Author: Tracey

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Rain

Snagging some boards at Nor Cal. It's a little tricky to snap pics with surf gloves on!
Snagging some boards at Nor Cal. It's a little tricky to snap pics with surf gloves on!
New Gloves!
New Gloves!

Conditions: 3-5 ft. – Glassy, walled up lines with open and worakble shoulders especially on the inside.

Gear: 8′ 6″ NSP Epoxy board from NorCal Surf Shop plus Xcel 3mm Infinity Gloves and ONeil 2 mm hood.

For a chilly, rainy day, conditions couldn’t be better. While mellow, the waves were pretty clean and winds stayed pretty calm for most of the day. My friend and I were on boards a little short for us so we didn’t get in that many clean runs, but it was fun.

Surfing in norther California on a cold day is a trip. Paddling out you can smell a fire burning somewhere and the fog makes for a mysterious looking coast. The rain makes a cool little noise hitting the waves. It’s definitely not what most people think of when they think of surfing.

I’d love to get a waterproof camera to take out with me. The California coast is a beautiful place and I’d love to send pictures back to everyone.

I rode an epoxy board for the first time. So far I’ve been on only soft tops. I think I have a few more bruises here and there, but overall it went well. It’s one step closer to me actually getting a board. I liked the grippiness of the wax too. Soft tops don’t need waxing.

I also took out my new gloves for the first time. As far as warmth goes, they are great. My hands were nice and toasty. Unfortunately they fill up with so much water it’s like paddling with weighted boxing gloves. I wore myself out paddling way too fast. I’ll definitely keep them on hand for cold days, but I’m thinking I might prefer to go barehanded.

My new surfing hood didn’t get any action today. For being a cold day, I was actually pretty warm. I’m planning on using it in the future. Silly as I might look, getting a cold wave to the side of the head is a lot like getting nailed with a snowball. Plus it should keep my hair out of my face and cut down a little on the salt water in my eyes. Other downside to the gloves, wiping your eyes isn’t easy.

I’m looking forward to getting a few more runs in this year.


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Surf Videos w/Boardcams!

While hunting for some photos of Saturday’s big waves, I came across a few surfing videos shot by people with waterproof cameras. It’s a lot of fun to watch other people out there having a good time. The fun thing about the boardcams is seeing people fall off and come right back up smiling and laughing.

🙂

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Angry Waves

Best part of the day was this little guy chilling by the surf shop!
Best part of the day was this little guy chilling by the surf shop!


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.

The surf at Ocean beach on the same day. From Mark @ harakabaraka via stokereport.

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.

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Teaching

Conditions: 3-4 ft. – waist to chest high and fair – conditions. Sloppy, scattered peaks in the waist-head high range with a few bigger sets on occasion. Cleaned up as the day went on.
Gear: 9′ 4″ Sunset Soft top from NorCal Surf Shop

Another beautiful day out in Pacifica. After flying cross country I was beat and not at my best, but with the cold water and stiff onshore flow I got a second wind in no time.

Today I tried my hand at teaching. I showed my friends how to pop up, how to fall, how to paddle and we jumped right in to give it a shot. My timing isn’t good enough for me to be able to teach other people when to paddle and what waves to pick, but everyone seemed to be getting a handle on the basics and having fun out there.

It’s pretty awesome to have good friends out in the lineup!

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Surfing on the Great Lakes

Sunset, Chicago and a pretty clean wave

I’m back in the Midwest visiting my folks. They recently moved from the house I grew up in to a new house about a half mile from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. If you’ve ever seen Step Into Liquid there’s a great scene about the die hard midwesterners surfing in Sheboygan. Today’s fairly clean although small waves got me thinking it might be worth a shot next summer.

Waves throughout the day were about 1-3 ft, water temp was 64 and some of the waves breaking out on the sand bar didn’t look half bad. If I can find a real cheap junker longboard to throw in my parents garage I might just be able to try it next season.

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Yikes

6-10 foot surf with occasional 12? I think this Saturday is best left to those who can handle the big waves.

The plan for this Saturday had been to teach 5-6 of my friends how to surf, but these kind of conditions would make that dangerous if not impossible. There will be other, better days to learn. 🙂

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Tides and Practicing My Turns

After surfing, with watch

Conditions: 3-4 ft. + – waist to shoulder high and poor+ conditions.
Gear: 8 ft Sunset Soft top, 9’4″ Sunset soft top from NorCal Surf Shop
and Freestyle Tide 3.0 watch. I now know what time it is AND what the tide is doing. Awesome.

I got off to a wobbly start on a board that was too short for me. After trading it in I caught a lot more waves, got in a few nice clean pop ups, plus a few really messy pop ups.

The best part of the day for me was completing my first bottom turn!
It’s supposed to look something like this www.surfline.com/video/video_player/video_player.cfm

What I did was zip down the wave face, dip the righthand rail in the water, and slingshot back up the wave going WAAAAAHHOOOOOOO before falling off. You’re supposed to use the momentum to turn back down and continue along the wave. I was so stoked to just turn that I didn’t even think about following through. It was awesome, I can’t wait to try it again.

Injury report: Somehow on one wave I managed to go flying in the air and to board flipped over on it’s deck. I came crashing down, my knee landing on the center fin, skidding into another forward fin. My hip and elbow hit the bottom of the board. I’m gonna have some wicked bruises when everything stops being swollen. Plus side is everything moves around just fine and doesn’t hurt unless I poke it.

In gear news, the new watch was a success.  The buttons are easy to press with cold wet hands and it says put pretty well. I’m trying to figure out a good way to fit it on my wrist above my wetsuit without bumping around when I paddle. All and all, it’s great. I can now see what time it is and what the surf is doing. 🙂

Why is the tide important to surfing? Depending on the beach, some beaches have the best waves at high tide, some at low, and some in the middle.  It also effects where the waves break at some beaches and what kind of wave you’ll have. For someone like me who’s just learning to surf a wave that’s spilling, rather than breaking will be an easy wave to ride for a long time. For someone who’s really got things down, a plunging wave is best. For more information, check out this great write up from Surfline.

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Getting a Class Together

Riding a wave all the way in

More from the day on my Flickr

Conditions: 3-4 ft. + – waist to shoulder high and fair-good conditions. Clean, peaky lines with workable shoulders and fair-good shape.
Gear: 9 ft foam board

AWESOME day.

I got together a group of friends who were looking to learn and headed to the beach for another Adventure Out class. My friends all got the basic class while I talked to one of the instructors about where I wanted to improve. Basically I wanted to work on my timing, on reading a wave, and generally working on my confidence.

I spent the day working with Melissa on catching waves, trying to learn when I should paddle slow (if it’s a steep wave) and when I should paddle faster to catch the wave. Mike helped me learn to balance my upper body and to use my front shoulder to steer. I learned to set up top turns and how to start to think about bottom turns. I didn’t get a whole lot of turning in, but I got up lots of times and had a blast.

Everyone else was getting the hang of things pretty quickly too, hopefully I’ll have a few more friends in the water!

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Surfing SoCal

Headed out to sea.

Surfing in Huntington

Conditions: 2-3 ft – knee to waist high and poor-fair conditions. Strong current from the south
Gear: 8 foot softie and a Spring Suit

This was my first time surfing anywhere but Pacifica. The weather was warm, I probably could have used a short-sleeved spring suit instead of long-sleeved, but it was nice to be in warmer waters.

I struggled quite a bit on the shorter board, but made the most of it. I didn’t really get up that much and wore myself out paddling into the strong current pretty quick. Still, it’s nice to check out another beach! When I have a board of my own I hope to check out new beaches all the time!

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New Wetsuit!

New Wetsuit

Conditions: 4-7ft waves breaking really hard with harsh winds. Strong current from the south.
Gear: New Xcel Superlite 3.4mm Fullsuit and Soft Top rental board from NorCal Surf Shop

Yay! I bought a wetsuit! After weeks renting I’m finally ready to take the plunge and buy my own suit. 🙂
I love this suit, it’s comfortable, it’s warm, and best of all, it’s not pink.

That’s right, pink. I’d been hunting for suits online and found wetsuit after wetsuit that had pink arms or pink detailing. Sure, I’m a girl but do I have to be paddling out in pink neoprene? I thought the bright blue was pretty awesomely me. NorCal stands by Xcel gear and the guy there spent a decent amount of time going over styles with me.

As far as surfing goes, ouch, rough day. The waves were pretty large with few lulls and a lot of texture from the wind. My board was actually humming as I paddled across the water. I got tossed around, drug up the beach by the current and took some hard falls. I was determined to get at least one wave in with my new suit but being stubborn is probably not the best idea when it comes to conditions beyond your skill set. I had fun, but it was some hard hard work. I don’t think I got up once.

Injury report: I started to pearl on a wave and jumped off early. I assumed my board would go straight back but instead it followed me. The board hit the water, I hit the board, the wave hit both of us and I wound up taking a rail to the ribs. Oww. It bruised up a day or two later, but was fine in no time.