Sea Kayak - Astoria Bridge

We set up for this trip with an early morning shuttle. I met Lori and Jerry at the Deep River ramp in the dark at 6:45am and dropped off my boat/gear. While they remained at the launch, I drove the 45 minutes to the ramp at Cape Disappointment State Park and met Lauren, Karl and Dan there at 7:30. We consolidated all the boats and gear onto/into my car and headed back to Deep River, arriving around 8:40am. The weather was clear and cold, but there was a steep temperature differential between Deep River and Ilwaco, creating some strong easterly winds.

We got on the water at 9:15 with a Pileated Woodpecker seeing us off from a tree above us. Paddling out of the sheltered small river, we soon encountered stronger winds from the east as we approached Rocky Point. Making good progress with the wind on the stern quarter, we made our first stop on schedule at Grays Point, just west of  Portuguese Point. A couple of river otters made their appearance along the way. Waves were about 1' for this section, quartering from the stern to our left.

After a pleasant break, we continued close to the shore picking up substantial current around Knapton. With 10-15 knots of wind and around 3 knots of current, the waves got substantially steeper and more confused around points. Probably 1-1.5' with lots of whitecaps and clapotis near shore. We made quick progress and stopped for lunch in the sunshine at the sand beach in Hungry Harbor, near the wreck of the USS Plainview, a large experimental navy hydrofoil. The weather was clear enough that we could look back to the east and see both Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams very clearly.

After lunch we paddled out past the numerous piles left from an old cannery and then continued west towards Point Ellice, the north end of the bridge to Astoria. The current really picked up to over 5 knots in this section  and combined with the substantial wind waves, created some challenging conditions with patches of whitewater and very steep and confused waves. The strong current helped us cruise through this section quickly, past the bridge and along the shore to Chinook Point, where we stopped for our last break. For about a mile through the bridge section, we were averaging 7-8kt in very lively conditions! Once past the bridge, the waves flattened out almost completely and we paddled along at over 5 kt. We stopped on the west side of Chinook Point on the extensive sand bar. 

During the last break we discussed options for the route back to the ramp at Cape Disappointment State Park. We could either ride the current along the main channel to the south of Sand Islands or paddle along the north side of the islands in much more protected waters, but without significant current push. Conditions looked much better than we had experienced east of the bridge, so we decided to take the route to the south of  Sand Island, getting a good current push and reducing the risk of a late take out. We headed off at about 1:40pm and ferried out toward the south end of the first major wing dam (day marker #7). A coast guard helicopter and boat were conducting exercises out in front of us during this leg of the trip. We had to ferry hard to ensure we got around the end of the wing dam with the current running 3-4kt in this section. Once past the end of the wing dam, we turned down river and cruised by the ends of the wing dams extending south from East Sand Island and Sand Island. The water in this section was very swift, with crab pot buoys being most pulled under as we zipped past. The turbulent water created interesting and fun conditions along the way. We started to pick up around 1-2' of  ocean swell at this point.

Once past day marker #1 at the end of the wing dam extending from the east end of Sand Island, we turned toward the shore of the island to stay as much as possible out of the ebb current coming out of the channel from Ilwaco. Staying just out of the small breakers, we continued a much slower pace, now against the ebb. We slalomed through the numerous pilings, staying close to shore and made it to the ramp at 3:15pm.

This was a wonderful paddle to end 2025 with some of the liveliest water of the year, superb weather, a great group and a new route.

Total distance paddled: 18.59 nm
Average moving speed: 3.9 kt
Maximum speed: 8.4 kt
High tide: 9.5' at 8:53am
Low tide: 0.3' at 4:04pm
Maximum ebb at McGowan: 5.8 kt at 1:11pm