Bodega Bay, February 7th 1999.

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Roger Lamb called and invited me to come along on his weekly exercise paddle out into Bodega Bay. I had tried to join the Cow Paddy Pageant the day before (a race down the Estero Americano and back) but had skipped it due to ferocious winds. I checked the weather at Bodega on the WEB and discovered that the wind had suddenly died down today from 17 knots to 2 knots and stayed that mild for three hours. The waves were high, 13.8 feet every 8 seconds, but we could paddle inside the bay behind the Bodega rocks. Roger bought a yearly pass to the county beaches so he drove to Doran Beach on the south side of Bodega Harbor and launched off of a little dock there. I drove to Campbell Cove and launched on the north side of the channel. We met between the arms of the jetty and paddled out into the bay.

We turned out to sea and headed straight towards the Bodega Rock. This is a low rock visible from many places around the bay and harbor. It is covered with California sea lions that bark incessantly and can be heard from farther away than you can see the rock. Last time I was paddling in Bodega Bay I was with Maryly Snow and stayed away from the rock to honor her comfort level. This time Roger and I paddled straight up to the rock and could have attempted a landing on it. To honor the comfort level of the seals, we stopped our advance when a few sea lions swam out from the rock with their heads and shoulders out of the water. I have heard that this is an aggressive posture and indicated that we were getting too close.

Roger and I sat there in the choppy water behind the rock and let the wind slowly push us southeast while we talked. When we slipped into calmer water we turned and headed towards Pinnacle Rock. This is the infamous rock that Roger tried to paddle behind and got swept into the cliffs. He calls this rock his nemesis and has been back to paddle around it (in milder conditions) to cure himself of a lingering fear. With a low tide, shallow water behind the rock, and 13 foot swells, we had no intention of getting very close and especially no intention of trying to circumnavigate it. I pointed to the cliff and joked that I could still see a white mark on the cliff where Roger’s Mariner II kayak had hit the cliff and broken itself. "No wait, the white mark is spelling out words! It says, R O G .. Hey Roger, that rock has your name on it!"

We turned to paddle around the arch of Doran Beach and stay in the up and down water before the waves break. Some pretty scary waves came by and threatened to break near us and we kept turning away from the beach, then heading back again. Roger likes to paddle north and peek around the end of Bodega Head and suggested we do this instead of going straight back to the harbor. We paddled out across the bay again, this time going between Bodega Rock and Bodega Head. There is a shallow spot here where the waves rose up larger than before. On a few waves the bow of my boat rose up and slammed down with a splash but we were facing into them and easily rode them out. Eventually we were out in the open ocean looking at large waves breaking on the outside of the head and turned back.

Roger said "Now starts the scary part". I thought this was an unusual thing for Roger to say, so I wondered if he meant that turning our backs on the large waves would be scary. I opened my mouth to ask him this when a large wave rose up under us. Both boats started to surf forward but fortunately stalled on the top of the wave. I was looking down a nearly ten foot drop in front of me! Since my mouth was still open to speak, I said "This is a little more scary than I would prefer!" If I had taken two more paddle strokes forward I could have surfed down that wall of water and ridden it all the way into the rocks off Bodega Head. Both of us turned south and paddled way around the point to avoid any more nearly breaking waves like that. Roger had been casting derisive remarks all through the paddle about the NOAA report of 13.8 foot swell. He said that we hadn’t seen anything larger than 8 feet tall. After this big wave went by he changed his tune and said that we had been seeing smaller waves inside the bay and there really were 13 foot waves out there in the ocean.

As we turned back, we could not see any way to get back between the point and the Bodega Rocks. It looked as if the waves had gotten larger and were breaking all the way across. Both of us started figuring that we might have to paddle the long way around the rocks to get home. But it turned out that we had just traveled farther around the point than we had realized. As we paddled south a gap in the waves became more and more apparent and we paddled directly back the way we came. Back to the safe harbor and our cars without getting any wetter than we had planed.


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Mike Higgins / mike@kayaker.net