[Paddlewise] day trip report

Well, Megan and I paddled both Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday what we
really wanted to do was go to Drakes Bay and do some whale watching.
But we got a late start, and only had time to paddle around Brooks
Island in the San Francisco Bay.  Since we were pretty sure Sunday would
be a full on El Nino day we knew we had better go for it.  It was a
beautiful afternoon.  Those massive white billowy clouds are not the
normal fare in these parts.  They were quite delightful.  There were a
few sail boats out but they weren't having much luck.  We passed them
like they were standing still.  The sailors  thought we had racing
kayaks.  Nope.  Even better:  stitch and glue.  We could see light
squalls over the city and off in the north, but we were rain free.
There's a big rock just off the western shore of Brooks.  I guess we
came up on it pretty quietly because we took a small group of seals by
surprise.  Most of them slipped quietly into the water nearby.  They
didn't panic and neither did we.  They just watched us in silence as we
paddled by, much as we were watching them.  Pretty awesome to see this
kind of nature so close to the gizmo metro.

The next day was the first day of daylight savings.  Ugh.  Hard to get
out of bed.  But the sky was blue!  A quick look at the satellite photo
and we were convinced we could get in a whale or two today.  We called
our kayaking buddies, but they couldn't quite struggle out of bed, so we
made a little breakfast, loaded up and took off for Pt. Reyes.  The
swell was light at Drakes Beach.  The surfers weren't getting very long
rides.  Megan launched first and made it look easy.  I had to punch
through what must have been three of the biggest waves that day (I have
a knack for that).  But I got to test out my latest Greenland design for
agility on the way down.  Mmm.  Not bad.  Once assembled outside the
surf zone we headed for Chimney Rock.  Pt. Reyes is a huge peninsula
that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.  The migrating grey whales heading
north along the coast are forced to take a sharp left turn fairly close
to shore when they encounter Drakes Bay, making it a great place to see
them by kayak.  We hung out at Chimney Rock for a while, but saw
nothing.  Still it was a great day.  The hilly terrain was lush green
with wild grasses punctuated by an occasional stand of live oak.  Where
land meets water the ocean has sectioned these hills to make gorgeous
hill-shaped cliffs.  The sky was blue above even though there were those
massive clouds on a panorama around us.  We headed back with a gentle
breeze to port.  I was timing the the lulls between the large swells
that passed under us.  Suddenly Megan shouted, "One just blew over
there!"  She was pointing to southeast to her right.  We rafted up
facing opposite directions so that we could scan 360 degrees.  I saw one
come up for air basically straight back toward our launch site. "Over
there!"  We watched as this great animal broke the surface and arched
along back under.  We looked at each other.  "That looked more like a
humpback than a grey."  "Yeah."  Then a mother and her calf spouted in
the same area.  Then another.  Sure enough they were humpbacks.  They
were less than 100 yards away.  Well that made our day.  Landing through
the surf was a piece of cake.  We had some clam chowder at the snack bar
and basked in our good fortune.  Here we were going to kick back at
home, have some dinner and get to sleep early.  Those whales would still
be out there on their northward journey.  It makes me wonder, how do
whales sleep?  Do they dream at all about kayaks?

***************************************************************************
PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List
Submissions:     paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net
Subscriptions:   paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net
Website:         http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/
***************************************************************************