Blog - The Naked Kayaker

Circumnavigating Angel Island, San Francisco Bay

11/6/2012

10am - Pull into the parking lot at Horseshoe Cove. The view from the Cove is pretty great. This morning the Bay was covered in a thin layer of thick fog, up to the base of the GG Bridge. It cleared up as the day went on.

Thanks to its strategic location just inside the Golden Gate, Angel Island has quite a bit of history. It was the U.S. immigration station from 1910 to 1940 where hundreds of thousands of immigrants entered the country. In the 1950's and 60's it was a missile site.

Drakes Estero, Point Reyes National Seashore

11/5/2012

Limantour Spit covered in white pelicans.

Estero: "small river," "marsh," or "estuary" in Spanish. I looked it up before agreeing to go on the trip. "Drakes" because it's the likely landing spot of Sir Francis Drake in 1579 during his circumnavigation of the world (thank you, wikipedia). We departed from the Drakes Bay Oyster Company around 10am. The Oyster Company manages a pretty extensive network of wooden racks with oyster beds throughout the Estero - when the tide reached a certain water level, we kept scraping the bottoms of our boats on wooden poles just below the surface. There's a lot of controversy surrounding the company -- oyster collection disturbs seal pups, covers eelgrass beds, and leaves some plastic waste floating around the estuary.

Fighting the Tide at Elkhorn Slough, Monterey Bay

11/5/2012

Sea lions chilling out in the marsh. In the background are the cooling towers from the Moss Landing Power Plant, a natural gas-driven electricity generation plant. The plant takes cool water from the slough or ocean and uses it to cool the gas turbines. Warm water gets dumped back in the ocean.

[blog post interrupted by random clippings from Marika's trip summary!]

In June. Marika, Julia, Whitney, and I decided to go for a paddle in Elkhorn Slough. This was shortly after I found out my company was applying to work on a restoration project in the slough. In 1947, a harbor was built at the mouth of the slough to provide a safe haven for boats coming in and out. Unfortunately, constructing a permanent structure like a harbor limits the slough's ability to naturally manage itself by opening, closing, and moving north to south, depending on factors like inflows and sediment supply.

Playing in the Surf Zone at Pillar Point, Half Moon Bay

11/4/2012

Feeling somewhat intimidated by the Pacific Ocean, I signed up for a Surf Zone class by California Canoe and Kayak. It's a paddling shop with a number of locations in the Bay Area, including Oakland (about 5 mins from my house) and Half Moon Bay.

I was one of three students in the class. According to the instructor, the surf was perfect for learning. The class was focused on handling your kayak in the surf zone: launching and landing safely, punching through breaking waves to get out past the surf zone, and side surfing to avoid getting flipped when the waves turn you sideways.

Canoeing the Sudbury River

11/4/2012

My little brother's high school graduation in June brought me back to Boston for a long weekend. As usual, my visit home provided my mother and stepfather the opportunity to ask boat-related questions and favors. Last time it was "can you help us buy canoe paddles?" This time it was "can you fix the canoe seats? My brothers and I spent an afternoon measuring and drilling holes in the new canoe seats, bringing the old green canoe back into service.

Moeke (= "mom" in Flemish) and I took the boat on it's maiden voyage, version 2, down the Sudbury River near our house in Lincoln, MA. Here's a map:

To be honest, it's been so long since we did this short paddle that I can't remember much more. Oops. But here's my mother in her funny hat :)