Angel Island Moonlight Paddle – August 13, 2011
Paddlers – Kim Grandfield, Ted Skedzielewski, Alex Stoeffl, and Friends
Earlier in the week, Kim had been asking around for people interested in doing a moonlight paddle on the bay as it was going to be a full moon on Saturday night. He ended up getting plenty of “we’ll see” responses. However, Saturday afternoon I got a call at work from Kim asking if I wanted to go out and paddle that night. I thought about it briefly and decided “what the heck, it’ll be interesting” because I’ve never night paddled before; dusk and dawn yes, but not true night paddling.
We didn’t arrive in Sausalito at Dunphy Park until around 8:30pm. It was already dark by the time we launched and the fog was cooperatively staying off the bay. Unfortunately, our late start also meant we missed the slack tide and were now well into the start of the flood. Yet, the water was quite calm as we paddled across Richardson Bay to Cone Rock and then Belvedere Island. We passed another group of kayakers as we paddled along the shoreline of Belvedere Island. They seemed to be a guided outing. We continued on towards the G “3” buoy off Peninsula Point.
From G “3” we paddled across the opening of Raccoon Strait to the R “4” buoy off Point Stuart on Angel Island. There was a little bit of rip just off Peninsula Point and then again off Point Stuart, but otherwise it was a smooth crossing. From Point Stuart we followed the Angel Island shoreline to Point Blunt on the southeast side of the island. At Camp Reynolds we encountered two other kayakers who said something about Sea Trek; I’m not sure if they were from Sea Trek or asking if we were from Sea Trek.
Once we reached the beach on the south side of Point Blunt, we pulled the kayaks up the beach and began to unload our late night snack. We sat down and enjoyed the nighttime views of Sausalito, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, San Francisco, and the Bay Bridge while eating bread and cheese and drinking champagne (or beer in my case as I’m not much of a wine/champagne person).
Around 11:25pm we headed back towards Sausalito. However, we took a little bit of a short cut on the way back and cut over to Peninsula Point from Point Knox instead of Point Stuart. The crossing was overall much smoother than before. From Peninsula Point we paddled back to Cone Rock, then to the R “4” buoy on the Sausalito side of Richardson Bay, and then we found our way back to Dunphy Park. It was about 12:45am when we arrived back at Dunphy Park and the sprinklers were watering the lawn. On the bright side, they helped us pre-rinse the salt off the kayaks and gear.
Overall, it was a very interesting experience to be paddling out on the bay in the middle of the night. There is most definitely a feeling of being very alone even though there is another kayak 15 feet off to the side. At some points it was extremely surreal, but I felt surprising comfortable given that I could just barely see some of the things that go bump in the night (like multiple fish jumping out of the water just off my bow or low flying birds). I’m glad I took Kim up on his offer because it was a great trip.
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