Half an hour after they left the beach the wind was 16 mph with gusts to 24 mph. At 12:53 p.m., a few minutes before they launched, the weather station at Fairchild International recorded winds of 12 mph from the west-northwest, with no gusts. In fact, both Walkley and Kelley were behind.Īlmost immediately, the conditions began to worsen. At the time, he thought all the other paddlers were ahead of him. Austin napped in the grass, and some of the others chatted with the volunteer lighthouse keepers.ĭennis Caines was focused on catching up to the others, because he had the keys to the van and didn’t want to leave his friends waiting. The kayakers soon arrived at the lighthouse, where they lingered for about two hours, eating their lunches and mingling with the hikers. Only the Caines had wetsuits the others wore cotton layers under light jackets. All of the kayakers wore lifejackets, but most weren’t dressed for immersion in cold water. Ken and Esther Corcoran followed in their Wilderness Tsunami rec-touring boats, while Caines and his wife Linda brought up the rear in a 22-foot tandem. The lead trio was in 17-plus foot sea kayaks equipped with rudders and sprayskirts. “It was warm and sunny and nice and we were just flying across the water,” recalls Kelley, then 50, who raced ahead with Austin and Johnson. The conditions could hardly have been better, with Fairchild International Airport in nearby Port Angeles reporting winds of 6-8 mph from the west-southwest-a quartering tailwind. The kayakers piled into Caines’ van for the short drive to Clines Spit, where they launched by twos and threes. She arranged to share one of Caines’s kayaks with her boyfriend Rob Johnson, who would paddle to the lighthouse and walk back. Austin was keen to paddle, and Walkley wanted to hike to the lighthouse and paddle back. Both were frequent participants in club kayak outings. Jacob Austin, 52, and Mandi Walkley, 39, raised their hands. The group gathered for a prayer and devotional, after which Dennis Caines asked if any of the hikers would like to kayak. Forecasters had warned of bad weather for more than a week, but when the group arrived the sky was clear and the wind was light. The low-lying spit provides shelter from ocean swells, but little protection from the afternoon winds that often come whipping off the North Pacific. Some members would hike out along the spit while others would kayak to the lighthouse, a straightforward paddle of less than three miles. So on April 11, 2015, the club split into two groups. “We loved kayaking so much that we begged to add kayaking to the hikes”

Tide graph for dungeness