Half Moon Bay: sun, surf and serenity

Half Moon Bay, Calif. — “DON’T paddle outside of the harbor,” the goateed worker at the kayak rental shop tells me as I pull on my blue splash jacket and grab a paddle. The waves outside Pillar Point Harbor can be unpredictable and dangerous.

Sure, I say. But I don’t tell him that the waves are exactly what I came to see. I planned to kayak past the breakers off the shores of Half Moon Bay to get a closer look at Maverick’s, a point break feared and admired by surfers around the world. I’ve heard that only the most insane ride these steamrollers, which, in winter, rise up to 50 feet high and break on a cluster of bulldozer-sized boulders about half a mile from shore.

I slide a bright red sea kayak into the choppy harbor waters and paddle hard toward open sea. Cold gusts keep shoving my kayak toward shore, and my arms and legs are already burning from a two-hour mountain bike ride in a nearby redwood forest earlier that day. What’s more, I had hoped to finish my kayaking trip in time to visit a much-touted tide pool up the coast.

I eventually decide to heed the advice of goatee dude. After an hour of paddling, I head for shore, vowing to return another day to Maverick’s.

During Prohibition, bootleggers slipped shallow-hulled boats past Half Moon’s giant boulders under cover of night and fog. But today the bay has outgrown its slippery reputation as a port of entry for rumrunners. Now it’s all about harbor-side seafood joints, antiques shops, cozy B&Bs and an annual pumpkin festival — an ideal weekend getaway for Starbucks-loving urbanites from the Bay Area.

But as I discovered, this coastal town 28 miles south of San Francisco, at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, is also a great outdoors playground. I set aside six days and packed a bike, a backpack, hiking boots, wading sandals and binoculars. In the end, I fell short on time and gear.

ROADS TO GLORY

The lush Santa Cruz Mountains cradle Half Moon Bay against the sea. One way to get here is to take on the Devil’s Slide, a crumbling promontory that has been the bane of the state Department of Transportation. When the road is intact, Highway 1 from San Francisco snakes along steep cliffs, over boulder-strewn shores, dropping into Half Moon Bay from the north.

But Devil’s Slide has been a hellish neighbor, shutting down Highway 1 nine times in the last 70 years with rockslides, mudslides and roadway fissures. The last Devil’s Slide closure — in April 2006 — lasted four months and cost Caltrans $9 million to repair.

During one visit, I checked into a historic bed-and-breakfast called the Goose & Turrets. During afternoon tea, the proprietor served a plate of freshly made chocolate chip cookies, which he dubbed “Devil’s Slide.” They’re just like the cliff, he said, moist and fragile.

The alternate route into Half Moon Bay is California 92, a winding, two-lane road that runs east-west from San Mateo. But when Devil’s Slide closes Highway 1, California 92 is a gridlocked mess and the region’s tourism business — a $16-million annual industry — falters.

So why isn’t everyone cheering the news that Caltrans is boring two freeway tunnels to bypass Devil’s Slide and that it plans to widen California 92? Well, some residents fear that safer, more reliable access into Half Moon Bay will invite more growth and development, and that means a mini Monterey: commercial and crowded.

But there is still time to catch the unspoiled Half Moon Bay. The tunnels won’t open until 2011.

SLUGS AND SEALS

Banana slug.

Banana slug.

Banana slug.

I’m on a mountain bike, streaking down a shady canyon trail at Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 25 minutes east of Half Moon Bay. It’s cool and moist here. Overhead, a canopy of old-growth redwoods, Douglas firs and tanoaks blots out the sun. Furry green moss covers tangles of branches and trunks that border Purisima Creek.

The air is dewy sweet, and the trails are carpeted in pine needles and oak leaves. As I speed down the trail, my eye catches a repeated flash of bright yellow: Banana slugs the size of double corona cigars litter the leafy path. The blazing downhill trails earn high praise from Bay Area mountain bikers. But on this weekday morning, I ride for two hours without seeing another soul.

I arrive at the preserve along a writhing two-lane road that shimmies past horse farms and flower ranches. The entrance — a small dirt parking lot marked by a small wooden sign — was so inconspicuous I nearly drove past it.

The same thing happened later that day when I drove about a mile north of Maverick’s to Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, dubbed by one longtime Half Moon Bay resident as the best tide pool in the state. The entrance was a small, sandy parking lot in the shade of a cypress grove, hidden behind a residential neighborhood. Drive to a tide pool like this in Monterey, San Pedro or San Diego, and you’ll find a big, crowded parking lot, staffed by attendants demanding a steep hourly rate.

At low tide, the pools at Fitzgerald Marine Reserve stretch for nearly 50 yards toward the ocean. The reef, covered in dark sea grass, loose sheets of seaweed and purple coralline algae, shelters a slithering world of rock grabs, sea stars, hermit crabs and anemones the color of green Jell-O.

I walk toward the water, studying the tiny creatures at my feet. I don’t notice the park ranger moving to intercept me until she is a few feet away. It’s against the law, she tells me, to disturb a marine mammal. What mammal? She points about 10 yards ahead of me to the edge of the tide pools where a pair of harbor seals are sunning themselves.

FROM SKY TO CREEK

The three middle-aged bird watchers train their binoculars and spotting scopes on a large brown hawk cutting lazy circles over Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve.

“The Harrier hawks are the only hawks that you can distinguish their sex by their color,” one of the birders tells me. That’s good to know, I suppose, if you’re a Harrier hawk.

The amateur ornithologists turn their attention to a great blue heron that swoops past and lands at a cluster of reeds in the marsh’s western tip. Herons, the birders say, build their nests in the nearby eucalyptus grove.

I’m in the 500-acre preserve about 15 miles south of Half Moon Bay on a Saturday morning. Somehow I missed the weekly docent-led nature walk so I trekked into the preserve alone and hooked up with birders. We walk slowly through marsh flats, following sandy trails, around a knee-deep creek and a large, murky lagoon, bordered by waist-high buckwheat, mustard, milk vetch, blackberry and thistle plants.

As we scan the skies, I hear the sound of splashing in a nearby creek. Two young men in waders are plodding upstream, casting fishing lines into the slow-moving waters.

“They’re allowed to fish in the preserve?” I ask the birders.

“Yeah. Steelhead trout,” one of them says.

Now I’m cursing myself because I didn’t bring my fishing gear. Who would have expected steelhead trout in a bird preserve? Later, state fish and game officials tell me that the creek is one of only a few waterways in the region that support a steelhead population.

I missed my chance to hook a steelhead trout, but I’m determined to see surfers take on Maverick’s. I drive back to Pillar Point Harbor.

LEGEND HAS IT …

According to surfing lore, Maverick’s was named in the early 1960s for a German shepherd called Maverick, who during an outing followed three surfers into the waves off Pillar Point. One surfer, worried that the swells were too rough for the dog, leashed Maverick to a car bumper. From then on, surfers began calling the break “Maverick’s Point.” It was later shortened to Maverick’s.

The waves at Maverick’s are born from Arctic storms that send swells along the California coast until they hit the reef at Pillar Point, which juts out of the northern end of Half Moon Bay. An underwater terraced reef rockets the swells skyward, producing waves up to 50 feet tall, mostly during winter.

Outside of the clannish world of surfers, Maverick’s remained relatively unknown until 1994 when Hawaiian big-wave surfer Mark Foo drowned here. The death brought the glare of national media. The San Francisco Chronicle called Maverick’s “treacherous.” Sports Illustrated called the waves “giant” and “massive.” The Orlando Sentinel said Maverick’s waves were “monsters” with the “power and speed of a locomotive.”

Now Maverick’s secret is out, and I’ve come to see whether those Arctic swells have kicked in.

At Pillar Point Harbor, I find that no charters are heading out, so I hop on a whale-watching boat to get a view from outside the breakers. At the helm is William Smith, a 25-year veteran who looks like an earring-wearing Santa Claus and goes by the name Capt. Smitty.

At a distance of about half a mile, I see 10- to 15-foot swells explode on a cluster of boulders. But the waves are breaking at a fast, violent pace — a condition surfers call “closeout.”

Capt. Smitty swings his boat away from Maverick’s to follow a lone humpback whale. For two hours, I, and about 20 tourists, watch from a cold, wet deck as the whale blows fine spouts of air and water into the sky.

Even more determined to see a surfer take on Maverick’s liquid giants, I leave my B&B early the next morning and drive to a dirt parking lot behind the Half Moon Bay Airport. Most visitors see Maverick’s from the breakers near Pillar Point Marsh, about a mile from the harbor. But I have some inside knowledge: The B&B owner says I can get a better view by hiking down the cliffs on the western side of the peninsula. I follow his instructions and climb to a wide, flat beach, looking south at the point break.

Peering at Maverick’s distant waves, I see what looks like a group of black gulls bobbing on the massive swells. But as I get closer, I realized those are not gulls but surfers in black wetsuits. In contrast to the huge, cresting waves, they look like small aquatic birds.

From a shelf of wet rocks, I watch a dozen riders line up in a north-south row on the water. They gauge the swells. Only when the waves crest at the precise time and break cleanly to the south do the surfers paddle hard to catch a ride.

I watch the scene for several minutes and then spot a man in a black wetsuit, standing on top of one of five huge boulders that are pounded by the crashing waves, about half a mile from shore. Look at this screwball, I think. One rogue wave and he’s a goner.

But he must not care. Maverick’s can have that effect on you.

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Planning this trip

THE BEST WAY

To get to Half Moon Bay, fly nonstop from LAX to San Francisco International Airport on American, United, Frontier or Delta. Restricted round-trip fares start at $118. From the airport, drive seven miles south on U.S. Highway 101 and then turn west on California 92 for 13 miles.

WHERE TO STAY

The Goose & Turrets, 835 George St., Montara; (650) 728-5451, https://www.goose.montara.com . Rooms run from $145 to $190 per night.

Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, 1 Miramontes Point Road, Half Moon Bay; (650) 712-7000, https://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/Properties/HalfMoonBay . Standard room rates start at $369.

WHERE TO EAT

Sam’s Chowder House, 4210 Cabrillo Highway, Half Moon Bay; (650) 712-0245, https://www.samschowderhouse.com . Entrees less than $30.

Princeton Seafood Co., 50 Capistrano Road, Half Moon Bay; (650) 726-2722, https://www.princetonseafood.com . Entrees less than $20.

THINGS TO DO

Fitzgerald Marine Reserve, Moss Beach; (650) 728-3584, https://www.fitzgeraldreserve.org . Visit the tide pools. Free.

Pillar Point Harbor, One Johnson Pier, Half Moon Bay. Rent a kayak at Half Moon Bay Kayak Co., at the entrance to the harbor, Highway 1 and Capistrano Road; (650) 773-6101, https://www.hmbkayak.com

Maverick’s. Watch the waves at this surfing mecca. Head for a point near Pillar Point Marsh and Shoreline Park (follow the dirt road to the point). Free.

Purisima Creek Redwoods Open Space Preserve, Santa Cruz Mountains near Woodside; (650) 691-1200, https://www.openspace.org/preserves/pr_purisima.as . Bike or hike among the redwoods. Free

Pescadero Marsh Natural Preserve, 16 miles south of Half Moon Bay on Highway 1; (650) 879-2170, https://www.parks.ca.gov/page_id522 . Free.