Sea Kayak Trips Bulletin Board

trip on 12/31/98

Posted By: tom
Date: Wednesday, 5 January 2000, at 4:57 p.m.

Hi all, I live in the San Juan Islands of WA and a group of 3 or 4 of us do most of our paddling in the winter. I keep a log of my paddles and last year I started to write up the paddles in a more complete way. Needles to say I only did so with 4 of the trips so the rest are just distance memories and shorthand entries into a trip log.

The first outing was 12/31/98, than 1/3/99, 1/10/99 and finally 1/24/99.

Here they are. Hope they are enjoyable to one degree or another. tom Trip Report for paddle 12/31/98 Leon S, Cory C, Ron S, Alan, Tom C

For our final paddle of 1998 there were five of us for a delightful little romp along a bit of Orcas Islands west coast. We put in at the north end of North Beach Road and headed west towards Point Doughty. Leon was using his Capella, Ron was using a friends Romany Explorer, Cory was in a Meridian SK, Tom was paddling a Romany 16 and Allen was in his Raven.

There was to be a high tide of about 9 feet around 1:30 pm. The low that proceeded this high was about 6 feet. The low after the high of 1:30 pm was to be around 9 pm and was a minus of about (-) 1 foot. As our paddling was from noon to 4pm most of our day would see us working with the 10 foot ebb that would run from early afternoon till 9pm or so. We did not need to factor in the large ebb, except for how it would impact Point Doughty , because along the coast of Orcas between North Beach and Point Doughty there is very little current, regardless of flood or ebb, if you stay within about a 1/4 mile of the Orcas shore. Keep in mind that this 1/4 mile, more or less, does not apply around the area of Point Doughty. The winds were about 12 to 15 from the southwest. Sky was overcast and it was a bit chilly. Most wore gloves or pogies and had on farmer johns with paddling jacket or fuzzy rubber and paddling jacket.

We put in around noon and headed west. We all got a bit wet on the put in as some small waves were breaking on shore. It took us till about 1:15 to get to Point Doughty. Tom was being careful with several areas of tendinitis and Leon was playing with every rock that had water rolling over it that he could find. As a matter of fact Leon got left high and dry on one set of rocks and I thought I was going to have to listen to him complain while he did a gel-coat repair latter in the week. As luck would have it no damage was done. This slow pace was fine with the others as people were visiting as we paddled west.

At the point, as expected, the small waves we had been paddling in since the put in got bigger and a bit jumpy. Several paddlers went around the point and some of us went through the cut that is available only at a high tide. The south side of Point Doughty was rougher than the north shore of Orcas we had been paddling along as it was getting affected by the wind from both the south and the west. A lot of small steep chop was present along with waves of about 1.5’ that were steep sided and closely spaced that traveled through to rebound off the point. There was no beach at the little pocket near the point as the tide was to high. We continued down the south shore of the point until we found a place to pull the boats up on some beach logs so we could have lunch. There was not much space for the boats but it was high tide and the winds were not expected to pick up so we knew the boats would be safe.

During lunch the sun came out a bit and we all moved around as a pack trying to keep in the direct line of the rays. Hot tea, fruit and sandwiches restocked our energy stores and we were ready to push off by 2:30.

As we neared the point about 3pm it became obvious that the current had indeed turned to be an ebb at some time during lunch. The wind was still out of the southwest but the current was now moving against the wind. Moving up to and around the point we still had the steep small chop that is so common to Northern Puget Sound when there is wind. We also had consistent steep sided 2 footers wrapping around from Presidents Channel. These two footers were occasionally pushed aside by some nice 3 footers. As you probably know the trouble with paddling in waves that are being made and pushed along where you are paddling is that they are steep. Older waves rolling in from some distance away are often gently sloped, for the most part, and nice to paddle in. Also, being at a major projection, Point Doughty, did not help. After we moved away from the point about a 1/4 mile things calmed down and we had a nice push of wind and small seas to our back till we got to the take out at North Beach at 4pm.

All and all for the end of Dec. a good day of paddling in a traditional Pacific Northwest style.

tom

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