Month: April 2010

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Cold Bolinas Morning

Surf: 2-5ft, inconsistent, windy, hard to catch.
Gear: 9’0

With the upwelling in full swing, my hands and face burned to touch the water. Oh man was it cold. Upwelling is a yearly event caused by the NW high winds. Warmer surface waters are blown into shore and are forced down by the bathymetry causing colder deep water to rise to the top to replace it. One day the water will seem a little colder than usual, the next it’s painfully cold and it stays downright icy until the winds stop. I absolutely made the right decision buying a new wetsuit when I did. I need every ounce of warmth.

For Monday’s session I’d worn my fuzzy hat and mittens to the rendezvous point. Today I’d almost wished I’d worn them in the water. After a few hours my pinkies had given up on me and refused to join the rest of my fingers in cupping my hand to paddle. The wind just added insult to injury. I have no idea how Chris goes without booties. That’s soul beyond soul right there. Brrrrrr.

Buoys and reports had suggested bigger waves, so I took the 9. As soft as these waves wound up being, the 9’4 would have been better. It’s got the float to take on anything and the weight helps with the drop on mushier waves. The 9 did hold a nice line on my last wave in. It’s fast enough to keep out ahead of the wave and as a result I managed to connect the outside wave with two inner breaks and make it all the way to shore. Yay.

Once on land there was a lovely numb footed shuffle back to the car. My hands stayed frozen for a good hour. Brrrrrr.

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Sunset at the Jetty

Surf: 2-3ft, Inconsistent, Mushy but smooth.
Gear: 9’0 Stewart LSP?

After wrapping work early, I decided to go for my first double session and catch a few waves at the jetty. Conditions were a little weak, but at that point, so was I. I haven’t done double sessions before (especially after getting up at 5am), so I was sloppy out there. I got maybe one okayish wave. There was a pretty embarassing moment when another woman in the linup (who was TEARING it up on a longboard) asked if my board was mine or I was just borrowing it.

Ouch.

She was legitimately interested in my board and suggested that perhaps it’s an LSP and not a hydro hull. After looking up the specs on the LSP, I’d say she’s right. The upside is that I’m learning a new board and it’s one that should be able to handle steeper, larger waves next winter. It’s what Stewart calls their “9’0 shortboard”. Hopefully it will help me learn to be more agressive and take on steeper waves. I’m also hopeful those skills will translate to my shortboards once I get better at riding them.

The lineup was pretty great to watch. Between the woman cutting screaming lines down the face and Jeff Clark turning a mushy peak into magic, there was a lot of great surfing going on.

Hopefully I’ll be able to up my second session game in the future.

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Dawn Patrol in Bolinas

Surf: 2-4ft, fairly clean. A little bit inconsistent.
Gear: 9ft Stewart

My friend Chris is working on a project up in Marin and with my new flexible work schedule, picking up a dawn patrol was high on the list of great ideas. As it was also the two year mark of me learning to surf, I figured I’d give the early session a go. We met up at 6am, drove over the mountains, then surfed 7ish to 9.

The sun cut through the fog right as we got to the beach. The morning was just beautiful. Waves were small rolling mellow ones and the crowd was friendly. Folks were hooting and hollering, cheering on other surfers when they got a good ride.

I really got to work my new 9ft. I could take off in a steeper spot and got the hang of shuffling it around more fluidly. Man, I got some great long rides in. This board is good staying just in the pocket and picking up speed when needed. The board offers a lot of room to chase on the right wave.

Heading back was the hardest part. I could have stayed out all day if I didn’t have an 11am meeting. Heading up the 1 we met a parade of classic cars coming the other direction. Must have been over two dozen beautiful roadsters cruising the coast, living the dream.

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Board Repair and Testing

SURF: 2-3ft, little bit of jumble but fun, peeling, and beautiful sunshine.
Gear: 9’0 Stewart Hydro Hull

My 9’4 has been in and out of the repairshop lately. Poor board has been getting dinged at crowded breaks and, since it’s practically a new board, I have it repaired professionally.

With the week or so turnaround time this leaves me high and dry if the swell is too small for my other boards. After seeing the forecasts for small clean swell, I hit craigslist looking for a backup board. Wouldn’t you know, there’s another board similar to mine for sale. I checked out for a long lunch, looked to board over and bought it.

I was looking for an 8’6, but I couldn’t really pass this one up. Sure the finbox had been ripped out and repaired, sure it had a lot of not so nicely repaired dings, but it was in decent shape and cheap. Cheap enough that I can learn to do repairs on it. Cheap enough that I can lend it to friends when I take them out surfing.

I spent saturday sanding down all the lumpy repairs and blobby resin. I touched up the fin box repairs and waxed it up.

Sunday I got it in the water. At 2 7/8th thick it’s a half inch thinner and about a half inch narrower than my 9’4. The tail is pulled in and very narrow. It’s lighter and feels like there’s not as much concave to the bottom. All of which leads to a slightly different ride. It turns fast and seems to be able to get into the wave at a slightly steeper point. I need to test it out more to really see how it’s different.

I managed to get two really great waves out of it. Both nice long rights. I could chase sections pretty well, but didn’t get any of the clean stable shuffling my 9’4 is so good at. Aaron and I stayed out for about 4 hours. He got one awesome long left and a few good rights.

The weather was so amazing people were hanging out all over the place, even the parking lot. A few kids were sitting around with a pickup overflowing with boards and a lazy boy. I’m sure somewhere just out of sight of passing officers was an ice cold bucket of beer.

California is whatever you make of it.

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Storming in Santa Cruz

Checked 38th Ave

Blown out, cold, choppy and unsurfable.

The Hook was breaking, but still windy as all heck.

After cruising around a while, we decided on Cowells. It was looking small, inconsistent, sheltered from the wind a little. Nothing inspiring but we thought hey, at least it’s small and mellow right?

Surf: 1-6ft, inconsistent, stomping, mellow, choppy, clean….basically schizophrenic surf.

Looking from the cliff it seemed small, barely breaking. In the time it took us to change and paddle out, conditions had shifted to skattered waist high peaks with shoulder + sets. It was confusing, difficult to read, cold and grouchy. Shoulders would jack up, then die, then reform in seconds making most of the wave catching guesswork and luck.

It was like Cowells took a vacation and Linda Mar stood in for it, but was angry about having to do so.

Aaron and I both managed to work some good rides out of it. It was split between clean faces and meandering rights, unsure if the wave wanted you to ride it or not.

Just after low tide, it started to become more organized, Waist to shoulder high peeling waves. Around 4 it started to look like a hung over version of usual Cowells, but by then we were exhausted and ready for some post surf Bear Claws. yum.

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Got it!

Surf: 1-3ft and inconsistent. Warm water, warm sun.
Gear: My usual Stewart and a 6’3 twin-keel retro fish.

Work was slow and the sun was out so I headed up to Bolinas to meet a few friends. It was small! Teeny tiny little waves rolling in, but man was that sun wonderful.

I caught lots of mellow rides on my longboard, knee paddled around. We all got ride after ride, me on the stewart and Tom and Bonnie on their fish. After a while Tom and I switched boards. There’s a good 3ft difference between our boards, plus his fish is about a third as thick so we joked how I prob wouldn’t even be able to sit on the little thing. I kept trying to line up with the snarling tiger face on the front. Rar! Rar, I sunk the nose. Rar too far back and stalled.

But I did sit on it, and I paddled on it, and I caught a wave, and I stood up!
It was a squirrelly ride, I was all over the place, but I was up! First shortboard ride standing.

I’m pretty proud.

On the drive back through Mt Tam I crossed paths with this coyote, out enjoying the sun a little too.