It was like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

puerco-bellies

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sat Apr-12-08 03:14 PM
Original message

It was like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan.

Because of last minute glitches we could not leave till last Monday and drove to Limekiln State Park.
Limekiln was the source of most of the lime for making the cement that rebuilt San Francisco after the great quake of `06. It is a beautiful park with stream camping in second growth redwoods, and beach camping in front of a small natural harbor.

While I've been to the park many times, this would have been my first kayaking trip there. Our first and last day there the ocean was pretty rough with 25 knot winds and we found out later 4'-8' seas.
We drug the kayak over the rocks and watched the waves for a minute and decided to go on the next lull.

The surf looked like it was about 3', and we have launched against that size waves down here in So. Cal, we thought we could handle those conditions. As we pulled the kayak in another set of lager waves rolled in. I made the mistake of trying to hunker down the yak to wait the set out. Again just as it looked like the set was over a massive wall of water simply arose a couple of yards in front of us and Ali being the smarter of the two made a doomed run for it.

We were instantly hammered by the force of the wave. Surfers speak of some waves being “heavy”. This is when waves carry greater mass along with height. Right at the impact zone the gravely beach drops off into deep water, a condition we had not encountered before, coupled with a heavy wave beach launch, another first.

Alison and I found ourselves struggling to regain our feet, my paddle was in the surf and Ali had managed to hang on to hers. The kayak had been carried up the beach now returned to mow us down with a shocking forced. It cut my legs out from under me tossing me over it has it sped to Ali. Ali was on her hands and knees and took the kayak hit full force face first as she struggled to regain her feet right at the impact zone/water depth drop off point, knocking her into deep water for a moment till an other wave pounded us and the boat.

Time after time we struggled to get to our feet and get up the beach but the force of the waves and the nature of the small gravel beach had us trapped. The kayak kept cutting through us with unbelievable force and even though Ali was asking me for help to get up the beach I tried to grab the kayak to keep it from striking her again. By this time the kids were panicking and crying for their mother, and we both knew we were in serious trouble. Finally a big enough wave washed both me and Ali along with our kayak high enough for me to pin the boat down with the help of our son Troy and Ali to struggle out of the water with the help of our crying daughter Blaise.

It took all four of us to drag the kayak out of the wave zone because we found out that one of our larger hatch covers had been blown off, probably on the first wave and the kayak was filled with water. Our boat can carry 550lbs of load so it probably had at least 250 to 300lbs of water in it which turned it in to a irresistible force as it repeatedly mowed us down as we struggled up the beach.

Ali and I have paddled in to some very hazardous areas and have been tossed out of our yak in places any sane person would not want to be. For the very first time since I've know Ali, she has been frightened, and for the rest of the trip became very cautious. We were incredibly lucky, escaping with just some soreness and the loss of one paddle. As soon as we were safe we looked back at the beach and it was as serene as a koi pond. Later Ali said that she could face anything but trouble in cold water, and we are making plans to return during warmer and calmer weather in the fall.

The beach less then an hour after we crawled out of the surf zone.