The weather was great… early on.

After meeting up at the Dean’s IGA in Mill Valley, we piled into a little car with a stack of big boards, and roared over the mountain. Had to make all the stops… Muir Beach was first… lot of changes in the last month!

If you haven’t been to Muir Beach in a while, check it out. The creek is getting rerouted. The windbreak at the parking lot has been cut down, the porta-potties moved, the parking lot re-configured (no more parking down at the end), and a number of other jarring odds and ends. I think it will look better when they finish. Hopefully they will regrade the lot too.

The surf was cranking! Sets were coming in left of the rock at a solid 4-6. At least 6. More or less rideable; if you can ride at Cron, these were good, steep and fast. Make the drop, bottom turn, climb out and over before it closed.

Next stop was overlooking Steep Ravine. It’s surfable. Almost. Barely. Little too gnarly on that day, but I’ve seen it working. Mess it up and you’re in the rocks.

Off to overlook at Stinson. Two people out. Rideable at the lifeguard tower. Looked pretty decent at Mickey’s rolling in around 6 foot.

By this time Jee was jumping up and down to get in the water… so it was off to Two Mile to get her some gear. Easy peasy. With a Rip Curl 4/3 and 8′ sponger, we’re dressed up like seals and off to play with the sharks (hat tip Walter).

By now, the weather had started to turn… but there were still a few people in the Patch, and there was plenty of water moving around. Loads of waves. A little bumpy, but definitely surfable.

Jee got into some whitewater and learned to plane, while Walter and I headed for deeper water and slightly bigger waves. The outside was working at about 4 foot, a very nice size for Bolinas. I was riding the Hinds 10/4. Lotta lift in the tail on that board (which is important, as you will read momentarily).

Since the current was hauling out to sea, I caught a few then headed in to give Jee a pointer or two about catching waves. She caught on quickly and had a blast being pushed all the way in by the foamy stuff.

I went out for another lap, caught a few more waves.

Now, we went in the water a little after noon, but we couldn’t stay out too late as Two Mile Surf Shop closed at 4. On my second trip back to the beach, I did that usual thing… grabbed some shallow whitewater to ride in… but my board pearled! The big 10/4 remember? This was bad… because the back end of the board picked up and drove me face first into a foot of water.

1 foot of water!

Crunch. Oww.

I was surfing the sand with my forehead. That was rude. And undignified. But no big deal. I start walking back over to Jee, as Walter was sitting on the outside. She waves at me, we’re having fun!

Then I see her face turn from glee to horror…. she shouts “You’re bleeding!”

I swipe my hand over my face, it comes away covered with blood. Awesome! (I was tempted to lick my hand… j/k. Sort of

No big deal. Just a little scrape. I traded boards and took the sponger out to catch a few. Not a bad board. Stable, not real responsive, but that’s ok.

By this time, it’s starting to pour, and it’s definitely time to pack it in.

We finished it off with a nice snack at the Sand Dollar in Stinson, and called the day a raging success.

Respect the ocean boys and girls. It’s not the big ones that will get you, it’s the little ones when you’re not paying attention.

When it starts to get really big, it breaks so far out, it’s hard to judge the size.

Unless someone catches a wave… then you can see big it is by how much of the wave is looming over their head! When it’s twice as tall, that’s “double overhead.” That’s big. Big enough anyway.

Late in the afternoon, I took the 7/9 Parmenter gun – the Aluetian Juice – out. Having been in the water once since July (the month before), I didn’t have high hopes of much more than getting really, really wet.

The longshore was screaming south when I first got in up at the outflow north of Sloat. The tide in SF Bay had been very low, but incoming tide on the beach.

When the longshore is this nasty, I typically do laps. I’ll paddle out as hard as I can and beat my head against the inside break. If I don’t get through the inside break, I’ll ride the whitwater in and walk back up the beach for another lap.

Score!

On my 4th lap, I found myself through the inside break!

There’s typically a sweet spot between the inside break and the outer bar where it doesn’t break very hard, if it all. A deep water channel of some sort. Maybe I got lucky and picked up a rip, or there was a slight lull. I noticed that the longshore had started to die off very quickly as well.

Whatever it was, I was clear of the inside break and facing only two more lines of whitewater to the outer bar.

Too bad it was starting to get dark!

Had it been a little earlier, I would have hung out in the channel and waited for an opportunity to bolt to the outside. In my experience at Ocean Beach, if I can get through the inside break, I can almost always find my way outside.

But I snagged a frothy piece of whitewater instead and took it all the way into the beach.

It was nice out there. While I was changing (in the rain!) back into street clothes, I watched a guy drop into an easy 12-13 footer, make a nice sweeping bottom turn, climb right back up the face of the wave and pull into the barrel at the top. Very, very sweet. A bunch of us watching, thumbs up all around. I’ll get there one day.

In any case, I had not been in the water since the big south swell late July at Bolinas. Sad, right? Especially since I’m supposed to be working for myself and have all this time to surf. Uh huh. More on that later.

So I roared out to the Ocean Beach, Sloat as usual, and jumped into a messy froth of whitewater. The outer bar was cooking at maybe 7-10, but the period was short. I didn’t look it up at the time, but it was acting like a 13 second swell. Typically four to five lines of whitewater, not much in the way of lulls.

Talk about weak…

Ok, the 8/4 is harder to duck dive, but still, I do like to get outside in the inside break, and that just didn’t happen.

So I rode 3 on the inside. Wiped on the first, stuck the popup very nicely on the second, spilled on the last trying to turn out from the wash.

All in all, a good day. Better than staying home!

There’s a nice south swell shutting down right now. I didn’t surf over the weekend. I did go out to Sloat and watch it breaking clean at 6-8′ and just felt sick that I didn’t bring a board. But Monday after a big weekend is always mellow. All the kooks have had their fill and have to go to work. The rest of us can enjoy a relaxed session on uncrowded lineups.

And sure enough, Bolinas was not very crowded, and the people that were in the water were very mellow. As it should be. I was supposed to meet a friend out there, but I didn’t get his txt message until later. According to the swell models, Bolinas was dead, so went to points south. Good thing I didn’t know it was supposed to be dead!

So… how was it?

It was GREAT!

I got in the water around low tide (~10am), which by my estimation was about +1 this morning. The patch wasn’t working, but the channel was firing outside with nice 4′ sets. In fact, it was firing hard enough that my 10/4 Roger Hinds was just too much board! I should have brought my SF 9/0. I could have surfed the 7/3 really.

It’s always like that. When I don’t bring a board, it’s going off. When I only bring a long board, there’s a short board wave breaking. I do this about once a year: leave home without a board, or with wrong boards.

Do you ever do that? Take off someplace else because you “don’t feel like surfing” when you’re at home. Then you’re like “I wonder what it looks like out there.” And it’s just going off! And you would sell one of the boys to get in the water.

As I said, the 10/4 was a little too much board. It doesn’t have a lot of rocker, and these waves were rolling in slow, then standing up fast. I pearled a couple of times before I got it dialed in. Oh yeah… I got caught inside three times! Sucked… but not bad for a dead south swell.

The outer bar was working intermittently, nice 4′+ face, mushing out quickly which robbed the wave of it’s energy.

Waves not breaking on the outer bar provided some nice peaky inside bar action. Short, but not bad.

These short period swells are nice because they don’t into slamming closeouts all the time. With so many waves, there’s lots of peaks, which means waves for all. People were spread out nicely, instead of the usual all huddled up together in a small takeoff zone.

Caught one on on the outer bar, then paddled inside, caught a couple more and called it a day. Had to help a friend move later.

From my estimation, the sets were coming in roughly 5-10 minutes apart, generally between 5-12 pretty nice swells. I haven’t seen the Patch in that condition in a couple of years.

There were lots of waves, and lots of room on the waves. Because of the way the Patch sections off, it’s easy for people to take the right and the left, and for people to come in way behind someone already on a wave. Yeah, yeah, I know about cutting back, but no, you aren’t cutting back 75 feet through slow moving white water. You just aren’t. Really you aren’t. Waves in the Patch can be shared. And that’s actually pretty cool.

Of course, as friendly as the patch is, with all the newbies mixed in with the old dudes, and most everyone really friendly as usual, *I* had to get snaked.

Yep.

Some SOB stroked in from 50 feet to my right, around outside me, came in right behind me to my left, and snaked right in front me. I was sitting right on the peak, perfectly positioned. I would have run him over. Then, of course, he cuts back left, and a clean right breaks empty all the way to the beach. This was definitely a deliberate move: “I’m going to snake that dude over there.”

This is an open letter to you, man, and all your ilk.

It’s The Patch.

Yeah, you’re a Big Man… because you can snake people in the Patch.

Why don’t you come on down to Sloat on a double-O day and try that. Seriously. You’re a big man, right? Just go right on ahead and snake someone out there.

This burns me up so much more because I was giving waves away, and all this dude would have had to do is just call it. Yep. “My wave!” And it would have been his. I would have let have have it, no problem at all.

I guess that wouldn’t have been any fun at all.

In other news, after 4 years Miss J is still driving the same truck, still surfing the same board, still paddling butterfly, and apparently, still hasn’t learned to turn. Definitely one kook I stay far away from. She dropped on me in the channel several years ago, ran me over, then cussed me out for being in her way.

Had a long talk with Steve Hill about how much Bolinas has changed over the years. I’ve started going out there in early 2003, and even I can feel how it’s changed since then. It’s a new crowd out there even since then. Can’t wait until fall!

In any case, it was a great day, and overall I had a blast. The Patch doesn’t always work that well, and I surf it maybe 2-3 times per year. When it’s on, as it was on Saturday, it’s as nice as San Elijo.

I surf mostly at a beach break (Ocean Beach, San Francisco). It can get really big (triple-O). There’s not really any channels, and not always a handy rip, so grueling paddles can be more normal than not. I’ve surfed it with everything between a 6/6 to 10/4, and I’ll go out up to solid double-O conditions.

Here’s the key difference between long and short. Duck diving a shortboard gets you under the wave and squirted out the back. With the right wave shape, the lip will help push you through as you take right about on your backside. You can learn to come out paddling.

Duck diving your longboard

With a longboard, your focus isn’t getting under the wave so much as maintaining control of the board as you take the white water pretty much in the face, so that you can resume paddling as fast as possible. Here’s how:

1. paddle as hard as you can into the wave
2. plant the nose right where the white water meets the green
3. grab the board *tightly* on the rails and push your body up. The board isn’t going to under the water so much. You want the water to go through your arms.
4. Get as much of your body off the board and in the air as possible, letting the whitewater go through your arms and under your body. I keep one set of toes on the board and put the other foot in the air for balance and to act as a “rudder.”
5. As soon as the whitewater gets under you, “plant” the tail of the board as deep as you can and roll it down forward. If you’ve ever used a post hole digger, it’s the same sort of motion. The natural bouyancy of the board will tend to want to push you forward as the tail comes back up. You’re going to be too far up the board to paddle without perling, so when you come back down, get repositioned for fast paddling asap.

If the whitewater is stacked more than about 3 foot, you’re better off turtling and rolling back over. This is not that easy either and it’s hard to hold on to the board in bigger water. And you have to get back on the board and figure out which way to paddle afterward.

If the wave face is standing up pretty good, paddle as far and as fast up the face of it as you can, then stick the nose through the lip duck dive style, right before it curls over. You can do this pretty high on the wave and not get sucked over the falls.

In this last case, you want to think “Michael Phelps” and give it that extra effort; paddle as hard as you can all the way up the face and through the lip. If you slack off… you risk going right back over the falls and getting blown back to the beach. With an out-of-control longboard coming down who knows where.

Since I’m on a roll…

Advanced duck diving

DON’T try this crap if you aren’t comfortable in the water and don’t know your break, and don’t have some rapport with your fellow surfers. I’m just putting it out here because it’s what I see in practice at OB. In practice… by old dudes 60+ yo who go out in big conditions on their big boards. I was asking one of them (M____) this winter how he managed it and he told me: “If it’s too gnarly I just swim it out.”

If the surf is big enough to matter (10′-11′+), and the Big Boys got their Big Toys out, watch what they do. I’ve seen a lot of ditching and swimming, and to be fair, when it’s big, you are NOT going to be able to hold on to the board directly, the white water will tear it from you. Conversely, when it’s 8′,9′,10′+ and you’re caught paddling straight into the peak on an outer bar, the safest place for you to be—for everyone involved—is swimming straight down to the bottom as hard as you can. This turns you into a “boat anchor,” keeping you from getting blown back to shore in a giant spin cycle, and believe it or not, helps control your board. It won’t go flopping all over the place when your pulling down as hard as you can from the end of the leash 9 foot under water.

Otherwise, trying to hold your board under big, snarling whitewater is just going to get it ripping uncontrollably out of your hands, may get you a torn shoulder or cut by a fin, knock you unconscious, or hurt someone else in any of a myriad of ways.

However, you can often control the board pretty well by holding where the leash is fastened to the tail. If you’re getting worked bad, this is a good way to get back in without hurting yourself or anyone else. The other surfers will watch you to see whether you’re in trouble, but if you’re holding on and getting washed in, everybody’s cool.

Don’t be a kook

Obviously, do NOT even do any of this with anyone in the general vicinity. Take your lumps back to the beach and try again. This last winter (2008-2009), I was denied at OB probably 4 times, and once it took me 5 tries to get out. I’ve seen people paddle continuously for close to an hour… then get blown back to the beach. It happens. It’s worth it.

If you do ditch your board in small conditions, and when it’s crowded people are going to think you’re lame and they’re going treat you like a kook. I learned all this stuff by paddling out in really crappy conditions when it wasn’t crowded, and finding my own peak ride on.

Worked for me. Had the 9/0 SF Surf Shop shaped by John Schultz. That board is getting old, but what a great board for OB!

And the weather… 81 degrees in San Fran, little puffs of wind at best… almost but not quite glassy. The beach was crawling with people.

What a great day!

I just read about this guy who drowned at OB yesterday: Tom Kennedy.

Ok, ok, I’m not really doing much on this blog… I have big plans, but other projects are even bigger. But this story pushed a bungh of my buttons, and I’m in the mood to write, so here it is.

Now, I don’t mean any disrespect to a man I never even heard of, but what the heck were they thinking? I would *never* voluntarily go for a swim at OB without

1. A wetsuit: the water is cold year around. How cold in degrees doesn’t matter. What matters is “cold enough to put you in full-blown hypothermia in 20 minutes.” Without a wetsuit, you’re going to die. Fast.
2. Checking the tide: slack tide, low or high only. If the tide is mid-range and moving, forget it. Current will kill you.
3. checking the swell: A friend of mine invited me out today for a big south swell, 16 second period. I didn’t go, other things (those projects I mentioned) going down. That means it was building yesterday. Here’s the deal: If your in knee-to-waist deep water and the waves are breaking at your eye level, that’s about 3-4 foot faces. That sounds pretty small, huh? It’s not. At the size, a set wave will knock you down. If the tide is mid-range and moving, you might get sucked out. Small waves, big danger.
4. Is there anyone else in the water? Specifically, are the any surfers out there that could help me out if I got in a bind? If there’s no one else out, forget it, it’s way too rough (and people will surf pretty rough conditions at OB, so if you don’t see any surfers out there, you have NO business being in the water).

For what it’s worth, I spent 4 years in USMC Amphibious Reconnaissance, living on Onslow Beach, and I’ve surfed OB since 2002. I’ve also done a significant amount of wet caving in Southern Indiana, where the water is as cold as OB. Our mantra: “Keep moving. Or die.”

I know what I’m talking about.

In this particular case, I read that someone sitting on the bluff watched it all go down. It was a nice day, a nice Sunday. There were probably loads of surfers out there. Had this man rode the rip into the line up, I am sure a couple of surfers would have had him on a board and back on shore in minutes.

The irony of course is that rips are surfers greatest friends at OB. I’ve spent hours, literally hours paddling like a madman at OB to get into the lineup, getting pushed back to the beach over and over and over. It’s incredibly discouraging to paddle for 20 minutes as hard as you can, only to find out… you’re in waist deep water, and it’s breaking at 6 foot over your head!

In fairness to myself, those were pretty big surf days, 10-12 plus.

But I see it all the time. People running around getting into the surf up to waist, chest deep. Or even worse, letting their kids mess around. It’s stupid. The outer bar is breaking at 11 foot, and some dude is letting his little 5-8 yo daughters run in and out of the shore pound in bikini swimsuits.

In short, if you hanker to swim in the ocean in Northern California, you’re pretty much out of luck for a safe place to swim. I do know a couple of places, but I prefer to keep those to myself. You can get a tide table and topo map and find them just as easy as I did. Just about every other place I can think of… you’re taking a real risk going into the water, even with a wetsuit, even with a wetsuit and a surfboard.

Be careful out there!

Update: I have to say more… as I mentioned, I have a fair amount of experience in the water, including the ocean. Even now, or maybe because of this experience, when I’m driving down to the beach on a big day, I feel FEAR in my body. Shortness of breath, tension, focus, a total elevated state of existence. Just even thinking about going into big water gets my blood pressure up. I believe this is normal, and I’m thankful for it. Sometimes, it takes me 30-45 minutes watching the water before I go out. But when I do go out I’m ready.

Sure enough, after stripping it down and peeling off the big sticker on the deck, as I suspected, the board is shipping water through a great big gash! There is a definite hole in the deck, and the tail is chipped along the rail in two places.  The nose doesn’t look very healthy either.

No big deal… this is what Sun Cure is for! 

The Patch Job

Performance

I’ll post more about this board after I ride it.