It was sunny and the wind was down as I drove into Jenner this morning. I put the boat in the water and parked my car. John, a guy who lives in Jenner and picks up a lot of litter was at the ramp and so we shot the bull for a bit. He had been fixing his car radiator, but by the time he got it all done his battery was dead and he was trying to figure out how to get to Santa Rosa to get a new battery. He usually uses public transit, but getting the old battery to the place and bringing a new one home wasn’t going to be an easy task doing it that way. I left him and headed down towards the river’s mouth which looked like this on the way.
I paddled by this flock of seagulls and the even bigger flock of cormorants sitting behind them.
Open mouth
The ocean was real rough and the waves were breaking over the rocks and the jetty, looking out the open mouth. Lots of birds and seals around on the beach as usual.
End of the river
I continued on down to the end of the river and sat around for a bit, thinking I should round up John and take him to Santa Rosa to get his battery taken care of.
While sitting there I spied these turkey vultures sitting just in front of me.
I paddled on over, getting close to see what they might be after. This vulture spread it’s wings, likely to look bigger than it was, a defense?
I looked around and finally spotted this raven on the ground in the rocks. It looked like it was eating what was left of a big fish after the seals get done with it, just a head and the stripped bones are left, which you can see some of to the right.
Eventually, I headed on back over to the mouth going past these harbor seals resting.
I went on by the open mouth headed over to John’s house to see if I could find him.
Ugly sea lion
As I was paddling along I noticed this sea lion coming my way, only about twenty feet away and staying on the surface, getting closer.
It passed on by checking me out good.
John’s not home
I made it to John’s house, but didn’t see him anywhere, so continued on up along Penny Island.
I thought maybe I’d see John picking up litter somewhere near town, but I didn’t see him, so I continued paddling up to the little channel on the upper end of Penny Island and sat around for a spell, napping a bit.
Eventually I decided to head on in and see if I could locate John in town or driving down to his house.
Catch John at the post office
As it was I saw him go into the post office when I was approaching the boat ramp, so I caught up with him and told him my plan. He was concerned I’d have to drive him all the way back to Jenner so I told him I’d just do a sunset yak and we were good to go. Well, almost, just still had to get the battery out of his car.
We drove on down to his house.
And John got the battery out of his car while I enjoyed the view from his place.
We drove into Santa Rosa to the battery place.
Now we had a problem
That battery was only two years old and still had a warranty on it. The catcher was he had to leave it with them to see if they could get it going or not, giving them two days. I suggested a loaner battery which he paid for and we were out of there and headed on back to Jenner.
I dropped John off and was thinking of going kayaking for the sunset, but I was tired out and hungry so I took this picture from John’s house and went on home for the day.
There are over a hundred pictures that are served up randomly every time you visit or change pages. They are of earlier pictures of interest and also some just to remind me of things.
A Sony AX33 4K, a video camera that takes stills too. What am I doing with that? I take pictures from my Kayak a lot. I found I was missing interesting shots, because my pic was being processed in my camera, before it would let me take another pic. Since I like to take what I call action stills, I bought this camera to take videos, that I could make stills out of, but, as a bonus, this camera also came with buttons to just take stills and that's what I mostly do, unless something is real interesting or too far away for my still zooms. My digilat zoom setting for video goes to two hundred x, and sometimes I need that, but usually, I only use the 10x lens zoom. Because this camera is HD and 4K, the quality has to be real good and it has a lot of stabilizers on it which really helps out a lot for taking pics on the water.
The other thing it has that is a must is a view finder and I had to buy Sony's top of the line cam to get it. This is a must for taking pics on the water, as you must hold the camera as still as posible and putting that eye piece to the eye forms a tripod with your arms that helps a lot. The eye piece is also a must as it works way better than a LED screen to see what you are taking a picture of in the daylight as the LED screens wash out easily in sunlight.
I also have another video camera, a Canon VIXIA G30. I use them both to mostly take stills. The Sony takes higher resolution stills than the G30. That was a bit of a disappointment as I bought the G30 to replace an older camera I dunked in the river, but then had to buy the Sony to get higher still picture resolution that the G30 was lacking.
