Neptune State Park to Heceta Head, August 14th 2007.

When we woke up in the morning the air was clear and sunlight was shining over our heads onto a tick bank of fog offshore. The air was dry and my tent was dryer than when I set it up, which actually was not saying much. I crossed the creek and climbed up to the picnic area. Here I changed into paddling clothes while standing on a picnic table bench in the sun. Sure beats getting sand in my gear! By the time we finished packing only two hours later the fog had moved onshore and we could not see past the breakers.

I helped hold Dick Ryon’s bow while he got in then launched and disappeared through the breakers into the fog. I tried to launch and had the typical problem of the waves turning my heavy boat sideways. Usually I have to get out, rotate the boat back and try again. This time I noticed that the waves were turning my boat past the perpendicular. I assisted the waves to do this until I was completely backwards, then shoved off and backpedaled over the first few rows of waves. I’ll have to try this technique out again sometime.

In the fog Dick and I were afraid we would never find each other after launching. My VHF radio had died so we couldn’t call each other. We made plans to search for each other for 45 minutes then travel south separately and meet at our next GPS coordinate nine miles south. Fortunately as I paddled over the last few breakers I saw Dick out there waiting for me.

We headed south at a slow pace since we had a short day. Between the sound of the surf and the angle of the sun (just visible through the fog) we could have stayed on course. A GPS and Dick’s compass helped as well in the fog. At one point in the day we heard a whale blow and paddled over to watch it for a while. At another time we saw something dark to our left and moved closer to shore to find we were in front of “Rocky Knoll”. But the rest of the day was spent socked in with fog that didn’t lift as we hoped it would.

We paddled past our lunch break in the hopes of stopping somewhere. Finally Heceta Head loomed out of the fog. We could paddle right up to the cliffs and I saw something I had suspected would happen: At the top of the cliffs was blue sky and a nice day that we were missing by being one hundred yards offshore.

Heceta Head is full of caves and arches. Even though it was a mild day we could not get into some of the caves. I don’t want to see this point up close on a rough day! On the south side of the head we paddled into a slot in the cliff that had a gravel beach on the end. We landed for lunch here after 1:00 PM. This beach turns out to only be visible from a few remote parts of the state park. We decided to laze about and take the risk of camping here for the evening. Dick climbed up an unofficial trail out off our slot canyon and went to explore the park. He waited in line and went on the tour of the lighthouse. Later I asked if anyone found it strange that he was wearing a wetsuit. He said that they may have wondered but were too polite to ask.

After dark we could see beams of light from the lighthouse rotating over our heads. To thank the rangers for not noticing us here, I removed all the trash from the beach and packed it in my kayak. We only had one more day of paddling to go.