Tag: ocean beach

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HSBG Saturday

2013-OBN-10-05

Surf: 3.0 ft at 16.0 s from the S at 175° and 3.0 ft at 7.7 s from the WNW at 300°.

Another weekend in the sun? Yes PLZ. Tim and I headed out to Ocean Beach. With HSBG parking was a mess so we parked the first place we found, paddled out at the first wave we found. It was pretty fun! Super cruisey, super forgiving, sunshine, and an optical illusion that made all the boats look like tiny toys.

Got a couple huge compliments from Tim on my surfing, which really made my day.

Afterwards, we grabbed some snacks and headed to HSBG. Music in the park. <3 Screen Shot 2013-10-11 at 3.37.41 PM
Photo by tim

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Photo by brien

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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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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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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.

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Surf Sunday

2013-OBP-09-08

Surf: 4.6 ft at 8.3 s from the NW at 322°.

Paddled out int he very dimmest of the morning light. I’m not fond of the low visibility + ocean beach combo. Add jumping baitfish to that mix and you basically have me paddling around whimpering inside my own head like a big wuss.

Still, it WAS nice to get a few waves in with the guys before the rest of the beach showed up to get theirs.

I got a few fun ones, but between me being sorely out of practice on my fish and me being a scaredy-scaredy cat, I didn’t really get anything GOOD. I know I can do better than just cruising down the face till the whole thing closes out.

It was fun to watch the other folks get some nice ones and great to see a few folks I haven’t in a while.

At one point a small group of dolphins zipped by right below me and surfed the wave as it broke off to my left. Wow.

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Sunny Morning

2013-OBP-09-06

Surf: 2.6 ft at 5.0 s from the WNW at 290°

Much cleaner today. And there was sun! Nice! Waves were a little small and soft, but with the longboard I was able to get a fun ride or two. Always nice seeing everyone out, goofing off. I like good surf, but I also like surf that no one takes too seriously.

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Not great

2013-OBS-09-04

Surf: 3.3 ft at 9.1 s from the WNW at 291°

While I did get a few rides in, this morning’s surf was plenty lousy. The wind was up, the swell was mixed, everything was pretty closed out. I took out my 7′ quad and did managed so sneak in a nice long one. I always forget how hard it is to duck that board and sure enough, I smacked myself in the head with it…again. I also managed to bruise the crap out of my hand. No idea how that one happened.

In the lot a guy said “Is it as bad out there as it looks?” and I said “Yes, yes it is” but he paddled out anyway. Nice to know I’m not the only desperado foolish enough to try it.

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Whiteout closeouts

2013-OBK-08-30

Surf: 3.3 ft at 14.8 s from the S at 185° and 2.6 ft at 11.4 s from the WNW at 286°

I have a feeling this season will be a lot of “you should have been here yesterday.” Thursday I was too beat and busy to get out and of course, it was glassy. Small but from the cams and the first hand accounts, it was SMOOTH. Couple of folks said it was so glassy you could see the wake off the tankers rolling up the beach.

Today was not that day. Today was mixed up, closed out, and next to zero visibility. I was really struggling on my fish. It was too soft to get in, too closed out to get a solid ride. Ugh. I paddled around in circles getting frustrated before going in for breakfast. Pretty fun belly ride in at least. (shrug)

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Sea lions

2013-OBK_08-27

Surf: 1.0 ft at 13.8 s from the SW at 226°. Outgoing. 3-6kn winds.

That was so much more fun than I’d expected. It was still small and kind of terrible, but the winds were lighter than the forecast and the little waves were a bit cleaner and more frequent than I thought I’d find given the forecast.

I took my 9′ which managed to hang on to plenty of lumpy shoulders. The biggest thing it was doing well was being maneuverable paddling back out. I forget how thin that board is. It’s nice to be able to slice it through waves on the paddle out.

There was the typical small wave drop-in contests and laugh riots from the usual crew as well as plenty of excitement from the sea life. Dolphins, porpoises, AND sea lions jumping left and right. A big bull surfaced near us with a salmon in it’s jaws. He thrashed around a while, ripping big chunks out of the fish. Pretty cool to watch, if you don’t mind the unease of having a 700lb creature thrashing within arms length. Another big guy decided he wanted to surf for a while, so the drop in contest had to be put on hold.

All and all, not a bad morning.

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