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Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board
Oregon Coast
Posted By: robert Hysen
Date: Thursday, 30 December 1999, at 11:29 p.m.
Just moved to Portland 3 weeks ago and I finally made it out to the coast. My wife and I went out to Canon Beach in 1' chop with 6' swells, I figured after doing Lake Superior this was going to be tame. Going out into the surf was fun for me, but my wife was scared to death, we had no idea how big the waves were until we got out about 70' or more, those waves are very deceiving! We went out about a mile and a half from the shore to look for whales, she got sea sick so we had to turn around, something I wanted to delay as long as possible because I knew she was going to freak out when she saw how we had to come in. It took us about ten minutes to get up the nerve to beat the waves, we went in between some breaks and had pretty clear sailing until the big one came, I didn't want to alarm her but we had a 6' wave breaking over our sterns, I just yelled paddle backwords and lean back! It worked for about a foot but the 17' kayaks just kept right in the wave, all I kept thinking about was stay perpendicular to the wave and don't let the bow submerge. Well I did the first part right, but no matter how hard I tried the bow just kept going deeper. I could tell we were getting close to shore and I was afraid of catching the sand with my bow so I leaned over and went in. Once over I realized I have only been over 3 times and twice was intentional, so trying to take off the spray skirt was somewhat new to me, so I grabbed the rip cord and ripped my whole coaming off! I quess I used the wrong technique, but at least I didn't drown. All though my wife and I were scared to death, it was very exhilerating (her words!).
One question we were wondering was whether or not one could go into shore backwords? We noticed going out we were in control because the front of the boat cut through the wave but coming back the wave did to us what it wanted.I figured going in backwords one could paddle backwords inbetween the breaks, and forward into the waves to maintain control, what do you think?
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