We had another long day so we headed south at touring speed. We expected a boring day but sighted whales three times! The first two I think was the same straggler gray whale. Trying to make a living scraping worms off the bottom in front of the town of Lincoln Oregon. The third sighting was a narrow black back, another minke whale like the day before.
There was no current to help us along so we took short breaks and did not pause to paddle into Depo Bay. This is a crack in the cliff leading to a natural harbor. The locals brag about it being “The world’s smallest harbor”. A large number of boats zoomed in and out as we tried to cross in front of the entrance. It seemed like more boats than I expect when crossing San Francisco Bay!
Our lunch stop for the day was Whale Cove. This is a beautiful protected cove with a sandy beach backed by a big pile of driftwood. It would have made a good camping beach but for all the large expensive houses around it. This is an exclusive gated community with no public access to the beach. We landed, peed at the base of the No Trespassing sign, sat on a driftwood log, ate our lunch and left before we were hassled. The sign was off the beach, hidden in bushes, at the base of a trail. It is unclear if it referred to the beach as well as the land above it.
Soon after lunch we rounded Cape Foulweather. Besides sandy Whale Cove I had seen no camp-able beaches for miles and I was worried about the evening. However, the small cove I had seen in the satellite photos here turned out to be ideal. It was a large gravel beach with flat berms well above the high tide line. Later we found just enough water dripping down the cliff to replenish our water supply. The only problem was landing on the steep slippery gravel without sliding back into the water, falling out of our boats and looking like fools. I picked a landing spot behind a rock with a slightly less steep beach and waited for a large wave. I heard Dick shout in alarm as I sprinted forward. I timed it perfectly, riding the wave in, backpedaling onto the top as it broke, slipping back down until the bow of my boat ground up the beach to a stop. I jumped out and was there to catch the bow of Dick’s boat a minute later. We both made fool-free landings!
Since the next day was supposed to be a short one, we stayed up late and had a campfire on the beach, the only campfire we shared on the entire trip.