On Saturday, May 23rd, four riders met up with the San Diego group to go on a ride in Oceanside. At 8:30am, it was a bit chilly with a slight breeze, but they were ready to hit the water. Upon leaving the marina, there were lots of kayakers and boats launching. The weather report looked pretty good the night before but as always there were warnings for the potential of 3-to-4 foot swells and winds around 12 knots. However, not phased by this as usual, Ryan, Sophie, David, and I launched our watercraft at 9:15am and were on our way by 9:45am.
There were a variety of skis for this adventure. Ryan just got the new 2015 Yamaha VXR, I on my 2012 Sea-Doo RXP-X, and Sophie and David on their Kawasaki Ultra 300s. As we left the breakwater there was minimal chop. Everyone was keeping up even, Sophie who is just over 5-feet in height.
Along the way, we saw marine life and received a greeting from Val, a fellow rider who follows the West Coast Watercraft Club of Southern California’s website. As we continued south towards San Diego, the swells became much larger. David came up and asked if I wanted to switch skis and as the jokester that I am known to be, I politely agreed, but then sped away, followed by shouting, “Not!” Continuing on, we were traveling at a good pace of 40 MPH and airborne most of the way. My Sea-Doo would go up in the air, tilting to the left and straight back into the ocean for the remainder of our journey there.
Around Carlsbad, Sophie got ejected and her lanyard had been detached. Luckily, David had a spare and fortunately found the other one floating along as we all continued to help her back up. From Carlsbad to San Diego, we encountered a large kelp bed causing us to ride almost 3 miles away from the shore to keep it from cramming into their pumps. Upon arriving at Point Loma, it was a kelp nightmare, causing us to ride even further out of our way just to get into the bay.
We had originally planned on meeting with the second group in San Diego around 11am. They were at the edge of the bay awaiting our arrival. We received our hero’s welcome for completing the rigorous ride we just completed, and rode to the public dock in Coronado to grab lunch together. We all had lots of laughs talking about the ride down and teasing the waitress about me being a professional karaoke singer.
During lunch, two riders decided not to return to Oceanside but I wasn’t going to back out and let Ryan go back alone. At 1:30pm, Ryan and I got fuel and headed out to the washing machine water for our 45 miles of pounding. This was a great experience for Ryan, since he is training for the Oceanside-to-Dana Point race coming up later this summer. For me, it was “Oh please get me home safely.”
It was even more brutal than it had been on our way to San Diego. I found by using the ECO mode I wasn’t up and down on the throttle so much, wasting precious fuel. I was starting to sing “99 bottles of beer on the wall”, which made Ryan and I both laugh and feel ready to continue our ride home.
We arrived back in Oceanside by 3:30pm. We cleaned up our skis and headed home. The next day is when all the soreness started and two days later I am still recovering.
