Return-path: Strosaker_at_aol.com From: Strosaker_at_aol.com Full-name: Strosaker Message-ID: <75bd4535.2521a906_at_aol.com> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 01:15:50 EDT Subject: A Santa Monica Bay Crossing and Something About Nebraska To: Strosaker_at_aol.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 26 A Santa Monica Bay Crossing and Something About Nebraska by Duane Strosaker After a great summer of crossings to Catalina, Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, I looked at a map of the California coast to find my next crossing to conquer. I heard about Monterey Bay being a classic crossing, and it is a crossing that I want to do someday, but I noticed that there is a very similar crossing much closer to my home in Irvine. The crossing is Santa Monica Bay. I imagine that Santa Monica Bay has been crossed in kayaks, but it wasn't a crossing that I heard of before. Maybe it wasn't really thought of as a crossing, but I was impressed with the challenge. From Point Dume to Palos Verdes Peninsula is 24 nautical miles, which is 27 1/2 statute miles for you land lovers. At the halfway point of the crossing, the nearest land is 8 nautical miles. The crossing is 6 nautical miles farther than Santa Cruz Island and 4 more than Catalina Island. The distance sounded like a wonderful challenge. Even better, I could do the crossing as a day trip and squeeze it into my kayaking schedule before the summer was over. Jim Gabriel, who was my partner on Catalina and Santa Cruz crossings, was eager to go when I told him about Santa Monica Bay. We have been trying to recruit other kayakers to join us on crossings, but finding any with the paddling skills, endurance, guts, and just as importantly, the right personality, has proven difficult. However, we were lucky enough to know Jay Williams from paddling with him in rock gardens and sea caves on club trips at Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, and when he told us he had Catalina crossings under his belt, we knew we found a cohort. It didn't take any persuading to get him to join us on the Santa Monica Bay crossing. We started the crossing from Point Dume at 7:00am on Sunday, September 26, 1999, with an ideal forecast of light and variable winds in the morning and WNW winds from 10-15 knots in the afternoon. Without incident we launched through 2-4 foot surf that was dumping right on the steep beach. The water was bumpy at the beginning near Point Dume and at the end near Palos Verdes Peninsula, but otherwise it was calm. Visibility was about 5 miles, and there was a heavy cloud layer making it gloomy all day. Due to the limited visibility, steering by compass was necessary. Jim was nice enough to navigate the whole crossing for us. Being in Santa Monica Bay, I expected a lot of boat traffic, but there were fewer boats on this crossing than any of my previous ones. During the first three quarters of the crossing, we saw only a few boats far away on the horizon. It was an amazing feeling being able to look around and not see any land or boats but at the same time know that there are millions of people just 8 miles away. All we could hear were our paddles splashing and jets taking off over our heads from Los Angeles International Airport. The contrast between the peaceful ocean and the metropolis so near fascinated me. It was one of those great kayaking moments. There was one of those exciting moments too. While we were taking a break to drink and eat, I happened to be looking over at Jay. He was looking at something in the water right next to him, and suddenly he had a look of terror on his face. At the same time he yelled for us to paddle fast because there was a shark the size of "Nebraska" under us. With the terror in Jays face and voice, Jim and I didn't need any convincing. In a split second, the three of us were paddling away. Once Jay stopped shaking, all of us, including Jay, laughed. Jay said the shark was at least 10 feet long. It was just below the surface and was slowly passing parallel to his kayak and just a few feet away. As it passed by, it rolled its body away from him, as if it was looking up at him. He felt they even made eye contact. Jay didn't know what type of shark it was, but he described it as being gray and having a wide girth. He saw sharks before while scuba diving, but this was the first one capable of eating a man. It was also the first one that scared him. I just had to know how a shark off the coast of southern California became associated with the state of Nebraska and why Jay chose this state out of all 50 of them. So I asked. Jay said he has no idea why he chose Nebraska and that he has never even been to the state. A little while later, our shark scanning eyes saw a fin flapping above the surface of the water. After an apprehensive moment, we recognized it as a sunfish and paddled over to it. By sunfish standards, it was small, about 2 feet tall, more like Rhode Island rather than Nebraska. It wasn't shy at all and let us watch from a couple of feet away as it slowly swam at the surface. Seeing those sunfish are one of the rewards of offshore kayaking. As we approached Palos Verdes Peninsula, the coast began to appear on the left and we had some boat traffic. With recognizable landmarks, Jim made a corrective bearing and led us to our landing at Malaga Cove. We made our landing in some gentle 2 foot surf at 3:00pm, making for an 8 hour crossing and an average speed of 3 knots, which is 3 1/2 miles per hour for you land lovers. After using Jay's excellent homemade kayak cart to get our kayaks up the long and steep hill above Malaga Cove, we went to Fat Burgers on Pacific Coast Highway to regain burned calories. Then it was car shuttle time. Doing the shuttle was the most brutal part of the crossing. It was a long drive up Pacific Coast Highway to get around Santa Monica Bay. With driving to and from the bay, shuttling, and paddling the crossing, it was a 17 hour day and a test of my devotion to the sport. In closing, I would like to say that Santa Monica Bay really is a great crossing and should be a southern California classic. Although a bay crossing is not as glorious as crossing to an island, such as Catalina or Santa Cruz, the distance across Santa Monica Bay is actually farther. One is still far offshore, and all of the crossing skills, including being able to handle rough water and navigate, are needed. It is a great place to test yourself, your partners and your equipment. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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