On this beautiful day four of us left the Morro Bay Marina just before 9 AM, on an outgoing tide. Pictured below are [by our boat colors] Alan Raul (yellow), Curt Johnson (blue), Betty Tenger (red-black-white) , and Mike Baird (orange). We knew we had to be back by 1:30 PM to have the required 1.5' of water needed for an easy take-out without getting muddy. Someone told us there was an Oktoberfest event in Baywood, so we paddled to the Baywood pier. There we messed around for a while, and gave some kids an introduction to kayaking. After a snack we paddled along the edge all the way into Shark Inlet. The tide was emptying quite rapidly now, and we only had a few inches of water, so we knew we had to get to a channel. We located the channel that follows the Sand Spit, and made our way about half-way back. Here we took lunch on the Sand Spit, and walked over to the ocean, on the path Curt insisted must have been the widest point on the entire spit. At this time of the year, the Snowy Plover fencing is not an issue. We passed by the remains of a Native American Midden, but the "blowout" was fast covering it up with fresh sand. We ate lunch on the ocean side of the spit, and returned to our boats. The tide had receded quite a bit more, and we found when entering, that the water's edge consisted of muck... Alan was soon several feet into the muck... and luckily had a good grip on his boat, otherwise we would never have seen his photos here from that day. Heading toward the channel just south of Grassy island, we sort of took a short cut, and missed the channel. "Some of us" grounded and had to walk the boats back into deeper water. At least the bottom was fairly solid there. On the last half-mile into the Marina, the winds picked up to 20-25 mph, and we had quite a struggle. Luckily this group is fairly well-prepared and experienced enough to take such a change in conditions in stride. We did, however, create one more new "rule" for the KayakMorroBay Yahoo! Group -- all boaters are now required to have a tow rope at the ready, fore and aft, to assist others, or to be assisted. Safe Paddling. See our http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kayakmorrobay/ messages, calendar, and polls for upcoming events.
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All photos are by Alan Raul (well, at least using his neat
waterproof camera!);
composite was constructed by Mike Baird using Photoshop Elements 3.