Mike Falconeri got angry after his kayak and expedition gear were ripped off by thieves in Eureka. But what made him truly nervous was watching a shark gulp down a pelican off the Mendocino coast, right in the waters he was paddling through on his planned voyage around the United States.

Falconeri, 40, wants to be the first to circumnavigate the 4000-mile shoreline of the United States, using paddle power. On Thursday afternoon, he literally blew in through the Golden Gate after finishing the hardest segment of his voyage, the stretch of rough coast between here and Tahola, Wash., where he began paddling on July 2.

Falconeri’s trip already has had one false start. He set out from the Quinnault Reservation on the Olympic Peninsula in October at the beginning of winter only to find himself hammered between rip currents and storm surf. He wound up stripped of his boat, swimming to land, hoping his equipment would wash ashore. It did.

The East Coast kayak instructor waited until July, launching into benign summer conditions. He’s exceeded his goal of making 20 miles per day. Navigating through heavy fog by map and compass, he enjoyed watching whales and seeing his 18-foot boat bumped by curious seals.

But he found a very different type of wildlife in Eureka, after he beached his craft and went to enjoy a rare night in a hotel room. When he returned to his cache site the next morning, he found a bare beach. After getting over his initial anger and disbelief, Falconeri went down to a biker bar to begin "networking," to see if he could recover his stolen gear.

Accounts in area newspapers and TV prompted several nocturnal visits to his hotel room by various locals who provided clues. Eventually, he did manage to regain his boat, drysuit and several other valuable items. "The main loss is, I don’t have a lot of dry clothes to change into anymore," Falconeri said. "I look pretty shabby when I come ashore." Falconeri plans to spend a week in the Bay Area, staying with friends from the Sea Trek kayaking center in Sausalito, where he made land-fall.

He hopes to finish the voyage in northern Maine by April of 2001. Other paddlers have done segments of this route. But so far as is known, no one has completed the entire thing. "People say what I’m doing sounds like fun, and I must be having a blast," Falconeri said. "Well, it’s not fun. It’s a lot of work. There’s a different challenge every day. But it is rewarding. And when I get back, I want to talk a lot to kids about what it’s like to try to do something that hasn’t been done before. I want to encourage them to take a chance on a dream."