Today a friend of mine, and I, launched at Santa Cruz Harbor planning to paddle North to Natural Bridges State Beach and then return. When we were in the Harbor Master's Office paying for parking, we asked them if it was OK to do a radio check on my VHF with them, as I had not yet transmitted on it. They said to go ahead, use Channel 9. They then told us that those radios are a good thing to have, "we almost lost two people yesterday in a Hobie 18. They capsized. One was with the boat and the other one couldn't catch the boat as the wind blew it away and they both spent a couple of hours in the water. (They must have had good wetsuits on, as the water is about 50-55 degrees, these days.) They didn't have a VHF so they floated around until someone saw them." Today was warm with a light breeze and about 4 foot swells coming from the NW. We had a nice paddle across the bay at Santa Cruz. On the way my partner, Howard Lewis had an encounter with a Marine Mammal. We were paddling thru' a kelp bed when he suddenly realized that he was about to hit a seal with his paddle. He immediately stopped paddling and wathched for a second. He said he thought it was dead. He yelled to me to tell me he had a dead seal and as he did the seal woke up and jumped up and then dived making an explosion of water that went all over Howard and nearly tipped him over. We also saw what we guess was the Hobie, two bows sticking up out of the water, upside down and at about a 45 deg. angle, near a big Ball Buoy a ways off of the Santa Cruz Pier. Looked as tho' the hulls got flooded somewhere along the line. Back 20 years when I was turning over a Prindle 18 a lot, it floated quite high and level when upside down. We watched more carefully for marine mammals after that and later our alertness scored a really rare marine mammal. At least it's really, really rare 1/2 mile off the shore in our cold waters. At first we really couldn't figure out what we were seeing. Then we realized it was swimmer, heading North parallel to and about 1/2 mile off the beach. Full wetsuit, white cap, and blue flippers. Stroking along and kicking like heck, s/he was going almost as fast as I was on my Kayak. We didn't approach close enough to talk as when we waved the swimmer waved back and kept on churning up the coast. Only time I've ever seen anyone swimming in this water except for a minute or two right on the beach. We arrived at Natural Bridges, or rather off of it. The swells were building up to what looked like 6-10 foot breakers off of the beach and we didn't feel up to playing in those. Since the last time I was there (about 20 years ago) the biggest bridge area has caved in, leaving a smaller pass thru' separated from the mainland. As we turned back we tried to contact the Harbor Master, but no luck. I think we were blocked by the land at Light House Point/Seal Rock. As we returned I tried again about 1000 yards N. of Light House Point, and further out to sea, and made good clear contact with the Harbor Master Office. At this point my GPS says we were a little over a mile from the mouth of the harbor. At Natural Bridges we showed 3.17 miles from harbor mouth, long range for a hand held even without an intervening point of land. Probably would have done just fine with a cell phone from there. Almost ran over a sea otter which surfaced about 3 feet in front of my boat as I was surfing down a swell in a kelp bed, but I had just put my paddle in the water to rudder and stay pointed down the swell and I swerved and missed it by about two feet. This avoiding marine mammals stuff can get pretty hard to do when they come up right in the middle of the freeway. :-) The day was absolutely beautiful, the water a gorgeous blue, the sun bright but not so hot you sweated out in a wet suit, and the bigger swells far enough apart so you really enjoyed them. The day was topped off by lunch at the Crow's nest and a stop at West Marine for a Parachute Flare. Nothing frighteningly exciting, but fun all the way. Kayaking is really a good life. Every trip is different, in some way, and, so far, every paddle has been a good one. Fair winds and happy bytes, -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dave Flory, San Jose, CA. daflory_at_pacbell.net ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Speak softly and study Aikido, then you won't need a big stick. ©2000 ------------------------------------------------------------------------- *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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