Doug Lloyd said: There are some fantastic examples of seperate wave trains colliding up near Cape Scott and North Brooks. I paddled around Cape Scott a few years ago. Waves were coming in to shore and boouncing off the sheer cliffs. Tide was falling, creating a big eddy around our side of the Cape. So, we paddled through very big (way over my head) waves coming from three and sometimes four directions. Some of the waves met up and made funny, swirling haystacks. Haviing paddled a lot of whitewater, this was all fun (nervous fun, but fun) for me. The strangest part was, just as another boat and I were accidently surfing side by side on a big wave we noticed that we had company. A large group of sea lions were surfing the wave with us. They were feeding on the salmon that had bunched up in the meeting currents. We surfed and played for a while, always with sea lions joining us, looking at us, and even bumping us a few times. That was one of the great paddling experiences of my life. Last month I was fortunate enough to paddle in the Dodecanese islands in Greece. Kalymnos has huge, sheer cliffs. When we passed them, the waves were building to peaks of about five feet. They came straight into the cliffs and bounced off at angles determined by the angle of the cliff to the wave. We deliberately paddled right up against the cliffs where the wave action seemed more regular than it was further off. For two hours we surfed, bounced and ran riot in the confusion. Rock gardens added to the fun. The more relaxed we got and the less we trusted our eyes, the easier the balance got. With eyes closed, it was downright relaxing. I think a big part of the problem in this kind of water is that we attempt to anticipate what our eyes tell us will happen rather than just let the boat keep itself up by leaving it be. I found paddling along the cliff without a paddle no harder than with, only slower. Jim Tibensky *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jun 17 2008 - 07:26:12 PDT
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