Conditions: 8-10 ft. – 3 ft. overhead to double overhead and poor conditions. Overhead+ to double overhead waves with bigger sets at the standouts. Mostly clean, light winds, but a pretty tough paddle.
Gear: 9′ 4″ Sunset Soft top from NorCal Surf Shop
One of a handful of valuable lessons one can learn from surfing is to know your strengths, know your limits and act accordingly. A few of my first times out, I tried to surf in waves too big, or surf too junky to really have fun. It’s hard to resist going out when you’ve gone all the way to the beach, but Saturday was one of those days.
We started out with “well, we’ll go down there, see what the surf is like and if the waves are too big maybe we can just hang out on the beach”. Once down there it was “well, maybe we can get some boards and just surf in the whitewater…”
At that point the surf wasn’t too crazy high, maybe about 6 foot. The guys at the surf shop made sure we knew what we were going out in. I spent a lot of time watching the waves down on the beach, figuring out the inside smaller breaks to surf, worrying about getting hung up in bigger surf.
I paddled out to a good spot close enough to the shore to be safe from the big breaking waves. The whitewater was moving fast enough it was easy to catch waves, but I only made about 2 runs before going back in. Some bigger 10 foot sets started to come in and the waves were looking beastly.
I wish I had pictures. It was definitely something to see. Big, rough looking barrels smashing into the water. Surfers wiping out in some spectacular waves.
UPDATE: Check out the waves at Ocean Beach for the same day. Scary.
In the interest of safety, we chilled on the beach watching the good surfers get chewed up by some seriously angry waves. I’m sure they were having an awesome time. Pacifica had some decent looking barrels. There was a surf/golf competition going on and imagine riding the big waves has got to be a rush…just a rush I don’t have the skills to pursue yet.
I’m glad we did things conservatively. Watching the waves was much better than being in them. Instead of getting knocked around out in an angry ocean, we got some pizza, said hi to a cool little dog in a Hawaiian shirt and napped in the sun.