On the way to the beach, I told Jeremy that the swells were reported under 4 feet, with breakers probably under 2 feet. This sounded good to him, although I warned hem that two foot breakers look pretty big when your head is only that high above the water. Sure enough, when we came over the dune, his first comment was "Those are too high"! I had told him that the plan was to play in the surf and definitely get wet. To help him stay warm, I had him bring an old pair of tennis shoes and I had him try on my neoprene gloves and diving hood. But when we got to the water, Jeremy decided to leave the shoes up on the sand. (He was afraid the surf would pull them off). A few minutes later, he took the gloves off and put them up by the shoes. And then a few minutes after that the hood came off as well. Apparently he was comfortable enough with just his wet suit and flotation vest on.
I held Jeremy in the little Frenzy kayak once to give him a free ride on one of the breakers, then left him to paddle himself out into the waves. He spent most of his time going back and forth in water that was probably never more than one meter deep. I got into the longer Scupper Pro kayak and joined him, a bit farther up the beach so we could stay out of each others way. At first I stood in the surf holding onto the handle on the nose of the kayak, waiting for a calm moment to get in. This is actually quite tiring, as I have mentioned before: Wrestling the kayak over the breakers, getting your knuckles banged up on the nose, occasionally getting dragged back towards shore. Then I made a wonderful discovery. If I was willing to get slammed in the face with cold salt water occasionally, paddling the kayak in the breakers was easier than standing outside it and holding on. It was actually quite relaxing to sit far back from where the waves were breaking in shallow water. Only the smallest waves came this close to shore to break, and the largest ones broke so far out that they lost a lot of energy before the breakers made it to me. The breakers pushed me back a little harder than the backwash pulled me forward, so I could paddle gently and stay in place.
A few times, I forced my way through the breaking waves and made it out to sea. Every once in a while, the breaking waves would calm down, and I'd have an almost flat expanse of ocean to paddle out into. Sitting in the shallow breakers was exactly the right place to be to take advantage of this, and I could glide out to sea with little effort or risk of getting slammed in the face. Jeremy followed me out one of these times, and was jazzed to have made it. As he passed me, a seal jumped out of the top of a swell heading for the beach. A few seconds later it jumped out of another wave. Jeremy saw this both times, and then the seal saw us. It swam around Jeremy's kayak and rose up out of the water to get a good look at him. From the behavior, I would have identified this as a sea lion, but Jeremy is adamant that what he saw was the face of a harbor seal looking at him.
After a while, Jeremy got tired of wrestling the kayak in the surf, pulled it out of the water, and went body surfing in his wetsuit and flotation vest instead. He would walk out until a wave started to break right in front of him, then turn away, hold his arms out, and let it slam into him and push him back towards shore. That's not really body surfing as I recall it, but it sounded like he was having fun. This was apparently a cold enough pastime that Jeremy put the diving hood back on his head.
While he was not using the little Frenzy kayak, I switched kayaks to try it out here, since it is supposed to be a more stable machine in the surf. When I picked it up, I found we had forgotten to plug the drain hole on the nose, and a lot of water sloshed around inside. I tipped it up and drained liters and liters and LITERS of water out of it. No wonder Jeremy got tired of dragging it back and forth in the surf! When it was empty, I tried it out in the surf, and felt a little less stable because I could not pin myself as tightly into the seat with my feet and thighs as I can in the larger kayak. Perhaps if I adjusted the seat I could hold myself in better.
I switched back to the longer kayak and suggested to Jeremy that he take a few more rides in the waves before we left. He decided to just keep body surfing. I have tried and tried to really surf on the waves, but I rarely actually surf down the face of one. In a kayak it is very easy to get a ride sideways up the beach in the breakers, and this is what Jeremy was doing in the shallow waters. But really surfing is a little more elusive. When I pick a wave and try to paddle up to speed to ride it, I rarely get a good ride. The few good rides I have gotten were usually surprises that rose up behind me while I wasn't looking. I recall this even happening to me in Santa Cruz years ago in my fabric covered Folbot kayak. One good ride this trip started when a wave broke behind me. I tried to paddle, but on my first stroke I hit the breaking water coming forward, and it felt like I hit a rock. The impact shoved me forward instantly, and I rode the wave nicely. My last ride was a large wave that sneaked up on me like this. I hardly had time to paddle twice before it started to curl behind me and push me forward. The kayak turned to the left sooner than I would have liked, and I was riding sideways on the wave before it broke. I managed to brace into it and keep myself in the kayak while it broke. Then the broken water really grabbed the kayak and we zoomed all the rest of the way across the shallow water and up onto the sand.
Driving home, I saw some trucks in the Duncans Cove Beach parking lot and some workers in orange vests on the closed off trail. This trail was partially washed out a year or two ago, and I feared that the State would never get around to fixing it. They had (foolishly in my humble opinion) wasted money instead putting a heavy railing across the top of the trail with a "Danger, keep off" sign. But now it looks like they are actually starting to repair the trail. This and the recent dune protection measures at Salmon Creek Beach have me hopeful that the State Parks Service is doing better at maintaining the accesses to the beach. Now if they would only repair the old stairs down to Fisk Mill Cove.
