California Canoe and Kayak (CCK) is a popular kayak store in Jack London Square in Oakland. In conjunction with BASK, they sponsored a benefit paddle around Alameda Island. This was a fundraiser for BASK member Lore Hogan who used to host BASK meetings on the beautiful East Brother Island. Lore and her husband quit the job as hosts at the lighthouse to pursue their dream of owning and operating a charter fishing boat. Just as their boat Chubasco was licensed by the Coast Guard and they started doing commercial trips, Lore was diagnosed as having breast cancer. The benefit paddle was to raise money to help Lore. Like lots of walking and running benefits I have heard of, we were all encouraged to collect pledges from family and friends, who would offer to donate some amount for each mile I paddled. There was a shuttle half way around the island for people who could only paddle 7 miles half way around, but I planned on going the whole 15 miles. I’ve long wanted to paddle the Oakland Estuary anyway.
We met at a rocky boat ramp in Jack London Square. It was a mad scene with dozens of kayakers arriving, dropping off boats, and collecting gear. After a short talk, we were invited to launch. CCK has a small dock for this purpose, but kayakers were lined up to use it. Many of us were able to launch our boats over the rocks so I was able to get in the water early. Maryly and I waited around for more kayakers to get in the water, but the first few kayakers took off as if this was a race. On my marine radio I heard the "lead boat" complaining about how difficult it was to stay in the lead with people disappearing around the island without them. The "sweep ", or last, boat also had a radio and I heard them complaining that the last few people in the water were complete novices and had to get lessons on how to paddle before they could start. So the first and last kayakers were miles apart when everyone got going. Maryly and I were somewhere in the middle.
CCK was loaning boats for free to anyone doing the benefit paddle, so Maryly was trying out a sit-inside kayak. She thought that with a boat like this she should be able to easily zoom ahead of me, but discovered that she still had to work pretty hard to keep up. I don’t have a particularly fast boat nor am I a particularly fast paddler. I felt like I was working pretty hard to keep up with the group, and it wasn’t working. We ended up paddling nearly by ourselves in a small group that included a canoe. Seeing the canoe made me think I should have brought my Kevlar double and paddled around the island in it with Maryly.
We paddled down the Oakland Estuary with factories on our left and houses on our right on the shore of the island. Most of the houses had a yacht parked in the water in front. The estuary was full of floating garbage. I started collecting it and setting it down in my boat. Soon I had trash packed in under my legs and I could no longer move in my seat. As we paddled around the south end of the island the shore became shallower with no boats parked behind the houses. Instead marsh grass grew out of the water and I head this area was a bird sanctuary. When we turned to go up the east side of the island, the shoreline was a long public beach. I landed here to put all my trash in one of the litter cans on this beach.
At the north end of the sandy beach, we landed for lunch. CCK was carrying people and their kayaks back to Jack London Square. Maryly has been having joint problems in her shoulders and decided to take a ride back from this 7 mile spot. A bunch of kayakers didn’t bother to stop but just paddled on by. Another group, with Lore herself in a triple kayak, left while I was eating lunch. I left with Joan Weiner and Joe Petolino. Joan promised to paddle slow which was fine with me.
North of the beach there was a public marina, then a bunch of facilities for the Navy base on Alameda Island. We passed the ends of several breakwaters separating different harbors for large ships. Around one of these breakwaters we ran into some fun dancing water from the beginning of the ebb tide. Because of reports about this, a bunch of kayakers on the beach went back around the south end of the island. Only one other boat, the sweep boat with Penny Wells in it, followed us the rest of the way.
When we turned into the estuary we got some scary rides from the wakes of boats roaring past. We ducked across the channel to the Oakland side to huddle up against the shore where there was a train full of sea/land truck containers piled two high. A lift truck was picking some of these up and moving them. I started wondering how big a wave one would make if it fell off into the water near me. Penny had caught up with us by this time and she suddenly started joking about iceberg calving alerts. She was thinking the same thing I was about the containers falling in the water!
As we paddled up the estuary we could see the flagpole where we launched from. Penny pulled ahead of us so Joan and I joked about her failing in her duty as the sweep boat. But we all landed within a few minutes of each other. The last people to land with no fanfare or very many people to greet us. The party was already starting at CCK and most of the kayakers were already back in street clothes. I hustled my kayak back to my car to hurry up and join them.