Save the Coast (Part III)

Mission Accomplished: With 300 miles and 26 days behind them, Santa Barbara surfers Nole Cossart and Chadd Konig hauled out at Tijuana Sloughs on June 7, wrapping up their ocean paddle odyssey from Gaviota to the US-Mexico border.

They did it to raise awareness about pending development along Santa Barbara’s Gaviota Coast, and along the way they got good surf, much kindness from friends and strangers, and sore shoulders.

For all the background, check out Part I and Part II.

Last week they shoved off from Manhattan Beach with no real plan on how to negotiate the busy waterways of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

“That leg actually went surprisingly well,” remembers Cossart, “especially considering the amount of stress we put on that part of the trip.”

The undaunted duo paddled tight along the inside of the breakwater, looked both ways at the harbor mouths, waited for a gap in the maritime traffic, and sprinted – pushed along by a favorable west-by-northwest wind – to the next safe stretch of breakwater.

They hauled out at Seal Beach and looked back at the Los Angeles skyline. “It kinda’ had an impact on us to see just how far we had come.”      

But more tough stretches lay just ahead.

The RV-only campground in the area couldn’t accommodate their bedrolls and dehydrated food packets so they found a seedy motel with a hot shower.

From there, they made Newport, where Punker Pat put them up, and they took a few days downtime to rest up and tend to some errands on the mainland.

In Laguna, they got in a surf session with Hans Hagen, who invited Cossart to fit a vacant spot on an upcoming surf trip to Indonesia. (They fly out this Thursday.)

Back on the paddle boards, they put in a long leg from Laguna to Cottons (just north of Trestles), where Cossart sprinted down to Lowers to catch a few on his alaia just before sundown. “It’s the most incredible wave for riding an alaia,” he says. “It’s such a speedy wave. I was just flying as fast as I’ve ever gone on a wave.” They camped on the sand and woke up to more good surf. 

Through the waters off Camp Pendleton they witnessed soldiers in dive gear making open-ocean drops from hovering helicopters, and coming to shore in Oceanside they got more hot showers and real beds at the Days Inn. “We were pretty wiped out at that point,” Cossart remembers. “We just needed a good night’s sleep.”

The next morning, a stiff onshore wind was toying with Konig’s overloaded paddle board and they abandoned the paddle until conditions improved. And as the south swell picked up, they considered skipping the Oceanside-to-Cardiff leg altogether in favor of hitching a ride to catch some epic North County surf. They figured they could make up the leg some day after reaching the border.

“That’s bull****!” was the sentiment put forth by photographer Branden Aroyan, who’d been documenting the journey since day one. And it was Aroyan’s little pep talk that inspired the paddlers to exchange Konig’s lunker for a top-of-the-line model at the local Patagonia store and just keep on going. (The Patagonia staff was down for the cause.)

Leaving Oceanside in their wake, they paused to ponder their place in the universe for a few minutes above the La Jolla submarine canyon, where depths reach 1,000 feet, then continued on to Windansea. They hit the beach and crashed with a friend.

The final-day long-haul took them from Windansea, around Point Loma, across the San Diego harbor mouth, down the Strand off Coronado, past the pier in Imperial Beach, and all the way to the border. Nearly 30 miles.

As they hauled out for the last time, a US Border Patrol agent drove up, asked them a few questions, searched their gear, then opened a gate so that Aroyan could drive into the area to pick them up.

“We were tripping, just staring at the border fence, watching kids play soccer on the beach in Mexico and seeing all the different-colored buildings and shanties,” says Cossart. “I remember thinking, ‘This is where the real adventure would begin if we just kept on paddling.”

-PoolSnob