What I wish I had known - Tomales Bay

There's so much I wish I had known! I still call this trip a successful one, but we certainly made plenty of rookie mistakes.

- Start early! I honestly think 80% of our problems can be summarized in this one. We underestimated how long it would take to pack and ended up arriving fairly late. This meant that we spent less time than ideal preparing the kayaks and weight distribution was not very efficient. On top of that, the wind had seriously picked up by the time we started, which made the whole thing difficult and unsafe.

- Weather is everything, don't ignore it. Wind will make things very hard.

- We used an inflatable kayak that didn't do a good job. Wind didn't help, obvioulsy, and I suspect it was overinflated. Still, an inflatable river kayak doesn't seem like a great option for this.

- Distributing weight and kayaking will be easier with individual kayaks rather than double. I wanted to keep the whole thing affordable and that's why we went for the double ones, but it's a good thing to be aware of.

- You actually can carry a lot of weight in the kayaks, but you gotta be efficient about the distribution! Especially with the items that will be tied to the surface.

- Trash bags are fairly good at keeping water out... as long as you don't capsize. I honestly didn't think anybody would capsize but, since I was so wrong, I really would recommend investing in drybags, at least for the valuable stuff and one dry set of clothes.

-...which takes me to the next point: no matter how light I want to pack, I'll always bring a second set of shoes (in this case, sandals.) I didn't capsize but I stepped on the water when getting out of the kayak and, as a result, I had wet shoes and feet all weekend. Really annoying.Read more