Month: September 2013

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Beach day Sunday

2013-LM-09-29

2013-OBN-09-29

Surf: 4.6 ft at 12.9 s from the NW at 309°. Outgoing tide. Light onshore winds.

Super fun beach day today. Friends brought their beach blankets and their kiddos for lots of family fun. We bodysurfed a ton, made sandcastles, and surfed a little too. The swell was coming up pretty fast. I was surprised how much was showing this early. Plenty closed out, but still fun. I got a couple of really fun ones on Brien’s Mitsven. That board is smooooth. I also shouted a heads up to a woman laying on her board watching the shore and not watching the incoming set. She still got tossed pretty good, but at least she knew it was coming 😉

Afterwards hit the Pizza Place and Polly Ann Ice cream. Mmm. Couldn’t ask for a better weekend.

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Sunny Saturday

2013-OBL-09-28b

2013-OBL-09-28

Surf: 3.0 ft at 14.8 s from the W at 276°. Low tide. Calm.

Fun little waves today! Piled into the truck with Tim and his friends and headed down to the beach. After struggling so much yesterday, I was setting my personal performance bar pretty low.

Thankfully it was a very forgiving day. Waist-chest high, not too mushy, not too dumping, little bit punchy. I got a great wave right off the bat. I was so stoked. Got in lots of swooping turns and hung on until the very very end working all the little corners. It was such a relief to get something good.

Lots of fun to watch the guys get good ones. Yeah, it was small, but clean! And we got in in some window where it wasn’t that crowded either. As the afternoon went on, the wind came up and so did the crowd. I bit it on a wave and came up right in another guy’s way. He did a HUGE cutback and hucked a bucked of spray. Had I been out at Lindy I’d probably have been run over. Glad the crowd was more people who could surf than ones who couldn’t. Some of the longboarders were getting some pretty sick rides. Folks were looking seriously stoked.

I’m still working on doing an actual cutback instead of just a stall at the top. Tim gave me the silly sounding advice of pointing my thumbs in the direction of the turn. It’s advice he got in Indo and says, while goofy sounding, it works. He also suggested trying them on my heelshide first, since it’s easier to make a frontside turn than a heelside turn. I’m looking forward to trying it out. All the lefts this morning kind of died out under me so I didn’t really get to throw my weight into it.

Had a beach picnic in the sun after. Super lovely afternoon.

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Struggling

2013-LM-09-27

Surf: 5.9 ft at 9.1 s from the WNW at 306°.

We got a late start this morning. Winds were better and waves were significantly cleaner, but it’s the same old story of closeouts into shallow water.I’m really struggling. I know it’s been an ongoing cycle of me getting better, getting lots of waves, getting clobbered, then starting over at zero, but zero is still really frustrating!

Everything I got into, I dug a rail when it got steep, but most waves I just couldn’t get into. It felt like I was in a slow motion clip of awkwardness. Snarl.

Well I got one wave in at least. But sheesh, so demoralizing!

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Left squiggle

2013-LM-09-24

Surf: 8.2 ft at 16.0 s from the W at 279°. Outgoing tide to 2.77′. Light winds.

This morning was a little bit of a long shot. The incoming swell seemed like it would be a little jumped and, sure enough, it was.

Upside was there was something rideable out there and I got to put in some practice on my heelside turns in the smaller stuff. I got that squiggly speedpump I normally do going right to work going left. That’s exciting. It was pretty much the only way to get a decent ride without a longboard today.

Moved further north for some bigger waves. Got nada. Everything had lump and bumps I couldn’t get over, then pretty much slammed shut on top of itself. Oh well. Squiggle is a good start!

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Sandblast drops

2013-LM-09-23

Surf: 3.9 ft at 11.4 s from the WNW at 291°. Low tide 2.3+. Light/offshore wind.

I hadn’t planned on surfing this morning, but went out anyway. Things were about what I expected, closed out with occasional size. I got some fun big drops followed by getting just wrecked by the inevitable closeout. One I accidentally got into a nice barrel stance before the hard stop. So much sand in my wetsuit, even with the hood on. Oh man. It came up my arms, up my legs. So much sand.

I would have liked a little more face on today’s waves, but it’s sunny and half decent. I’ll take it.

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Bodysurf + dolphins

2013-LM-09-20

Surf: 2.0 ft at 5.0 s from the NW at 306°

Winds were up, swell was down. We skipped the boards and grabbed some swim fins instead. While the water was a little brisk, the morning was pretty fun. I got probably the longest ride yet and had the fun of actually getting a shoulder and riding it out rather than getting pounded by the shorebreak. Yeeeeheeeeew.

There was a lot of dolphin activity this morning too. One jumped out of the water just a little bit aways from us in maybe chest deep water. It was a little spooky, but pretty cool. They were churning up the water a bit and I decided to paddle further south to give them space.

I’m sure if we’d really hunter, we could have found something surfable, but in was a pretty fun morning anyway. 🙂

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More size

2013-LM-09-19

Surf: 5.6 ft at 10.0 s from the WNW at 294°. Slightly offshore.

Winds were light again this morning and the waves were looking fairly clean. There were plenty of closeouts, but all around, things were looking fun.

I got a few okay ones, but on one I just got swallowed by the wave on the inside. I haven’t had a wipeout like that in a while. I got clobbered, went over the falls a couple of times, bounced off the sand, and got drug for long than I would have liked. After that, I want back to being scaredy cat and didn’t get another waves. Sigh. Made some progress, lost some progress.

On the upside, I didn’t get clobbered by incoming waves, which is a nice change of pace.

Chris got some great ones.

I was a little chilly in my beat up old suit. It might finally be a “summer suit.” Poor thing. I might need to upgrade my backup before it really gets cold.

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Less Wind

2013-LM-09-18

Surf: 5.9 ft at 8.3 s from the WNW at 284°. Light, occasionally offshore winds.

I’d written today off given how windy it was yesterday. Fortunately I woke up early and checked the winds. They looked reasonable (and almost favorable) so I headed out.

Things were a lot more organized, not too much cleaner, but fun! I’m getting a little better and getting into closeouts. After the big bad beatdown winter, I haven’t taken as many chances on waves. Some days all there is is drop and wash, so it’s been something I’ve been trying to get back into doing (as safely as possible.)

I got a few decent ones. I’m digging this whole snappiness thing. I don’t really know how to describe it, but since I can climb and drop faster, I feel like I’m getting a little more action in before the wave closes out and, when my timing is right) I’m getting in a good spot to straighten out when the wave finally closes out.

Maybe it’s my fear of snapping my longboard (or getting clobbered by it), but I don’t tend to climb when it’s on the more closed out side and I’m usually trying to figure out how to straighten out earlier or how to plow through a section using the weight of the board to get the last little bit out of the wave.

While I won’t say one is better than the other (I was totally jealous watching Chris grab the outside waves I couldn’t get into), it’s certainly been fun learning something new.

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Zippy slop

2013-LM-09-17

Surf: 5.3 ft at 7.1 s from the WNW at 282°. Windy.

Took a shot on this morning knowing the would would be howling both close to shore and out on open water. While it was a sloppy mixed up mess, it was actually surprisingly fun. There were some racy little scraps that lined up. I got a few rights that went pretty well. Fast, lots of quick squiggly turns. Crazy. Not sure if I’m stoked because my expectations were so low they were greatly exceeded or because I feel like being able to make terrible slop work with this board might mean I’m starting to figure it out.

Totally stoked on my orange fish. 😀

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Monday

2013-OBP-09-16

Surf: 3.3 ft at 14.8 s from the WSW at 242°. Incoming tide. Light winds.

The wind forecast has been all over the place lately. We took a chance on it being wrong and scored some ruffled, mushy, but forgiving morning waves. I heard plenty of “you should have been here yesterday,” but it was fun enough.

The 9’4 > 6’4 switch is still tripping me up. The first hour and a half I was struggling. Switching between the two I’m in the wrong spot or I blow my takeoffs. Eventually, I managed to sneak one in and finally get into a little bit of a groove.

I had two nice long ones (with some turns, whew) and quite a few drop and mush waves. Managed to get a nice long inside wave all the way in to the beach. Lots of work to keep that little wave going. Hop hop hop. Pretty fun kooky morning.