to watch. I had a small driftwood fire and stayed up late feeding it and reading my book by flashlight.
Some of my diving friends were going to Fort Ross the next morning and I had told them I might meet them there. We would go abalone diving and then BBQ our catch on the beach When they went homeI would return to my beach camp. However, I slept in late and didn’t have the energy to rush off. So I sat around and read another chapter from my book, and another, and whiled the second day away. When my book was finished I finally started packing up and getting ready to leave around 3:00 in the afternoon. The swell was getting a little alarming and was forecast to get larger on Monday. So I figured I would break camp and just go home.
The waves extracted a big price before they let me get off the beach! On my first attempt a large dumping wave came in, flipped my boat over and dragged me back up the beach. My skeg, which was in the upright disengaged position, was buried in the sand and bend into a U. I had to exit the kayak, bend it more-or-less straight and try to launch again. This time I left the skeg pointing straight back so it would not be damaged by being upside down. The next wave pushed my kayak sideways and then pulled it down the steep beach into another dumping wave. I braced and kept myself right-side-up, but the wave raised the nose of my kayak up, pushed the skeg down into the sand and bent it 90 degrees. Just then there was a calm window in the waves, I was already half way out, so I paddled out to sea with the skeg pointing sideways.
Most of the time the sideways skeg stayed out of the water, only dipping in and slowing me down when rising over a swell. It was a sunny day with no wind and I considered just putting up with this for the short trip back to Fort Ross. I considered landing at a calmer beach, if one could be found, straightening the skeg and launching again. Finally I decided to jump out of the kayak, swim to the back and bend the skeg sort-of-straight again. I had no trouble doing a “cowboy rescue”, just clamoring up onto the kayak and twisting myself back inside without letting too much water in during the process.
A short while later I was glad the skeg was out of the way because a strong wind came up. This made getting back to Fort Ross a bit of a workout and the skeg might have slowed me to a standstill if it was still bent sideways. The tide was low and I expected big waves breaking over the base of the reef, so I slogged my way directly out around the outermost rock of the Fort Ross Reef. Once around this I turned and went straight to the Fort Ross Cove which is a very well protected place to land with a sandy beach. My dive buddies had finished their BBQ and gone home already. I walked up to get my truck, packed up all my gear and drove home. On the way back I could look down at Lost Beach and see that it was still a warm sunny day down there with no wind. The wind was only blowing offshore and around exposed points like the Fort Ross Reef.