I worked my way slowly through these rocks taking my time so that Brian could catch up with me, but I never saw him. Finally I paddled out of the rocks to look around. I saw Brian north near the Sisters. What is he doing up there? Photographing the caves we saw the evening before when they were too rough? I went behind the last few rocks then come out again. Brian was still messing around near the Sisters. Finally I gave up and paddled up to ask him what he was doing. He was looking for me! Apparently the last time he saw me I was heading north to look at the crack. He assumed that I had gone north into the caves and may have gotten into trouble. He had looked in my rock garden but somehow missed me and gone back to the Sisters to look for wreckage of my kayak in the caves. At his insistance I took out my VHF radio and left it on my deck for the rest of the trip. The next time we don’t see each other for 15 minutes, I am to turn on the radio and check in.
We turned south and headed past another long nasty sandy dumpy beach. This was supposed to be a short day, only 15 miles, and Brian said that short days are the worst. When you know that you have over 25 miles to go you relax into it and let it take all day. But when you only have 12 or 15 miles in a day he gets impatient and it seems to take forever. He was also cranky because he could not get his traction kite up and he had to paddle the whole distance!
We paddled past a few rows of small offshore rocks with boomers, waves breaking over submerged rocks we had to guess the location of. We looked behind Hubbard Mound and Otter Point from a distance, two of my possible camping spots but we had places to be. Dave Harry was meeting us in Gold Beach at Jot’s Resort and we had to keep going to make our appointment. As we approached the jetty we saw what looked like large waves dumping across the mouth of the jetty. But this turned out to be an illusion. A shallow sandy point north of the jetty was breaking the waves but we paddled around this to find a clear approach the last few miles.
The tide was rising and we expected a free ride inside the jetty to the resort. But when we turned the corner there was a lot of current going out. Did I read the tide chart wrong? Brian pointed out the rocks inside the jetty: They were free of barnacles, indicating that the water was all fresh! I checked my map to see what body of water this was and discovered that we were fighting the current of the Rouge River! It must be murder to try and paddle up this river when the tide is going against you! As the river widened inside the jetty the current became easier on us and we soon landed on the dock of the resort.
When Dave arrived, he and Brian took off to shuttle a car. They drove up to Bandon to pick up Brian’s truck, drove two trucks down to Brookings, and then came back in one to join me in our hotel room for showers and dinner. When we finish the trip we’ll pick up cars one at a time as we drive back north. Brian says that he is pleased with this style of kayak camping with a hotel room every few days.