The River’s Mouth was Breeched Yesterday, But Didn’t Open Up

Tuesday November 3, 2015 Jenner CA.

Dentist and the time change

First thing this morning I had to drive to Forestville to see my Dentist. I walked in the door and the receptionist says, you’re early, real early. Huh?

Did I miss the daylight savings thing? Yes, I did, but I got lucky and the hygienist’s appointment at this earlier hour had been canceled, so I was good to go. Now, I thought I was going to have to have a crown replaced and the tooth rooted as it’s been bothering me for awhile now, but my good dentist studied the x-ray’s and checked the tooth and decided it just might be that it needed to be adjusted, so she had the time to take care of that too, mostly because I was really too early. Sometimes things work out.

Off to Jenner

I was thinking the other day I should go do some shopping after that, but had already decided to heck with that and headed on down to Jenner.

The river’s mouth didn’t open

Now, this morning before going to the dentist, I had received an email from Ken, who has a place down at Jenner and he thought they messed up yesterday and the mouth didn’t open up like it was supposed to.

He provided pictures and here’s one of them.The high waves had washed some sand back into the breech and the sand

didn’t wash out like it was supposed to. If it had opened, there would be a much bigger channel and those piles of sand would have likely washed into the ocean. Besides the ocean being rough, the low tide which is needed for a wash out, wasn’t very low yesterday. I think it was about a 2.2 foot low tide. A –1 foot would have been better to get the job done.

This was one of Ken’s pictures he took from the overlook yesterday evening of the breeched river’s mouth not flowing into the ocean very well,…………….. at all.

Jenner

I arrived at Jenner around 12:30 and yes, the estuary water level was up, so the mouth hadn’t opened up like it should have. I also saw Ray’s truck parked in the parking lot, so knew he was out in his boat somewhere. If I could find him soon enough, I had a walk planned.

I put my boat in and paddled across to Penny Island into the little channel on the upper end. The wind was up a bit as I paddled into the island channel by the big trees. I thought Ray might be there or coming up the back channel, but he wasn’t.

I decided to go down the island back channel and check out the flooded island on it’s lower end, so I went down this back channel, paddling into the wind.

Flooded island

The wind was blowing into the flooded island water so I let it blow me all the way in as far as I could go to this point, looking back out over the flooded island towards the river’s mouth.

River’s mouth area

Here’s a long shot down to the river’s mouth area from the end of the island. The big sand piles are still there and the mouth didn’t get opened.

But at least there was a channel cut to the ocean so the estuary can’t rise up very much more, unless the ocean pushes more sand into the ditch, damming it up again. The mouth still may open when it goes to a low tide, but if not the guys will have to breech it again. I’m not sure what they will do, as I’ve not seen them fail at this before. As far as I can see, they are good, unless the ocean pushes more sand into the ditch and blocks it up.

Back up the river

It was real windy looking down towards the mouth, so I decided not to paddle on down there and instead decided to paddle back to the upper end of penny island where the little channel is out of the wind.

So, I headed on up that way along here, letting the wind blow me along.

Roof guys

I took a picture of the guys doing the visitor center roof as I went by. It looks like they have the old roof off and are taking out all the old nails and prepping it for it ‘s new roof.

The wind is usually less on the upper end of the island, so I pulled in under the trees to the right, where I found Ray sitting in his boat. He’d been up the river at Eagle’s landing earlier.

Walk on Penny Island

We sat and shot the bull for a bit, then decided to go ashore on the island and see just how flooded it was, so we went ashore here.

Right away, we could see most of the island was flooded with water. Only the places where the old houses and barns were, was it still dry, so we walked around and checked that out.

Most of the island is flooded as we could see as we walked the trial over to the old milk barn.

It was dry here as we walked under the big eucalyptus trees towards the milk barn.

We worked our way down to the old houses and they were on dry ground too. We couldn’t go far and soon returned to our boats.

I head up the river

Ray said he was headed in, but not me. I headed up the river along it’s south shore going past these cormorants resting on this log. They put their wings up as I got nearer to dry them a bit thinking they might have to take of, but they stayed as I passed by.

Checked out the flooded field

It was fairly windy up river, so I crossed over to the north side as I wanted to check out this flooded field as I saw a bunch of birds in it when I drove down today. This looks like the river, but it’s not. This is a small creek that comes from a little pond up ahead in the field, called Jenner pond. I can just barely make out some birds up that way on the grass, so I paddled on up.

There were a bunch of geese and some mud hens and some ducks. They were leery of me and started to walk off, so I didn’t press them and turned around. Besides, it was also getting too shallow to paddle.

Back at the river, it was a bit rough with the wind up. About five of these little birds flew in just before I headed out into the river.  Maybe yellow legs?

The wind was up, so I hung in close to the shoreline as I paddled on back to the boat ramp at Jenner along here.

They lost a deck girder

As I approached the guys working on the roof, I hollered up, hey, you guys let the forty foot redwood deck girder get away that I told you about yesterday. I knew one of the deck girders was loose and floating under the visitor center, but there was no way to get it. Ray said he saw it down by the lower end of the island today, so I was ribbing them a bit about it. It’s an old redwood board about forty feet long and worth two or three hundred dollars these days. And maybe worth more than that as getting one of these boards forty feet long might not be easy any more, especially of the quality of that board from the olden days.

I told them I’d let some locals know about the board and they might still get it back if it doesn’t go out the mouth, if it opens up.

I pulled my boat out and put it on the car and drove on home and that was my day. Windy but still nice.