I have wonderful memories of paddling around Stewarts Point and Fisherman's Bay. These are two very scenic places on the long stretch of private coastline between Sea Ranch and Salt Point State Park. It has been two years since I was last there and it was time to see it again. I also wanted to share it with other kayakers so I scheduled a BASK trip to paddle this stretch of coast. Three of us showed up at Stump Beach in Salt Point Park on Sunday morning to get organized. Leigh Moorehouse in a fiberglass sit-inside, Bob D'Arcy and myself on plastic sit-on-top boats. We left my van at Stump Beach and shuttled the boats and ourselves up to Pebble Beach. Pebble is not the first public beach in Sea Ranch, but it is one of the mildest beaches there and my first choice for launching a kayak.
There was a 0.3 mile hike to the beach according to the maps. I put wheels on my kayak and used it as a wheelbarrow to carry everyone else's equipment down. Bob and Leigh carried their boats down to the beach after putting on their wetsuits and arrived all too soon and I had to rush to catch up. The more you try to rush putting on a wetsuit, the sweatier you get and the harder it is to put on and the harder you have to work and the sweatier you get...
The NOAA WEB site was reporting mild four foot swell and a prediction of reasonably mild six foot swell by evening. The morning was foggy but this rose up off the water into a low ceiling and left our visibility undisturbed all day. I had certainly never seen Pebble Beach as mild as it was on this day. We launched over these mild waves and started south. Before getting to Black Point Beach there is a ring of rocks I have paddled through before. One of the rocks has a little arch through it and I wanted to go through it again. It looked a little rough between the rocks and I was the only person who paddled in there, everyone else went around the east side of the rocks. They discovered the arch when they saw me come out of it. Then a large wave came though and convinced them not to go through the arch themselves.
We paddled past Black Point Beach without getting very close to the beach. At Black Point itself we stayed close to shore and started trying to find paths behind the rocks. I have complained about the group dynamics on BASK trips, where the majority often takes a different route than I want to take. The trick seems to be finding a group of people who what to do the same things I want to do. After the first few transits behind rocks I asked Leigh and Bob if continuing this sort of rock gardening was agreeable to them or if we should travel a little farther from shore. They both enthusiastically agreed to do the rock garden thing close to shore. We proceeded to poke our kayaks into each little cove and behind every rock. We went through places that I never even noticed on my last trip past there. Part of this was because my skill and confidence in the waves has increased over the last two years. Part of it was having other kayakers along so we could back each other up. This is a potentially dangerous thing: having friends along gives you a potentially false sense of security and makes you take chances. Having other people around to try to impress is another form of this. However, we managed to keep everyone in their boats all day long without having any close calls or even any large waves break over us. Often we stopped as a group in front of a hazardous looking section of water and discussed whether to proceed. Several times we turned out to sea around and area and were glad we had. Several times we looked back at one of these areas and decided we should have gone for it.
From my memory of the coastline, I told the others that there were a couple interesting little coves around Black Point, then a boring section of coastline before Stewarts Point where we would stop for lunch. As we traveled down past the last Sea Ranch house and into the ranch land area, however, we kept finding more little coves and rocks to paddle behind. It turns out that this section was only boring to me two years ago because I stayed too far from shore to enjoy it that time! We found a cave in one place, and I paddled all the way through it only to find very shallow water at the other end, in fact no water at all between waves. The waves were breaking over this shallow rocky beach, so I backed out and said we could not proceed. But then Leigh went through the cave, let the waves leave her boat high and dry, and just continued on when the next wave hit. So Bob and I followed through. We couldn't let a fiberglass boat go where our plastic boats were afraid to tread!
Another incident with Leigh was a long (20 or 30 meter) ridge of rock perpendicular to the waves with a narrow channel behind it. This line had a few gaps in it where waves could break in. Leigh lined up at one end of this and looked like she was thinking of going through. Both Bob and I passed it by. But when Leigh looked serious, I stopped at the other end to watch her go through, which she did with virtually no problems. At different times of the day, each of us took the lead going through the rock garden. There were places that each of us felt confidant going through that the others did not and the rest of us just went around with no chiding or loss of face.
We stopped at Stewarts Point for lunch. The sun came out for lunch then went behind the fog again. As we started off again after lunch the fog finally blew away for good and we had a sunny and clear day for the last few hours we were out. We did more rock gardening into little coves around Stewarts Point until we worked our way into Fisherman's Bay. It was at least as much fun as I recalled from the last trip here, with the additional benefit that my increased skill allowing me to go places I didn't try last time. And it was great to be able to share this area with someone else. We went behind every rock and through every crack that was wide enough for the boats to fit. Bob said that he had never done rock gardening as thoroughly before this day.
We continued going behind rocks and through the points and made a short rest stop at Rocky Point. When we turned the corner around this point, Bob pulled ahead an stepped up the pace for the rest of the afternoon. He cut across Horseshoe Cove without turning in to explore. By this time Leigh and I must have been tired because we did not object and vote by turning towards shore. We did pass a few places where I was tempted to turn aside and go behind the rocks some more. Leigh said afterwards that if she had known that the rock gardening was over she would have lingered longer on the last ones. But we were content to step up the pace and get back to our cars and into dry clothes sooner. Around Horseshoe point into Fisk Mill Cove, Bob let us catch up so I could point out where Stump Beach was. We paddled close to shore but managed to avoid doing any more rock gardens. When we turned into the channel to Stump Beach, the waves were very mild compared to the last few times I have launched or landed at this beach. There were no large waves breaking through the opening to the channel and we had a mild and easy paddle to the beach.
