Arm Day: Ocean Kayaks on a Saturday

We'd been planing for a while to take a day and go play on a boat. After broaching the topic with an adventurous toddler, he'd bring it up each weekend and ask to go "onna boat."

Finally we made the time and made it happen.

We headed down to Sunset Beach in Orange County, a few minutes out of Long Beach on PCH. Technically we were in/on Huntington Beach Harbor, but really it was the rich folks zone, people whose houses are on the water. I tried to capture an overhead picture from Google to get a sense of scale, along with a yellow line showing our progress, in only one direction (since our return trip was simply a backtracking:

We started off at the bottom of the above picture, wove our way from the ritzy neighborhood out to main channel while hugging what amounted to an edge, sprinted across the channel, tried to check out the wetlands, and finally made it to the DO NOT CROSS buoys that separate the fishing and kayaking zone from the military area.

That's about as much as my arms could handle in one direction.

The trip was very, very cool.

In the main channel, while Cass and I were leading our flotilla, about ten yards directly in front of our kayak a large sea lion surfaced to catch a breath. Both the boy and shared a hearty "Whoa!" as the marine animal swam right at us. It dove out of sight about foot off our bow. It seemed like it was as interested in us as we were in it.

We spotted various cormorants diving for fish, but it was hard for Cass to spot them. When he finally would, he would lose it after it dove again, and he was ask, repeatedly, "Dad, where'd duck go?" It was adorable. "See, son, that's a cormorant, not exactly a duck...with dense bones for diving...right there!" And it would be gone and the cycle would repeat.

I wore a life preserver to model good decisions for the boy. His has a Spider-Man design, something he had a difficult time returning after it was all said and done.

We had a difficult time when we made it to the wetlands, since we weren't allowed to disembark. That was likely for the best. The following sign illustrated the tides, I imagine:

Cass was an expert at steering with his paddle, and eventually got good with the paddle motion. He did want to venture further, but the decision was made by ma and pa to turn back. Our trip was for only two hours, which was about the max for parents who don't really spend time at the gym on the shoulder machine.

Cass had a blast, enjoying the whole thing, even when we were forced to face the sun for a few minutes. We snacked for a while, once at the closed inlet and again as we were getting ready to finish up, that time under the bridge close by to where we mustered/landed. That shady snack time was great.

Afterwards Corrie tried to take a selfie with all three of us, while Cass was playing with his oar, and got this neat action shot:

At one point, when we were heading to lunch after finishing up, Corrie mentioned something about how Cass's first boat ride had been a success. I had to remind her that his first boat ride, and actually first two boat rides, were Italian ferries to and from Sicily. We shared a laugh and shrugged and thought, whatta world...