First Time Out the Gate

With the help of great instruction by an elite set of excellent kayak coaches I achieved a goal I've been working towards for months -- I kayaked out the Golden Gate to the Pacific. And had fun doing it.

Here are a few photos of this trip: My pictures

Sean got some better ones: Sean's photos

And here's a video that Tiffany, one of the women on this trip, took with her GoPro camera. It gives quite a feel for the kind of paddling we were doing and the range of conditions we got that day. I'm in some bits of the video. I'm paddling a yellow kayak (Delphin), wearing a blue drysuit, yellow PFD and black helmet. Tiffany's Open Coast: Marin Headlands video

Yes, I paddled out the Gate for the first time on Saturday May 18th with Sean Morley, Matt Krizan and folks. This is something I've been working toward over the past months. I had a plan and it worked!

I learned to kayak in the Seattle area so developed good skills for paddling in strong current (like Deception Pass) and wind waves (which arise everywhere). I'd become a decent intermediate kayaker. When I moved down to the Bay Area I started exploring the kayaking areas and these skills were just what I needed on the Bay. But there is lots of great paddling on the Pacific Coast and I lacked a few key skills to go out there: I needed to get much better at launching and landing my kayak through surf and I needed to build skills paddling along a rocky coast with ocean swell. A skill called "rock gardening".

The plan was to work on surf and rock garden skills. I started in earnest at the Lumpy Waters Kayak Symposium in Pacific City last October (2012) where I focused on intro surf classes with Karl Anderson. Then intro rock gardening with Paul Kuthe and Cate Hawthorne at the Golden Gate Sea Kayak Symposium in January 2013. Then an absolutely fabulous surf clinic with Sean Morley in whitewater boats at Bolinas. That's where I really first started to "get" surfing a kayak rather than just surviving getting one to shore through the surf. I had a huge amount of fun that day. After meeting Cate and Jeff of Liquid Fusion Kayaking it was clear that I could learn a lot from them than would help this endeavor. So I went up to the Mendocino Coast for a couple weekends of surf and rock garden classes with them. By the end of those classes I was having nothing but fun rock gardening in relatively mellow conditions. Still need a lot more practice in surf. I have no idea why parents take their kids to Disneyland when we have this kind of excitement in the real world right here in Northern California. In nature getting exercise no less!

Of course I wasn't going to just take these skills, point my kayak west under the Golden Gate Bridge give it my best shot on my own. I wanted good coaching my first time out the Gate. The folks at California Canoe and Kayak supplied exactly the opportunity I was looking for. Their Open Coast: Marin Headlands Class is focused on teaching the skills required for paddling the open coast safely. It starts at the Presidio Yacht Club, which is just inside the Golden Gate Bridge on the north side of the Bay. The plan for the class is to work on skills in current, wind, swell and waves going out the Gate and along the north shore of the Bay to Point Bonita. And if conditions are mellow enough, to then go out into the open Pacific and explore the beautiful Marin Coast heading north to Rodeo Beach. They were clear that if conditions are not safe for people at our level, we would not go past Point Bonita. (To be more precise, they were clear that if conditions were rough we wouldn't leave the parking lot.)

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But that Saturday was beautiful. A sunny day with a light breeze from the west. We launched near the Presidio Yacht Club and Sean had us do some warm-up exercises in the quiet waters of Horseshoe Bay. (Which I'm sure also gave him a view of the current skill level of each person.) The tide was ebbing with slack at appr 2pm. Since we were at about a 1/2 moon the tides were pretty mellow. A nice day for a first out-the-Gate trip.

Going under the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time was amazing. It is an awesome piece of engineering. At that point there was very little wind and the ebb made paddling effortless. I'd never seen those little beaches between Lime Point and Point Bonita. I'd studied the nautical chart many times and I was enjoying the new scenery in real life.

At Point Bonita we carefully checked out the conditions "outside". They looked doable for folks at our skill level so out we went into the Pacific! I had a great time doing rock garden stuff along the coast north of Point Bonita, especially in the rocks near Rodeo Beach. Tiffany's video has some nice footage of that. And I was able to enjoy the one surf run we did going into Rodeo Beach for lunch. (It was small, spilling surf. Appr 2' waves.) It was also easy to launch from that beach and get out through these small waves. I was feeling very thankful to all of the kayak coaches who've helped me with surf skills. That's still an area I need to work on quite a bit.

After lunch the wind had kicked up to appr. 25 kt so we had much bigger seas for our return trip. In the Point Bonita area we had 5' swell with appr 2' wind waves mixed in. It would have been easy to get a bit gripped with fear, but I remembered advice I'd gotten from Jeff Laxier on paddling in rougher waters: "Slow is steady. Steady is fast." So I just kept a paddle blade in the water doing forward strokes with the blade angle ready for bracing. Though we were not surfing, all the surf practice I had done recently gave me great skills for going over the tops of the waves so that I could keep making progress to get back inside Point Bonita. Several people went over. It turned out I felt solid the whole time and I stayed upright through it all.

Back inside Point Bonita the swell was much smaller and the wind was at our backs making for a very pleasant paddle back to the Gate.

So I'm feeling thrilled. I now want to get out and get lots more practice rock gardening and surfing. I've already got more trips to the Mendocino Coast on my calendar in August and September. It's turning into a good summer.

If this sounds like fun and you'd like to try it, start with some good instruction. You will learn much faster than if you try to learn on your own, you will learn proper safety skills, and you'll have much more fun. Here are a few folks who can really help you:

Pacific NW	Body Boat Blade	I learned my core kayaking skills from Shawna and Leon and Matt of Body Boat Blade on Orcas Island in the San Juans. They are the people to go to for both foundational and advanced skills. And going up to the San Juans is always such a nice vacation. [NB: the wait at the ferries is much too long in summer. Go some other time.]
	Alder Creek	Paul Kuthe of Alder Creek in Portland taught me whitewater skills and how to roll. Both of those skills make paddling so much more fun. Karl Anderson does a great job teaching skills for surf, rough water, and navigation. I remember well one cold drizzly morning at Cape Disappointment where he was talking about safety before we went out on the water and he said "Do not arm wrestle with Neptune. You will lose."
	Columbia River Kayaking	Mark Whitaker and Ginni Callahan and the rest of their crew teach a wide range of kayaking skills on the beautiful lower Columbia River. Great place for beginner classes. Mark has really helped me improve my roll.
Northern California	California Canoe and Kayak	I've taken some great classes with CCK coaches that have helped me be able to paddle safely in the dynamic waters of the Pacific. I really want to thank Sean Morley, Matt Krizan and Matt Palmariello for all of their help.
	Liquid Fusion Kayaking	Jeff Laxier and Cate Hawthorne of Liquid Fusion teach kayaking on the stunningly beautiful Mendocino Coast. I highly recommend them for learning surf and rock garden skills. And for my friends who are not kayakers, they do some wildlife tours using really stable kayaks.
Scotland	Skyak Adventures	Gordon Brown is an excellent kayaking coach. It is so worth it to take a trip to the Isle of Skye to paddle with him. Sea kayaking on the rugged coast of NW Scotland is a wonderful experience.