The Baja Paddle

I was starting to lose it; my stuff, I mean.

A few days ago I missed my sponge. I normally have it with the bucket on my rear deck; that morning it was gone. I found it back when I made my first stop for the day. It was on the rear deck, behind all the stuff I carry there, unsecured. It had been riding all along without being washed off by a wave. Yesterday I lost my bucket and my flip flops. I know exactly where they are, at least the bucket, which is against the slope of the dune where I had camped. In the rush to get started in the morning I forgot to carry this to the kayak with all the other stuff. I had noticed this at my first stop , which was twelve miles too late. I also noticed that my flip flops were missing when I packed earlier in the morning. They should be floating somewhere in the Sea of Cortez. When I had washed the day before I had taken them off at the edge of the water and left them there. I had forgotten to put them back on later and they were washed away by the high tide during the night. Finally, my sponge really got lost . It was under the strap holding the tortoise shells in place. After the heavy battering of the waves, the sponge was gone; washed away by a wave.

This day had been a mixture of all sorts of things. I had wanted to leave early and get to the lighthouse at Cabo Virgenes. This would have set me up for an easy following day and would get me to Santa Rosalia on Wednesday.

The early part of the day was easy; sometimes a little wind and a few times the swell with me so that I could surf the waves, sometimes for several minutes at a time. I was paddling reasonably close to the shore, which was rocky with pebble beaches; no good place to land to take a break. I paddled for five and one half of an hours straight until I found a beach, also pebbles, where I thought a landing could be risked. When I got closer to where the beach was, I noticed the lighthouse and realized that I had already reached my targeted destination for the day, although it was only 1.00pm.

During the paddle in the morning I had seen two fin whales. I noticed the first one when I was taking a break on the water. It came up about 800ft astern; it made two or three shallow dives and then a deep one and came back up several minutes later, this time at may be 500ft. away. It dove again a few times and then another deep dive and it was gone; I did not see it again.

The second one came along somewhat later when a pod of dolphins was cruising by in the opposite direction. This whale stayed on the surface longer and it seemed that we were on a course that would eventually make us cross. However, the whale took a dive and was gone.

I was carrying the two new tortoise shells on my rear deck. The big one was on top and covered the smaller one nearly completely. When I had tied them to the deck this morning, I had taken a picture and noticed that the big one with its head still attached to the shell, was sitting a little sideways on the deck, looking back with its two empty eye sockets. It looked a ridiculous sight. The occupants of two pangas obviously thought so, too. I heard them coming from a distance and then heard whooping and hollering and loud laughing. The normally so reserved Mexican fishermen were shouting and whistling at me and pointing at the tortoises. As they overtook me, one shouted” el tortuuugaaaa!!” which resulted in another bout of laughter from the others.

After my break I had wanted to paddle a little further; I did not want to stop yet, and , anyway, I could not stay on the beach where I was; it was too low and would flood at high tide.

The water had become somewhat more agitated when I left and as soon as I got close to the point that I needed to round I saw the whitecaps on the other side. Since I had had these quite often without having to paddle in them as long as I stayed close inshore I decided to continue.

As soon as I got out of the wind shade I realized that today was going to be different. The wind came from the southeast and I was paddling south. There was no wind protection; there was no sheltered paddling close to shore, it was fighting big waves and swells which found their end on the shore and were reflected back into the sea.

The shoreline was pretty straight for as far as I could see. It was pebbles and rocks and steep shorelines for the next few miles, battered by high winds and big breaking surf. Not a place for a safe landing.

I was forced into the open sea and paddled about 200ft from shore to avoid the breaking waves and rocks. Quite frankly, I did not think that paddling was what I was doing; I was bracing and steering and pushing to take the waves at a 45 degree angle since this was the safest way I knew to stay upright in the kayak. I was fortunate in that despite the confused seas, most of the turbulence came from in front which reduced the risk of a freak wave hitting me without me seeing it first.

In these conditions, my forward movement was very slow, also because I sometimes went closer to shore when I thought that I had seen a spot where I might try a landing. After a little while it became clear that any landing on this coast in these conditions would be impossible without risking injury and damage to me and the kayak so I stayed well clear of the coast.

Suddenly, the wind stopped dead. From one second to the next it went from a very strong quartering wind to total stillness. It was so sudden that I nearly lost my balance because I had been leaning into the wind very strongly. Within 30 minutes, the waves had diminished in height and strength and I felt that I could risk a landing.

I paddled for another 30 minutes until I found a shoreline which was not so very steep. I pushed the kayak up the pebble beach as high as I could and quickly climbed out of the kayak. At least, that was the plan. What happened was that my knees buckled; I fell out of the kayak and came to sit on my behind next to the kayak in the surf. My legs had been wedged so tight in the cockpit during the three hours that I had been battling the waves that they could not immediately support my weight.

I sat in the water for a few minutes until the strength in my muscles came back and I could stand up. Sitting in the water was actually quite refreshing; my body was so hot from the exertion that it got a nice cool down and since I was soaked from top to bottom already anyway, I could not get any wetter.

The kayak felt very heavy when I wanted to pull it further up on the steep slope of the beach. I did not have enough strength to pull it completely out of the water and had to start unloading with the rear deck still partially under the water. When I had emptied the front compartment and opened the rear hatch I realized what the problem was; the rear hatch was full of water.

I had noticed already for a while that I had a leak somewhere in the rear compartment but could never really pinpoint where the trouble was. Both Martijn and I had suspected that a small tear had opened where I had epoxied a tube into the hull, just behind the bulkhead but we could never pinpoint an actual leak.

Up to that point, this leak had been more of a minor inconvenience, but this day the flex of the kayak must have really opened it up with the resulting flooding; every bit of space that was not taken up by a dry bag was under water.

A field repair was impossible, and, anyway, I had only one more day to go.

I emptied the rear hatch and dried it as much as possible before pulling the boat all the way up the slope of pebbles.

Once at the top, I looked around to see what sort of a place I had landed on. It took my breath away.

Behind the pebble beach stretched a most beautiful valley. The beach was about 100ft wide and beyond the pebbles was this beautiful amphitheater formed by hills and mountains. The nearest hills were approximately 1500ft away and steadily grew into low mountains which encircled the area.

I was looking at this sight against the soft light of the setting sun and into a slight haze. The valley floor was of a yellow/brown golden hue and was covered with assorted desert plants, low scrubs and cacti, as well as very bright green trees. An incredible sight, especially after paddling along such an ugly shoreline all day long.

By looking south along the beach, I realized that I had landed on mine property; buildings and equipment were nearby. The mining was clearly for minerals, judging by the soil, and I noticed big heaps of soil and large cranes further down the shore.

I decided to stay where I was. I did not know if I was allowed to be where I was, but anyway, I was much too tired to move.

I quickly put up my tent and made a fire to cook dinner. The sun set just as I was putting my pots on the fire and while I was waiting for the food to cook, I could watch the color of the sky change from blue to orange to red, all the while trying to relax my back muscles which had started to hurt badly.

Dinner was eaten quickly; I needed to lie on my back to relieve the back pain. The earth was still warm and there was still a lot of light in the sky when I crept into my sleeping bag.