Kiddie Beach or Hobie Beach
Sunday September 10 |
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| By: Robert Tongen | |||
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| This morning under a chance of rain with a cool wind coming off the water Paul Jonason, Lance Pillsbury, Keith Elliott and I stood near Hobie Beach debating the best place to launch in Channel Islands Harbor. Seals had moved in near the knee wall where we are supposed to launch from on Kiddie Beach but there was room to launch more toward the lifeguard stand. The tide was coming in and the sand at Hobie Beach was quickly disappearing. Most of us opted to use Kiddie while Keith and George Ball launched from Hobie. Bob Glickman joined us at Kiddie. The water was dirty, riled and cool when we launched. We could see white foam coming over the breakwater as we paddled out the channel. As usual Bob and Lance headed off for a longer faster paddle. When we got to the pond the wind was coming directly down the coast and it was exhilarating paddling into it and make good headway. We met up with a nice pod of dolphins following the swells. There were a lot of birds in the air diving for the bait fish that were jumping. In addition to the usual seagulls and pelicans a large flock of Terns was also present. It was interesting to watch the Terns and catching fish then other Terns chase the one with the fish so eventually it was dropped and they all went without. We met Lance and Bob coming back from too heavy seas to comfortably paddle in. Lance challenged us to paddle with him around the breakwater, but we were too lazy. We ended up paddling in the harbor with Bob, Lance, and George paddled the entire harbor. The rest of us not quite so far. Keith had the amusement of watching 3 relatively new kayak fishermen landing ahead of him at Hobie Beach. Eventually they let him pass so he could carry his boat up to his vehicle. George opted to land at Hobie Beach with us and move his vehicle from Hobie. Several times George, who was having trouble deploying his skeg, commented on how straight Peter and my kayaks paddled straight without a skeg while he was going every direction. I did not have the heart to tell him we could go straight because we did not have Bev Waldron's old and trained paddle. |
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