Tag: pleasure point

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Birthday Beach Day – Afternoon

2013-SCHK-10-01

Surf: 10.8 ft at 14.3 s from the NW at 308°. Low tide to incoming. More wind.

The swell came down in the afternoon, but the surf was plenty fun. I took out my fish to sit further inside with Beamer and Brien on their fishies. Paddling out was a pretty amazing time to realize how completely exhausted I was. Whoops. I managed to sneak in one very long wave that made me very happy. I kept the fish snug in the pocket with lots of fast swooping turns. Managed to hold on to the very end of the wave. So stoked.

Sadly, an older guy on a log was fussing with his board, swung his tail around and put the fin directly into my rail. MAAAAAN. First ding on that board. The guy didn’t even apologize, he paddled off.

I shrugged the whole thing off with some hot tubbing and milkshakes for dinner.

Way too stoked on my wave to be as crushed as I thought I was going to be by the first ding on my baby.

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Birthday Beach Day – Morning

2013-SC-10-01

Surf: 11.8 ft at 15.4 s from the NW at 306°. Incoming tide. Light winds.

Birthday surf is pretty much my favorite excuse to skip out on work and head to the beach. 😀

It was Chris’s birthday yesterday and unfortunately yesterday was full of meetings so today we got up very early and headed south to escape the local winds.

The surf in SC was pretty solid. It had a little texture on it from all the winds out in open water, but otherwise was running just a little bit overhead and lovely. I took my longboard hoping to get a few extra waves in and hoping I could sit further outside for maximum birthday hooting. Of course, I wound up doing what I always do and camping out wide of the peak to get the soft sets that miss first peak.

I got some funnn ones. Big ole longboard swooshes and swoops. What a blast. Everyone else got some nice ones, too! We were out there for about 3 1/2 hours. I was starving by the time we were done.

Headed to Paula’s for some seriously syrupy breakfast. That totally hit the spot. Grabbed a new wetsuit for Chris (finally!) before head headed back north.

Napped on the beach waiting for the tide to change. 😀

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Catching up to the swell

2013-PP-05-21

Surf: 3 ft at 16s from SSW at 205° Rising to high tide.

This is the swell. This is the swell that we heard about the whole time in Mexico. This is the swell that was “supposed to be here tomorrow” every day. I’ll admit, I thought about bumping the trip a few extra days to catch it (and to say Hi to the folks from theseea.com who were coming in on Sunday for a shoot), but sadly between obligations back home and flights being crazy expensive if we had stayed, it didn’t work out.

Word from Ed was that when it came in, it came in huge. Big big waves full of thousands of juvenile Portuguese Man O’wars. Not only would I not have known what to do with that much swell, my delicate skin would have been toast after just a few stings. Ouch.

The nice thing about a swell like this swell is that not only did it hit Tahiti, Hawaii and Mexico, but it snuggled right up to Santa Cruz.

Although I was feeling some serious work guilt about coming back from vacation and turning right around for the water, I plowed through my first day back chores on Monday and hit the surf early Tuesday.

Normally I’d want my longboard for this. I’m still skittish about the point when it’s on the bigger side (I either want to be able to duck dive or be able to scratch to safety with paddle power.) My log’s in the shop getting a ding fixed so I decided to try out my new an improved hull skills.

I get some confused looks whenever I paddle over to the longboard peak with my little 6’10. Thankfully I’d just gotten out to the peak when a beautiful wave came straight towards me. Remembered my Mexico lessons and paddled longer, stood up faster and swish…I was off.

It was a pretty good wave. 😀
I was really stoked.

After that it was a lot of floating around, answering questions about my hull, being in everyone’s way, getting a few more waves, and doing some horribly kooky things.

I know I’m gonna be a kook for a long time, but I still am so embarrassed when it shows. I was trying to get out past an incoming wave, didn’t make it, went flying backwards and right over the top of Tim. He’s thankfully great at duck diving so he only got a knee to the back. I was slightly horrified. Glad no one got hurt.

He got some great waves. I saw Darren and Noah get a few beauts too.

Also saw a small pod of dolphins slip right by me. Always a cool thing to see.

Overall, I’m glad I chased that swell down. It was a great end to a fun little surf trip.

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South by Northwest

2013-PP-04-16

Surf: 7.9 ft at 10.0 s from the NW at 305°

With the wind howling locally and swell in Santa Cruz being inconsistent at best, finding in a window of “not awful” to paddle out in has been tricky.

While the sunrise was lovely, I was really struggling. The new leash works much better (no tangled up feet) but I couldn’t get in to a wave to save my life. I finally got one and very slowly rode it in. Uff.

Oh, thanks to the orange board, I’m quite visible on the cams:

Screen Shot 2013-04-16 at 3.30.34 PMedited

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Santa Cruz Saturday

2013-PP-03-09a

Surf: 8.9 ft at 10.0 s from the NW at 311° High Tide

Jon was in town from Colorado and, with a limited surf window, we headed down to Santa Cruz to make the best of a high tide, smaller wave session.

While the tide made everything pretty soft, there was next to now crowd for the first hour or so. I got plenty of fun long waves on the hull. I didn’t really get it up to full hull action, but I did get a few really nice bottom and top turns out of it. 😀 yeeeeee.

Super nice weather.

Totally beat. Naptime:

2013-PP-03-09b

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High Tide

2013-PP-02-20a

Surf: 13.1 ft at 11.4 s from NW at 306° High tide.

I’ve been working hard over the last few months to overcome all the fear I was left with after last year’s bigger days. I took the breath holding class, I’ve been working on getting my confidence back little by little.

Today was a big leap. It was pretty solid out at Pleasure Point. Probably 6-8 feet, occasionally a little bigger. The tide was high so the waves were a bit gentler, but the cold cold air still packed quite a bite. There was ice and frost everywhere as we suited up.

I’d been reading Jaimal Yogis’ “The Fear Project” over the past few weeks. For me the biggest takeaways were: prepare and slow down.

Prepare for facing the thing you’re afraid of. If it’s an extreme sport: train, plan routes, study the break, work out, take a breath holding class, learn from others who have faced this before.

Slow down. One thing I’d really noticed in dealing with my fear was I kept putting myself in worse positions by either scrambling to get out of the way of a wave (using up all my energy) or being indecisive and choosing though inaction.

For me, taking this on involved a few steps:

  1. Admitting I was scared. Denying I was scared meant paddling out, right to the peak, and just getting clobbered again and again. Tenacity and stubbornness were getting me more of the same clobberings rather than teaching me how to deal with the situation. Admitting I was scared and using my fear to be smarter about my choices proved to be much more valuable.
  2. Preparing for uncomfortable situations by taking Hanli Prinsloo’s class, working out, and practicing on smaller waves helped me learn a lot about what I am capable of. I now know on a good breath I’ve got about two minutes where everything will be just fine, much longer if I can stand the discomfort and the underwater somersaults. Sure I haven’t timed a real breath hold in surf conditions, but it’s a good reminder that hey: I’ve got air.
  3. Slowing down when I see a wave coming and my heart sinks. I’ve tried to be more aware so I see the wave coming from farther off, decide if I can make it out and over easily or if paddling further out will just put me in the impact zone where sitting still would leave me dealing with the wash rather than the lip. If it looks like the latter, I slow down, try to stay calm, get a good breath and take the hit as calmly as I can. Being calm in the water, so far, has lead to less violent tumbling underwater. I’ve also had better luck keeping the board safely with me by being calm. The larger boards especially seem to get torn out of my hands when I’m holding them too tightly.
  4. Being kind to myself when I make a mistake. This one’s been pretty hard. When I first encountered this problem, I didn’t want to back down. I held myself up to this imaginary standard and felt being scared was a sign of weakness. It was a sign of weakness. It was a sign I was making some bad decisions in the water and I needed to spend more time thinking things through. But not all weakness is failure and not all failures are permanent. Going easy on myself has lead to much more improvement than forcing myself to do everything the hard way so as not to feel weak.

I realized through this process that I’d always sort of felt that other people weren’t scared. Jaimal’s book was a reminder that fear is pretty universal, some people simply practice facing it more effectively.

The results of all this?

Well, I got a bunch of overhead, fun waves today. I didn’t get clobbered. I didn’t spend the whole morning running away. There was even some spray thrown off a top turn or two.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of heart-in-my-stomach moments and plenty of really unpleasant beatdowns, but here’s to learning to facing it a little more effectively.

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Sunset – 2012

2012-PP-12-31

Surf: 5.9 ft at 17.4 s from WNW at 290°

Last minute SC new years eve camping trip in the van! 😀

Surf was okay. Crowded, but I got a few fun long ones. It was hard work.

Afterwards, a little hot tub time, some Japanese food for dinner, then smores. Slept in the camper van.
Super chill NYE.

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What it’s made for

Surf: Started out Chest high and slow, became slightly overhead.5.9 ft at 12.5 s from W at 270°. Outgoing tide.

I had a little bit of free time today and I’ve been itching to try out my Vaquero on a nice point break.

The cam’s looked okay. Fairly manageable, a little slow, but I wasn’t exactly racing down. Hell, Beamer and I stopped for lunch on the way.

Getting down there, it looked fun enough, but still slow and on the smaller side. I was relieved. I still have a pit in my stomach from last years Pleasure Point beatings. Even after paddling out and into some reasonable sized waves, I was still a little nervous.

I got a slow wave off the bat, missed a few for a while, then went inside to pick up some little steeper ones. Looking back, the size had really come up. Suddenly things were head high+, clean, and beautiful. The sun was out, people were smiling.

I paddled around till my back muscles were burning. When I got tired, I headed to 38th and cruised along on some chest high waves a while. I was getting a little bit of a look from some longboarders eyeing my little Vaq skeptically, but I got into to plenty of waves and swished and zipped around.

Met back up with Beamer for a hot tub soak and a couple of slices of pizza. Pretty good day.

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Back in Santa Cruz


Photo by Chris

Surf: 7.5 ft at 16 sec 290° WNW. Chest-Head High+

I was a little skittish after the run of big days I’d had in SC all spring. Every time a set would line up and I’d see the black wave faces start to build, I ran for it. I guess one too many crushing hold downs will do that. Eventually, after some teasing, I pulled myself together and got a few. I got a handful of nice long swoopy waves before even getting my hair wet. Wheeee.

Chris got a whole 3 seconds of footage from behind me on a wave. 😀 It kinda looks like I can surf.

Saw Chris take the drop of all drops. I didn’t think he was gonna make it, I really hoped he was gonna make it, and then he made it. Woooohooo. I heard a few shortboarders in the lineup say “whoa” quietly as he went by. It was a very steep drop for a 10+ft log.

Wrapped up the morning with some fun little knee-waist high waves over at 38th. I tried to get some shots of Chris, but pushed all the wrong buttons. Almost had a dry hair session.

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Raining on the Eastside

Surf: 4-7ft. 10ft @ 16s WNW, 308°

Woo! Another solid day in Santa Cruz.

The waves were swinging wide of the point with a little bit of warble, but still managed to hold up all the way from the point to 38th. I got one ride so long with so many swoops and cutbacks that my legs were burning by the time I kicked out. Woohoo!

Chris got a beautiful big wave at the point too. I saw a big arc of spray coming off one of his turns and heard the lineup hooting for him the whole way.

After a few waves, some waiting in the rain, and one good ragdoll wave by me, we decided to work the smaller inside waves at 38th. I wanted to work on some noseriding moves. Close, but needs more work.

I’ve also been thinking about my cutbacks and how I need to work on staying in the pocket a little better. I’m certainly better about seeing where I am in relation to the curl and trying to correct, but in these larger waves I’m not really committing to a cutback. It’s more of a bottom turn-stall to get back in position. I’m worried the wave is just going to fold over on me so I’m out-running it half the time. The other half I’m very slowly trying to cut back to get back in position.

Only solution: more practice.