Friday, January 7, 2011

Back Bay with Mike

Mike and I paddled from the Baywood Pier in mid-morning, about an hour before high tide. The sun was out, with some clouds, but absolutely no wind. Just glass. We paddled to the Cuesta Inlet, then along the golf course area to Shark Inlet, where we saw no sharks. Continuing north along the sand spit, we checked out a catamaran that was beached up at the high tide mark, and back in some tules. We could not get in close enough to find any reg. numbers or a name. Most likely, the boat blew over from Cuesta. Further up, I spotted something orange just off the shoreline, floating above the pickleweed. Turned out to be a large (marine diesel?) Fram oil filter. Really? Who does that? I strapped it to my deck and disposed of it when we returned. We stopped to stretch our backs and walked up the dunes to a high point, trying to unravel the mysteries of numerous animal prints that crossed over each other in a helix. Best guess; a rabbit chased by a dog or coyote.
We spent some time at the top, enjoying the view (360 degrees) and some pistachios. The picture is from there. We cut back across to Baywood; a wonderful 2 1/2 hours on the bay, on a day that would make any non-Californian jealous.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Last Paddle of 2010

First, I'd like to mention how fortunate I am to have been able spend a good part of the last day of the year in a kayak. Love the Central Coast!
I paddled solo from the public launch at Tidelands Park in Morro Bay; getting into the water at around 11 am. The tide was rushing out, so I paddled into it and followed the channels up near Baywood, noticing lots of debris in the brown runoff water from the recent rains. When the tide began to slacken, I headed in the opposite direction and out to Morro Rock. There were plenty of birds on the water, including some white pelicans. A few otters were spotted, as well as the sea lions on a barge toward the end of the sand spit.
There were a number of paddle boarders in the area between the two jettys at Morro Rock, some  appeared to be taking lessons. I see more standup paddlers all the time. The water was fairly calm, the wind slight, so I decided to paddle out into the ocean, just to check the conditions. There was a fair sized swell, and I was solo, so I only went out far enough to catch the view up toward Cayucos and south to Montana de Oro. Three dolphin cruised by, one of them submerging just a couple of yards from my boat and swimming directly under me.
On the way back in from the harbor entrance, two small acrobatic planes flew past, on the "inside" of Morro Rock. They both flew quite close to the rock, and were only about 150 feet off the ground. Lots of laws broken there, but a cool sight to see.