The Cape

I lay here under my tarp this morning, it hanging mere inches from my face, wet with condensation, thinking... well maybe another hour. I know very well that the tide changes to a solid flood at 1030 which means I need to be past the Cape really early or really late, but not on the change. I get up at 0800, fiddle enough that I hit the water at 1000. I put myself in 'The Gut' at tide change.

Cannons, crash, boom, bang. It's a very, very big world out here. Waves crash over reefs, a chop is six feet, clapotis is like mountains of water sloshing back in forth in a giant's bathtub. From the bottom of a slosh it's a stretch of the neck to see the top. I choose to follow the coastline side, which though larger, seems more predictably constant than going out towards Tatoosh Island. Stronger flood current to deal with, but for a shorter period of time.

Cape Flattery really is the big world. Massive pillars of stone surround it, grain askew, the slish-slosh of the unbridled Pacific bouncing through a grandiose Pachinko. Sea-lions own this place, and snort their disapproval as they follow me closely. "Hole in the Wall" hmmm... interesting name, and very descriptive, it all goes through here. Deciding to check things out a little closer I roll and lurch my way closer to the shore, passing through the narrowest of slots and over a reef that bared it's teeth at me as I was lifted up and over on a wave. The pulse out here is over-whelming, the seas blood surging with power far beyond anything I've ever experienced before.

12oz Nylon. That's only a hair thicker than the average pair of jeans. That's the only thing between me and all of this unbridled power... I feel it all... everything... the kayak flexes and twists... overwhelming... My hips are being thrown back and forth in the water. My hips are really getting a work-out today.



Once I get around the Cape things feel calmer, the hardest part is over. So I think.



Waatch Point is a triangular reef, sticking out into the Pacific, just before a low valley that divides the Cape from the main part of the Olympic Penninsula. It runs to the Northeast. I'm coming across the outside of reef, giving it's booming big waves a wide birth when a wild Easterly roars out of that low valley, 25 to 30knots, pushing me off-shore and tearing the Makah Bay up into a froth. Boomers everywhere, crests everywhere, trails of spray blowing back off their heads as they roared shoreward in vertical faces. The wind and snot are more than I can handle, can't go into the bay, and after my last experience with off-shore winds I'm pretty damn hesitant to play games with them. Options? The point, two beaches, I choose the closest one and struggle to stay upright while surge after surge tries to surf me wildly in. I didn't even see the reef until I looked down and saw Persephone's bow scraping across it while I'm back-paddling with all my might, my stern held high by the wave. Please don't bite in I'm thinking, and thank-you it didn't. I'm being unceremoniously broached, dragged, scraped, slid, and washed across the entire reef by each wave coming in until finally I'm out of reach of the biggest. I sit there, my paddle trapped under my kayak, feeling like an ass.



Persephone thankfully is virtually unharmed. I have new respect for that nylon.