Beaver Creek Messabout
January 17, 2015

Friday was a stunningly lovely day on the coast. I spent most of it inside the Boathouse, working.

Saturday was miserable - tons of rain and wind . . . so we gathered together for a messabout.

When I got to the parking lot at Ona Beach, things were already in full swing. We had a pretty good turn out.

Chuck and Shaleen had the only canoe, most others had kayaks, and we had 2 rowboats.

David and Cheryl are new to the Coots, this was their first outing with us.

I was bringing the 8' Tik Tak Kayak I'd built last summer. THIS is why you don't build with luaun underlayment - it'll delaminate Every Time.

The saying goes "There's no such thing as bad weather, only bad equipment. Is this bad equipment? Craig is perfectly dry under there.

Curt showed up without a paddle and was about to run home when Bob L remembered he had on somewhere in his truck. This is his 'break down' paddle with a homemade collar.

Time to launch - the rain could REALLY pour down on us.

Bob M and his son, Craig, were in one of the rowboats.

Jim and his faithful adventure dog, Lucy, was in the other.

Cheryl, David, and Bob L.

The wind would pick up and stop us dead. With their greater windage, Chuck and Shaleen were having a rough go of it. This is the last picture I got of them before the end.

There's a nice group shot. If you look closely, you can see Craig has the spare oar and is helping his dad row against the wind.

Curt was having a great day. He'd shoot out ahead of all of us.

Bob L and Cheryl fighting the wind. It'd really stop us, sometimes - AND it blew from any point on the compass.

That's a nice art shot. I like the scraggly tree.

Look closely dead center, you'll see a bald eagle. There were two of them in the tree at one time, but one flew off.

I paddled up as close as I could, trying to get the second eagle to fly, but he wasn't budging. If you look closely dead center of this picture, you'll see an eagle's butt as it looks from underneath.

That's a good shot of David.

Lucy was loving all this wet, but Jim was looking a little soaked. He had to take his hat off to keep it from being blown off.

Patti and her dad, Bob L.

Craig was having a good day, too.

Nice group shot.

I handed my camera to Curt so he could get this shot. I keep forgetting just how small the Tik Tak Kayak is.

Nice distance shot of Jim and David.

Oh, man, the rain could come down.

We'd turned around and headed back towards the ramp (you go a LOT faster when it is with the current and with the wind) and then decided to go take a peek a the ocean. We slipped under Hwy 101 and . . .

. . . kept going under the pedestrian bridge where a family out enjoying Oregon's liquid sunshine stopped and gawked at us- it's not every day you see a group of paddlers on the water.

To quote William Clark "Ocian in view! O! the joy," (except he was actually looking at Astoria Bay)

We headed back to the landing where I decided to try out my drysuit. It's kinda nice, being able to just walk out into the water. I never realized how much pressure water puts on you - I could really feel it increase as I went deeper.

The pressure squeezes the air up around your neck, keeping your head out of water, which is nice, but f you raise your legs, some air goes down there and it gets really hard to get your feet back down. Also, if you roll over onto your belly, the air goes around to your back and doesn't really help keep your head out of water - and it's hard to roll back over again.

Some poor lady was sitting in her car in the parking lot, waiting for her friend, so I made her come out and take a group photo of us. Thanks to Shaleen and Chuck, David and Cheryl (not pictured) Jim, Bob M, Bob L, Patti, and down in front: Craig and Curt. Also, thanks to the lady who took the picture - she told me her name, but I forgot.

Hope you enjoyed the write up. See you next week.