I'm where?

"Did you feel that? The wind changed direction to off shore.", I said to Katherine, my paddling partner that day.

Katherine, who is also the president of the kayak (or is it kayaking) club I'm in, had called for a short little coastal paddle. The plan, roughly, was to head out of Santa Cruz harbor, go right, and head down Capitola. It was a nice day, 4ft swell at like 8 seconds or something, winds like 5kts, patchy clouds, slight chance of rain. Just, you know, nice.

Now it turns out that I am, with very little doubt, an exceptionally well trained sea kayaker. This is not arrogance as there isn't much credit I can take for the circumstance. All I've done is seek out and train with the best coaches I could find and afford in terms of money and time. And while, in many regards, my on the water skills do not do justice to the quality of my coaches and training, when it comes to the non-motor skill bits of the sport I feel rather the opposite.

One "skill", if you can call it that, that I practice vigorously is dynamic risk assessment. Different coaches and instructors of mine have called it different things. Situational awareness. Environmental awareness. Attention to detail. Probably a few others. For various reasons I think dynamic risk assessment (DRA, because I'm really down with TLAs), is the most useful nomenclature and that's what I use. And DRA is something my regular coaches pretty much constantly talk and question about. Regardless of what one calls it though, all this is about is constantly evaluating the conditions in which you are immersed for changes that might demand a change in what you are doing or had planned to do. So if you're paddling along and hear thunder, maybe you'd want to think about getting off the water. For example.

So when I felt the wind coming from the shore I noticed. In fact the forecast had called for NW winds at 5 and, given our orientation, the wind was now NE. Still around 5 but, as I say, offshore. And offshore winds, as I'm sure you know or have been taught can be a really big deal. Not at 5, but if wind is offshore it's worth paying attention to regardless of speed. And it was this that caused me to make mention of it to Katherine. But I'm not at all sure what made me do what I did next.

I always (always) carry a compass in my PFD (life jacket, whatever) and I pulled it out and took a look. And I looked up and sez to Katherine, "Katherine, which way are we heading?" to which she replied, quickly and without much thought because she was watching some boardies, "West". Which is totally what I had thought because Capitola was directly behind us, it's on the Pacific coast so, sure, we were heading west. But she stopped watching the boardies when I said, "We're heading south." and looked at me for a second with a how-did-you-get-that-wrong look. So I paddled over and showed her my compass and damn. South.

On the one hand this was really good. The winds weren't NE and offshore, they were NW just like NOAA called for. On the other hand this was pretty bad. I didn't know where we were. I mean I knew where we were I the sense of, you know, there's Capitola right there for chrisakes. But in the sense of like mayday mayday, we're at such and so location I was pretty fucked. Had I been asked to swear on my life as to our location, I'd have sworn about one and a half miles west of Capitola. And since, at some level, mayday mayday is nauticalese for I-swear-on-someones-life you don't want to get what you're saying wrong very often.

So much then for my feeling good about my non-motor skills. Sure, I pay attention to the wind, the water, who's looking nervous, where the boomers are. All of that DRA stuff. But I couldn't have told you correctly where to find us if someones life had depended on it. Which, as I mentioned, it probably would have if I had had to tell someone at that moment. In my defense, this isn't a place I've paddled very often. Maybe once or twice. To my great chagrin though I didn't bring a chart.

It was an inexpensive lesson this time. I hope I learned something. I wonder what I'm gonna learn next and hope it's as inexpensive.