Bandon to Cape Blanco, July 21st 2008.

All these rivers in Oregon that have jetties also have a little Coast Guard office near the mouth with a warning sign with two lights that flash yellow when the “bar is rough”. Brian Schulz told me a story about the Coast Guard ordering him not to go out over the bar when it was too rough “for a craft under 18 feet long”. So he went back to his shop, got out a 20-foot long kayak and paddled over the bar anyway. The Coast Guard was officially furious about this. Brian is a man after my own heart in “official” matters like this. When Brian and I launched from the boat ramp in the morning, the yellow “Rough Bar” lights were flashing. But we slipped under the Coast Guard’s radar and started out anyway. As we approached the mouth of the Coquille River we encountered spilling waves that we easily climbed over. Brian warned me that the maps showed shallow spots just outside the bar and we should follow the channel markers. But as soon as we were over the bar we saw fun rock gardens south of the jetty and turned to go through them.

After a few minutes of fun rock gardening we headed south past a long nasty sandy dumping beach. Brian made it more fun by playing with a new traction para-foil kite. It works great! He spent most of the day dragging his paddles so that he would not pull too far away from me. He took the kite down as we approach a rocky area around Tower Rock. Next we paddled into a rock named Gull Rock. This is actually a network of dozens of rocks with arches and channels between them, my first really fun arches for the trip. The afternoon wind was blowing strong by this time and I had to work hard to get my long heavily loaded boat to turn and go where I wanted it to go.

Soon after Gull Rock (what a dull name) we approached Cape Blanco. I went close inside over some shallow areas with lots of jagged rocks just under the surface. The boat Brian was paddling belonged to one of his clients and this made him more conservative most of the time about where he would risk it. Blanco is a double point so we had more rock gardening fun as we rounded the second end. I saw a big arch to my right but no time to turn my heavy boat into it. Later I took a picture of this arch while standing up on the point.

We landed on a beach with tons of driftwood above the high tide line. I pushed gavel down from the edge of the cliff into a driftwood log to engineer myself a flat spot for half of my tent to sit on. This was enough for my sleeping pad and blanket but the tent never worked well at this angle. We clambered up the cliff to see the Cape Blanco Lighthouse. It was closed and we could not take the tour but the gift shop was open and we acquired T shirts and berry jamb. To get back to the beach to dinner and the rest of our gear we had to walk past signs that said “Area Closed Beyond This Point”. But our side of these signs didn’t say anything. With all the resources at our disposal we had a big driftwood fire in the evening before going to our beds.