Pt Reyes, Drakes Cove...for dungness????

Trying to tap the NCKA knowledge-bank:

If sandy bottom is the ticket for Dungness Crab.....why not Drakes Bay, in the protection of the Pt. Reyes Penninsula????????

Good parking......short stretch of sand to the launch.   

What say you?

Judd

Its a very good area!!!!! Look for the commercial  gear AFTER THE 15TH

Sherm

Hey Judd,
Where do you park and put in? I'm hoping to get out for some dungies before the commercial onslought. I've never tried out there.
Jonesz

danglin and i launched at chimney rock once. its a sweet launch,no wheels necessary. we drove down to the little pier and launched from the little beach on the right. then we had to park the trucks in the parking lot above. there is a sign at the top of the small road from the parking lot to the little pier. it says official vehicles only or something to that effect. ignore that and drive on down. this is the most protected launch ive ever seen. i dont care what the ocean is doing,it is always an easy launch. now for the bad news: its along drive to get there no matter where you live. at the end of the little pier is a crab processing shack so i bet there are a lot of crab there. better get em before the commercial guys start.  good luck and happy crabbing.

That must have been a LONG time ago that anyone was allowed to launch down at Chimney Rock (the old US Coast Guard residence and railroad-track Rescue Boat Launch facility).

It's been converted to a bird-watcher thing by the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and is gated.

The launch I've always used is VERY convenient and VERY accessible......and even has a manned hamburger stand-kind-of-restaurant.....in which you can feed yourself really good burgers & fries and just all kinds of stuff.

We are talking DRAKES BEACH.    You go out the peninsula road headed for the lighthouse and some distance out thataway you see a paved road off to the left, there is a sign which I think says Drakes Beach, and ya buzz down that road which ends at only one place.

Because POINT REYES breaks a N and NW swell to this beach the break is much reduced and is interesting because it always occurrs AS ONE SINGLE BREAK.   You do not have multiple lines of break.....not ever.   Just one single flopper.    Now sometimes that flopper can be 4-5 feet high and it does curl.   

The method is to get your boat afloat but hold back until the curl flops....then charge the white stuff....and having gotten thru the white stuff power your way forward with everything you have so that you beat the next curl.

You can stand there on the sand and count seconds between curls and evaluate what you see.   Most-times it is SUCH A piece of pie.

CAVAET:   Achtung...!!!.....Be careful of launching when the wind from the N or NW is very strong......because CAVAET...!!!...right there at the beach the wind is entirely broken by the ridge of land behind you and you will NOT notice the wind.

So CAVAET up there on the ridge, before turning left to descend to Drakes Beach, stop your car and get out.....or at least look at whether the grass is being blown flat to the earth....this is the wind you want to know about.

OK......when you launch from Drakes Beach.....SHOULD the wind be at 30 knots up there on the ridge....CAVAET.....IT WILL COME BACK DOWN TO THE WATER about a half-mile out.

So you paddle a half mile out and suddenly you are in a 30 knott OFF SHORE WIND.   This is a very difficult amount of air to paddle against and it is blowing you directly away from "home".

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There's one other thing you should know about.....should you paddle out toward Chimney Rock....there is an underwater rock formation that's out from shore about a quarter-mile and about equal (a bit "inward" toward the cove-side) where HUGE waves will suddenly (infrequently and unexpectedly) build, crest, sometimes even curl, and break.   "Huge" defined:  12 & 15 feet.    In quiter swells where that break is not occurring, the only trace of it.....to the very attentive eye....is that the larger of those quieter swells will suddenly mount.....and maybe only the very tops of them will "hiss" a bit of foam.     Take my word, that even when a serious break is occuring at that zone, you can go for FIFTEEN MINUTES before a large "combined-wave" comes in and shows its stuff.

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Drakes Bay is vast and for a long way out is not very deep.   It is home to flounder and sand-dab.

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I have one final CAVAET.    Stay away from the ocean-mouth of the HUGE in-land estuarys on an outgoing tide.    There is an immense volume of water up in the estuarys and on an outgoing tide at the mouth, where it is pouring out into the ocean, there's a fair gradient so it comes out quickly and where it hits the ocean it GOES UNDER THE OCEAN BREAKERS as a laminer bottom-flow.     

Read "laminer bottom-flow"......as UNDERTOW.    If you were to be capsized by the ocean-breakers up at the interface where that laminer flow from the estuarys meets the ocean.....you'd stand a good chance of being held by it, life-jacket and all, and your path would be out, and down.

This is just not a place one would want to capsize and be a swimmer.

Judd

Is this place save to go by myself??? Also how deep and how far do I go for dunnzzzz... Im planning on going there tomorrow morning ...What types of fish I can catch there???   

  :smt003ANY BODY WANNA GOO???

Yes, this is a safe place to solo.

Out a ways from the breakers it's 8-feet
Out a half-mile or so...it's 12-15 feet
Out at The Buoy it's 35 feet....and the buoy is the breakoff to 60-90 feet.

I want very much to go & try out my brand-new-never-used $160 FlexFold crab net........but.........

I have spent enough time sitting-on-my-livingroom-floor-in-decked-kayaker-position.....practicing with opening & closing & handling that net....that I now know two things:   

A) It's do-able...but...B) It's a rig that is easily able to kill any boater using it (loose line/arm-entrapment-in-any-of-the-swing-shut-entry-gates) just ALL of the classic dangers that have been killing lobster-fishermen from the beginning of time.

My plan is to first gain experience by learning to handle it under very controlled conditions before I figure I "know everything" and take it out where Murphy's Law has final say.

The ocean will have to wait.

Judd

i believe it was earlier this year that danglin and i launched there. the launch is even more protected from the prevailing nw swell and wind than drakes beach. the guy at my local kayak shop said kayakers use this launch a fair amount and the custodians dont mind. that said you cant beat a launch with its own hamburger stand. that spot where the occassional wave brakes is no joke. like smith said it is about a quarter mile southwest of chimney rock. make sure you take note of its location and steer clear. i'm going to launch my pots on tues when the swell is down. i'm not sure where yet.

Kayakjack.....Well, there IS another launch-point north of Drakes Beach (and South of the old Coast Guard Station) but it, too, is locked and gated.   It is known as the Point St. Joseph Fish Company, and is wholely owned by George Nunes...who is also owner of the Historic Ranch "A", a large dairy operation, up at the top, on the main road.   The "Point St. Joseph Fish Company" is an odd arrangement of a handful of commercial fishermen and a few permanent live-ins.  George is a "on-speaking-terms acquaintance" of mine.   If I call him beforehand, he opens the gate for me.......that shortens the paddle to "around the corner."

Further South down at the tail-end of Drakes Bay..???...there is Limantour Beach.  There is direct-road access to Limantour.   I've never been there.

This is the list of "N-to-S launch-points" that I know of in Drakes Bay:

Old Coast Guard Station....closed as a launch. (GGNRA)
Point St. Joseph Fish Company...private/gated.
Drakes Beach.....excellent, and open.
Limantour Beach...it's there, but I've never gone there.   It is "ages" away from Chimney Rock.

Judd

it was my first and only time there. we went down the road on the left side at the end of the parking lot. the road split.  it was 630 am and creepy foggy. the road to the left had a gate that was open with a sign saying something like oficial vehicles only. that road led down to a small pier with a fish processing shack on it. there was a small beach on the right side of the pier that turned out to be the closest to the parking and what i thought to be the best spot to launch. we actually launched over by the boathouse down the road to the right of the split. it was little bit further of a walk to the parking lot and we had to lift the boats over a small 2ft tall gate. when we came back in we landed at the beach to the right of the pier. there was a big dead whale on the rocks to the left of the pier. both lauchspots were wondefully protected from the weather and we were able to drive our trucks to within 15 ft of the water. i believe the parking was free.

Kayakjack......yeah......absolutely.......you guys launched from the old coast guard rescue station.

And you're right again, there is no "gate" barring the way down......but there is that sign saying "official vehicles" or something.....

So I never dared to try.

What's the motto here:

Boldness wins every time.......???.....
It's easier to get forgivness than permission....???....

Weekend access to ANYTHING closer to the Pt. Reyes Headland than Drakes Beach is greatly complicated during the mid-summer months because the GGNRA "Smokies" close the road at the Pt. Reyes Beach North parking lot.   

The idea is vehicle control.   They force everyone wanting to go see the lighthouse and hike the trails up on the head to park their car at that lot and take buses.     That stuff ends with Labor Day.

Judd

jwsmith, we actually launched from the boathouse and came back in at the fish company pier. we had heard that the local officials dont mind yakkers using the road and that yakkers do it fairly regularly. i heard that from the guys at clavey river supply in petaluma. it is also listed in the guide to seakayaking in northern california as a launch. it seemed like the boathouse was some historical site that was open to the public but i may be wrong. when we came in at the fish company pier, there were people working there and they didnt seem mind us landing our kayaks there. it was in july of this year. i guess it wouldnt be a good spot if you had a large group but it sure is a nice spot to launch if the weather is coming from the northwest. i'm not sure what motto i'd go with,maybe the new hampshire thing "live free or die".

 Hey Judd,
 George Nunes died 2 years ago.


Sherm

Huh......his wife never returned my Christmas card(s)...
Haven't launched from Point St. Joseph Fish for at least five years.

George was the epitome of a really neat farmer-guy.
He loved his cows.

The farms out there, the GGNRA has been sweeping them out as the owners die.   I wonder if now Historic Ranch A will be "sunsetted"....or whether for a time his wife will carry on...or???

The "environmental purists" want the farms out because they smell like...well, farms.
Environmental purists are such despicable people.
They take my breath, with what they want, and what they will do.

I grew up on a farm just south of Corvallis, OR.   George and I made common-cause over our love of cows.    Cows give you milk and they're an industry but to those who 'husband' them, the close relationship brings understanding of and appreciation for the sweet simple girlish curiosity of a cow.

I was hunting pigs not long ago up near Cloverdale, it was overcast with some rain, had been all day and I was headed back to the car along an earth-cut road.  About 4-feet above the roadcut was a shallow bench of land and then for fifteen vertical feet above that a diagonal cow/deer/pig trail provided a route to the next bench and into combination of old California Oak landscape with a fairly dense growth of recent conifers.   I became aware of activity above me in the trees and stopped to watch.    All that land is grazing land and I could see that about eight heiffers coming down towards me, among them, this one young gal was about four cows back but she knew that diagonal one-cow-trail down to the road was ahead and so she rushed through her "pals" ahead, shouldering and pushing them aside, and came jogging down that diagonal trail.....when she reached the bench of land she whirled to face her girlfriends....     The move was so classic, I knew she was just totally filled with exhultation that, you know, she'd beaten her buds down that diagonal trail.      Only when she looked back at her friends they weren't looking at her at all.....they were looking over her back because....They Had Seen ME....

And she stood there for a pretty long time puzzling why her friends weren't giving her any attention, given that she had beaten them down that diagonal trail.   She wasn't getting the recognition she knew she deserved....instead they were all looking off in the distance...it was puzzling and she took a while to think on it....and then she turned and there I was.....seven feet away....

And I swear.....I'd never seen a heiffer's lower jaw drop, with that level of astonishment.  Not ever.  I've enjoyed that moment a thousand times, since.

Judd

nice cow story. my brother and i used to spend summers working my dads cattleranch in merced. we were just kids age 10-13. we used to herd them from the holding pen through the chutes and into the squeeze box with an electric cattle prod. they would often kick me in the shins when i zapped them. once we got them in the squeezebox, my brother would stick a giant syringe into their eyeballs and give them a shot. then my dad would slice open their nutsacks and snatch out their balls. all the while they never even flinched. then i would put the branding iron to them and they would go beserk. i'm pretty sure those cows hated me. the part i liked was when the baby cows were born. they were really cute and we would name them and become very attached to them.    COWS ARE COOL.