Friday September 26, 2014 Jenner CA.
The day started out with no wind
Ray was on the launch ramp as I pulled into Jenner today. We headed on down to the river’s mouth as the it was almost time for high tide and we wanted to see what things looked like. The wind was down, but predicted to increase later today, so we decided it would be good to go down there first today.
This was our view as we left the boat ramp at the Jenner visitor center, looking down the river towards the ocean. Nice huh, or nice eh. :O)
The ocean was fairly rough, but not as rough as yesterday. The river’s mouth was still closed, mostly, but it was coming upon high tide, so we expected the water to start coming into the river soon.
The river’s mouth is still closed
This photo shows the jetty with the mouth closed. Some seagulls resting on the beach and one fool out there on the jetty playing chicken with the waves. If he only knew what could happen to him in an instant. He was laughing and having a good time. A wave almost got him, and he thought it was funny. I thought he was real lucky.
But water is still coming in to the river through the closed mouth
Ray and I sat in our boats in the front of the jetty waiting for it to get to high tide. Here you can see some ocean water coming into the river as a big wave just broke over the jetty.
We watched as some harbor seals headed out over the sand to get to the ocean.
Walked on the ocean beach a bit
After awhile we went down to the end of the river to hay stack rock and got out of our boats and walked up on the sand overlooking the Pacific ocean.
This was our view looking down south, to Goat Rock, with the jetty just to the left of center. The river’s mouth certainly looks different from this angle as compared to our view from our kayaks just inside the mouth.
We walked around just a bit, being concerned about big waves coming in and then got back in our boats and headed back over to in front of the mouth. We watched a harbor seal walk over the sand back to the river from the ocean.
Penny Island walk
After we got tired of watching things around there, we headed over to the west end of Penny Island and put our boats ashore and went for a walk.
Here’s Ray, just as we emerged out into some grass on the west end of the island.
We walked across this grassy area, looking down towards the ocean.
Water is seeping up into the island
With the mouth closed and the river level rising, the water is starting to enter parts of the island which meant we had to work our way around some of the water to get around.
Big redwood log
We barely made it by this big old redwood log as the water was getting high in this spot.
We came out in this spot looking for our boats which are hidden by the grass somewhere up ahead, we hope. This is looking up the back channel of Penny Island and by now the wind had come up pretty strong, but it was a warm wind and not too bad.
Ray and I put our boats back in the water and headed up the back channel of the island.
No need to paddle with the wind blowing you our direction
The wind was blowing in our direction for a change and we didn’t have to paddle to move along at a brisk pace.
On the east end of Penny Island is a little channel where we pulled out of the wind and sat for a spell enjoying the nice day, before heading on in.
That was it for another fine day kayaking on the Russian River Estuary.