A friend of mine and his wife visited me in Berkeley on Saturday, so I had to delay this paddle until the next day. Sunday is usually my sleep-in day, so getting up for this paddle was definitely a Herculean task. I originally wanted to be up by 6:30am and be out of the house by 8, but that was simply too optimistic in this case. I ended up leaving the house at 9 am, and arrived at the Jack London Aquatic Center around 9:20am. The parking lot was already nearly full by this time, but I was able to grab the last available parking space in the lot. There was also a rowing class of about 10-15 people working on their Concept 2 Row Ergs when I got here, and I suspect the full parking lot was primarily due to this class.
Getting ready to launch at the Jack London Aquatic Center in Oakland CA. There was a group of rowers who just came back prior to my launch here. There were two docks that I could see; I chose this one because it was a tad closer to the parking lot.
I was on the waters around 10 am. There was hardly any wind, and the water by the dock was calm and smooth. There was another person on his SUP paddling in this area. Chris told me that he was new to paddle boarding, and thus he was staying close to the dock to practice. He also said that he spotted a sea otter close by, which I also kept my eye out for, but was not able to get any glimpse of it. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Chris has a boat that was anchored feet away from the dock. More on that near the end of this post =)
Bantering on the water is way cooler than doing so by the water cooler =P
Having started out near Estuary Park, I then crossed the channel to the Alameda side, and followed the waterfront south toward the Tidewater Boating Center. Alameda in Spanish literally means “tree-lined avenue” or “poplar grove”, and is an island among several, including Bay Farm Island and Coast Guard Island, that make up the city of Alameda. This area has a lot of personal watercraft, and I would occasionally see people sitting on their boats enjoying themselves with a drink or two.
Oops! It seems like this post isn't published yet. Stay tuned for updates!Just ahead of this area is the Coast Guard Island on my left. Per my sources (e.g. Wikipedia), this artificial island was formed in 1913, and was originally named Government Island. It is home to several USCG (United States Coast Guard) commands and centers, and is one of the largest bases of the Coast Guards on the West Coast. There was also a big Coast Guard ship moored outside of the island when I paddled by – I guess there’s no better way to shout out “I am Coast Guard Island” by having a ship painted “U.S. Coast Guard” sitting out in its front yard =D
The words are probably too small to see, but the ship to my left has “U.S. Coast Guard” imprinted on it.
There were not too much traffics from the big ships at the time I paddled the estuary. Small, personal boats, on the other hand, was a different matter. I ran into a few that were definitely going “fast”, creating wakes that forced me to sit down on the board to keep better balance for myself and not fall into the water.
Beyond these big ships and nice boats are some wildlife that can be found both in and on the water.
You will pass underneath three bridges paddling from the Jack London Aquatic Center to the Tidewater Boating Center. The first one is the Park Street Bridge, an old green “double-leaf bascule drawbridge spanning 372 feet” that was built in 1893, but opened in 1935, which links Oakland and Alameda. The opening ceremony also coincided with a public wedding celebration between a man in Oakland and a woman in Alameda – a union of the two cities, they said. From what I read, Alameda used to be a peninsula, and the government dredged the channel from around here to the San Leandro Bay and turned Alameda into an island after that.
Oops! It seems like this post isn't published yet. Stay tuned for updates!Just past the Park Street Bridge on the Oakland side are new(-ish) townhouses and condominiums which overlook the estuary. A lone duck was in the water enjoying its fine Sunday morning when a boat sped by in my opposite direction. The duck hastily got out of the way, knowing full well it’ll lose the battle head on. I, too, hastily scrambled onto my knees to brace for the coming wakes. I thought there is a 5 mph speed limit in this area, but perhaps no one really enforce this so boaters are free to observe the law however and whenever they’d like. Then again, who’d enjoy their boat going at below 5 mph per hour? If I can get my SUP to go at 35 mph, I would have done so as well =D
I had paddled the estuary twice previously, but did not get beyond the second bridge (Fruitvale Ave.) both times. There were a few surprises up ahead near that bridge, and the first among them were two artworks drew by the Cal Crew Team and the Berkeley High School (BHS) Crew Team. It turns out that BHS’s mascot is also a yellow jacket, the same as my alma mater Georgia Tech =) Go Jackets!
The second surprise here were the many fishes in the water under the bridges. I don’t have a good theory for this, but I believe they could be hiding out from the heat and those predators that could swoop in from above? Well, there were no swooping in, for the birds simply floated on the water and sniped these fishes out at their leisure.
There was not much distance between these three bridges, with more waterfront houses on the Alameda side (my right), and big commercial (shopping) complexes on the Oakland side (my left) after the second (Fruitvale Railroad Bridge) and before the third bridge.
Oops! It seems like this post isn't published yet. Stay tuned for updates!And a short time later I arrived at Tidewater Boating Center, parked my board by the dock, and had a yummy treat of dark chocolate almonds and some rest before heading back. Because this is near the tip of the southern end of Alameda island, I could feel the wind picking up slightly here. Had I continued south, I would have been in the San Leandro Bay, where I could paddle to the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline, or loop around Alameda Island for a 16-mile circumnavigation trip. Those will have to wait for another day.
I took a break of some 20 minutes at the Tidewater Boating Center before heading back. One thing that I had to do while at the dock was to manually fix some settings on my GoPro, and reset the capturing mode as my remote control was frozen for much of the paddle here. It seemed that the GoPro smart remote control was not so smart after all, as there is not a button to power it off. In the end, I had to leave it as it was until it ran out of power by itself. For this trip back, I just manually changed the time lapse interval to 10 seconds, and left it like that for the entire duration. I also swapped out the battery to make sure my entire way back would be documented, in case some alien kidnapped me and left no other trace to be found =P
The view on the way back was much the same as before, except you could feel the wind picking up, and there were some slight chops in the water. I ran into a SUPer around the Fruitvale bridge going the other way. From what I could gather, he also started from the Jack London Aquatic Center and was heading for the Tidewater Boating Center. He asked if I paddled around the entire Alameda Island, to which I laughed and said no. Although that would be the goal for the upcoming weeks, once I have better prepared my stamina for the trip.
When I got back to Coast Guard Island, I decided to go right and hopefully get partially shielded from the winds coming up from the main channel. I ran into another SUPer here, who mentioned that he and I have the same boards. It turned out that Keith was demoing a board from the California Canoe & Kayak shop (at Brooklyn Basin) close by, and his board was indeed very similar to mine (Sports 11’3 vs. my Sports 12’6). He asked how I liked this board, and I told him I like it very much, as it glides well and is super luxurious for my taste. But I did mention that this board is slightly narrower than his (mine is 30”, his is 32”), and the longer length could mean being more affected by the wind. He also seemed intrigue by my GoPro mount, telling me that he didn’t know what it was for until he saw it on my board. Keith seemed to enjoy his demo board very much, and was thinking about buying it given that there was a going sale on 2021 models currently. I hope to run into him again on the water at some point in the future.
Oops! It seems like this post isn't published yet. Stay tuned for updates!From here, I paddled past my original launch point at Jack London Aquatic Center, and instead pushed on to Jack London Square. This area was much busier than the places I had been to thus far, with lots of boat traffic and kayakers and SUPers out and about. Many people were also out walking or enjoying the waterfront view on a bench at this time, waving or saying hello to me as I paddled by. The wind was even stronger than before, that together with the big boats and ships plying about meant big wakes, so I stayed seated on my board for the rest of my paddle.
And with that, I began my paddle back to the Aquatic Center. And there was one last surprise waiting for me when I got there. Remember Chris, the SUPer I met at the beginning of this paddle?
Chris and friends were having a great time hanging out on his boat. They asked me to come up for a drink, but I politely declined. My tolerance is not too high, a few unintended gulps and I could be a bigger burden than expected =D
I got back to the dock some time after 2pm, having been on the waters for around four hours. I covered more than 8 miles, and had a great time meeting people and taking in the view throughout the paddle. The question now is, where to next week?