When we arrived at the tip of the point we discovered an extensive set of reefs extending south with waves breaking over them. These reefs were not on any of the maps I had and they did not show up in the satellite photos. When I was here in 2001, we launched from the mouth of the bay and headed south. We didn’t look over our shoulders and see the waves breaking over these reefs then. Gregg Berman looked the area over with his experienced reef-surfing eye and suggested we could cut through the middle next to a seal-covered rock. I paddled close to the rock, waited for a calm window, backpedaled over a large set and then made my run over the reef. One large wave arrived and broke around me but I was able to side-surf it and stay upright into the calm water behind the rock. Watching me was enough for Charles Harris; he chose to go the long way around. Gregg went over the reef but had a calm easy passage.
Now we were in protected water and paddled around the corner and up the point into the mouth of Bahia San Quintin. I tried to find the beach I had camped on six years ago but did not recognize it. Charles and I stopped for a rest break on one little beach but Gregg stayed offshore. He referred to it as a “track sand into your boat” break. As we paddled in the mouth of the bay, the afternoon wind came up. In our planning we had never worried much about the wind because the prevailing direction was from our backs. But now we were looking at paddling 12 miles north to get to our take-out location. We had an extra day or two in our schedule and we could have stopped, camped for the night and hoped for a calm morning to dash north. But everyone seemed to have back-to-the-barn fever and just pressed on into the wind without discussing the options.
We hid behind every point we could find to hide from the wind for a few minutes of rest. I had a GPS co-ordinate for the Old Mill Hotel, but late in the afternoon it occurred to me that this co-ordinate was generated by guessing and clicking on a vague spot on the map. Charles was especially eager to land in time to check into the hotel and get to a bar for a margarita by 5:00, the cocktail hour. So he was the first to see the remains of the dam that held back water for the tide-powered mill that gave this place its name. We landed well before cocktail hour but chose to take hot showers before going out to dinner and finally having our celebratory drinks over diner at the successful end of our trip.