The weather was almost perfect today with sunny skies, moderate waves and not that much wind...at least at the start.
Today Anders, Nina and I completed the course we planned: Jack London Square in Oakland to Aquatic Park in SF. To do this we left my jeep at aquatic park and took their car to Oakland.
Getting out of Oakland Inner Harbor took about as much time as it did the first time when I was alone: about 1 hour. From there we headed directly toward Yerba Buena Island. The water was a little choppy at this stretch which may have been to a submerged wall on the Oakland side.
It was a real pleasure seeing the beautiful house and light house on Yerba Buena Island. I think this part of the island is off limits to non-coast guard personnel.
From there we went under the Bay Bridge. And that is where the easy part of the ride stopped.
From there we were bombarded with big waves and the wind picked up significantly; possibly 15-20 mph. At this point we followed the instructions of the manager of the kayak shop in Oakland which was probably a mistake. We tried to go diagonally toward SF, skirting around the ferry terminals. Due to the strong current this took us way out into the Bay, almost to the point of Alcatraz. This gave us a lot more rowing to do. With pretty large size waves and strong winds this tired us out pretty quickly.
In the end it took us 3.5 hours to cover 9-10 miles.
Still, we were never in danger and the ribs we had back in Oakland were great!
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