Saturday November 1, 2014 Jenner CA.
I started off the day by having a look at the relay I bought for my car’s heater fan. I couldn’t find an exact match, so I found one that should work, but I had to check to see if the pin out was the same and it wasn’t. That meant I had to change the wires on the socket of the car, but how to get the pins out of the socket so I could change them. I played with that a bit and decided I’d have to make a little tool to release the pins from the socket, so that project was put on hold until I make the tool.
Visitors from Canada
Around eleven or so AM Marty and Patti came by with Roy and Suzanne who are visiting from Canada. Marty came by to pick up his laptop computer that had crashed that I reloaded for him. It had the unsupported XP on it. It was touch and go for awhile as it had the wrong windows key number printed on the back of the computer. I got a little program called Jellybean key finder and was able to get the key off the system, before I reloaded it.
Turns out the whole key on the back was totally wrong. Anyway, that got it all going.
We had a nice chat sitting in my front yard and then they went on their way, headed down to Bodega Bay for lunch and some sight seeing.
Headed to Jenner
I headed on out too, to Jenner to kayak for the day.
The wind was up as I put my boat in the water and headed on up the river towards Paddy’s rock.
Since it was pretty windy, I headed on over to the little channel on the east end of Penny Island for a bit where I spotted this egret, which was fishing in the grasses.
I headed on up the river towards Paddy’s rock in the wind. Because of the wind, there didn’t seem to be many birds around today, except for a large number of coots scattered around in the water. I was looking for that coyote again, but didn’t spot it.
Saw Steve across the river
I saw Steve over by Muskrat Nest Beach so I headed on over there from Paddy’s rock and we sat there trying to stay out of the wind as much as possible.
Steve tells me that he saw a coyote by Paddy’s rock when he paddled up earlier.
This was our view from the Muskrat area looking down to Jenner.
Lots of coots on the river today
We sat around there watching some coots across the river. They would start to go ashore, then turn back into the water. It seems they didn’t trust the shore for resting today.
The biggest flock of them were resting in the lee of Paddy’s rock which is what we saw below, across the river from us. Can you see the coots piled up on Paddy’s rock?
This might help a bit. They weren’t as nervous today, but they were being real cautious, just the same, with that coyote around.
As we sat there watching the wind picked up some more to maybe 25 miles an hour.
Eventually we started back down the river looking for places to stop along the way out of the wind.
I’m following Steve here as we paddle along in the wind and the waves.
We pulled into otters log at this spot and took a break as the waves got a bit larger from the wind.
Here we are just above Penny Island headed down the river. Except for the wind, the sun was out for a nice day.
We pulled into this grass before crossing over the back channel of Penny island. We needed a rest before starting across the windy channel.
I really shouldn’t take my non water proof camera out in these kind of windy conditions, but I did for this picture of the wind in the channel we were crossing to Penny Island, which is to the right of me.
We were headed for a spot where we knew the wind would be down on the east end of the island, a small channel behind some big eucalyptus trees.
Steve has pulled into the channel and I’m right behind him.
We took a much needed break there out of the wind. A small flock of coots came along and started feeding in the grasses in front of us.
We are just about to cross over the river here to the boat ramp. Another small flock of coots are feeding in front of Steve.
As I crossed over, I took my camera out again and took this picture looking down towards the river’s closed mouth area.
I checked out the water level gauge at the visitor center which read about 6.4 feet. The estuary is rising very slowly now, maybe two inches or so a day, so it will be awhile until the river’s mouth gets opened again, around the nine foot level.
We took our boats out of the water and went on home for another nice day.
I’ve learned to like the wind as well as the calm. The wind makes the calm even better and when it is windy we have the place pretty much to ourselves as not many other people like to boat in it.