Salty Adventure

By Renée Beus

See the photos for this story

At Next Adventure, our staff is pretty tight-knit.  A lot of us are pretty close since we spend a lot of time together, and therefore we plan many adventures together.  Yes, together we work hard and play hard.  When we started talking about going surf kayaking at Indian Beach on one of our days off (and staying overnight in a yurt at Nehalem Bay for those who wanted to), and more people than usual showed interest in going, I became very excited!  It’s hard for us to ALL have time off together so it’s nice to have some trips planned where lots of us go.  

For this trip, we had myself, Dawn, Luke, Tony, Matt B., Megan, Mary, our friend Chief and my friend Shannon.  We all met at Next Adventure to figure out carpooling and soon thereafter hit the road to the coast!  We had been checking the surf report and it was lookin’ good: 11ft waves, 13 second intervals, 5 knot winds, north swell,…the excitement for this trip had been building for days!  We arrived to a foggy beach with BIG, beautiful waves just waiting to be shredded.  The tide was higher than I’d ever seen it, totally covering up the sand leaving only a mound of rocks closer to land for us to set up our base on.  
The mound was perfect for entering the surf—we were able to simply slide down the hill right into the water. 

When we arrived, some of our comrades were already there:  Mike Northrup (eNRG lead instructor), Sean Larkin (eNRG programs director/Next staff), Jonny Ott (eNRG instructor), and Seth Hansen (eNRG intern).  They had just dealt with a heinous rescue involving a swimming intern and boat in the riptide.  This was a great mood-setter for a day on the beach.  After everyone had dressed down into their paddling armor, the brave entered the water starting with Luke, Tony and some of the comrades.  An audience of wide-eyed ocean gazers in the parking lot watched closely with cameras engaged as the core paddlers battled the waves and current to get out to the BIG waves.  Everyone watched with a head-shaking wonder as if to think ‘they are either going to shred like I’ve never witnessed before, or die’.  Luke and Tony looked miniature on the faces of the monsters!

Our friend Chief got out in the water soon thereafter, followed by Matt then myself—with the inflatable kayak.  The inflatable is a two-seater, and a lot of fun for folks who can’t roll a kayak but would like to feel the sensation of surfing a kayak.  The first one I tried to coax into the water was Dawn.  We dragged the inflatable out and made our first attempt, but as Dawn has not spent much time in the ocean on days like this she decided to wait a while longer (which is good—sometimes it’s hard to make that choice, especially when you’re around a group of friends).  The next person who wanted to try was Megan, one of the newest additions to the employee list.  Megan is a surfer, so she is comfortable and familiar with the ocean.  We got in the kayak and practiced leaning into the wave to avoid capsize THEN proceeded to surf a bunch of little waves (little compared to the rest…they were still fairly big and certainly powerful).  We had a blast!  Soon it was Mary’s turn, but her courage was also broken by the enormity of the surf, so she decided to wait.  Megan and Mary went out into the water a little while later to surf on Megan’s surfboard.  Finally Matt and I took it out for a quick surf before I got into my EZ.  I really, really love surf kayaking.  The surf was still big, but had mellowed out since we first arrived.  The sun was breaking through a little bit here and there and before we knew it everyone was worn out and ready to go.  Megan said at one point “I feel I have witnessed a great performance…”  I thought it was funny just because this was her first outing with the Next Adventure crew and I guess she didn’t know how extremely talented and fun our staff is.  I feel fortunate to be a part of it.

The crew split from the beach.  Part of us drove back to PDX, the others went to Nehalem Bay State Park to camp out in the comfort of a Yurt for the night.  Those people included Matt, myself, Mary, and Megan.  That was PERFECT for after a surfing adventure.  We made some food, made some beverages—Oh, yeah…it was the eve of Mary’s 21st birthday!!  So we counted down.  What a great memorable place to have a 21st birthday!  

I really enjoy hanging out with my fellow crew members…it’s worth all the planning and motivation to get out!  Let’s do it some more!  See ya Next time!