09-11
Swell: West 7’ @ 10 sec,
Wind: East to North East
Water Temp: Mid to high 50’s
Air Temp: Cool getting Warm
I’ve been away from home for “a while’, and every report I get about the waves here since spring has the same elements…
Either the swell was wrong or the sandbars messed up or the wind was bad…
The repeated bottom line: “Worst summer for surf….Ever…”
(above) Well today is a new day…Hot weather is in the forecast, the ocean factors appear favorable and I have a free day…Above, first look at the surf right at sunrise…
(above) Right now the sandbars are looking just fine…
(above) Open shoulders, no closeouts…
(above) The Corner is showing the shape it is known for…An offshore wind is the X –Factor that changes everything…Got it here right now…
(above) No one out yet…That will likely change…
(above) What else to do than suit up and get it while it’s going on…???...
I took out my just finished 9’0” wood hollow for the first time…It rode as designed, loose and fun…Design and construction validated…The ocean conditions we changing with the tide and increasing wind, so I opted for a board change…
I went in and switched to my 13’5” foamy that I got a few months ago and really haven’t surfed at all…I have had a bunch of lake time on it, but my surf sessions have been limited to one waist high day with onshore winds…
The 13’5” had all the design elements that had me sitting 30 to 50 yards further outside of everyone else allowing me to pick up the unbroken waves easily…I was catching and riding the steepening unbroken waves until it lined up on the inside sandbar and fires down the line…After kicking out of a wave, the 4” thickness easily allowed me to paddle back out fast and I never got caught inside all day…It was similar to surfing an SUP, but without the paddle to get in the way…Unlike a SUP, this board is only 22” wide…Big difference in handling…Easy to hand paddle without blowing out the shoulders…
The swell and stiffening offshore winds made for faces on the bigger sets in the 8’ to 10’+ range…And I had the outer sandbars to myself…I probably caught over 100 waves and surfed for six hours…Sheer exhaustion was my only reason to come in…Totally surfed out, I left the water grinning…
(above) I changed to dry clothes and shot a few more pictures…Here is an inside wave at the Corner…
(above) My preferred playground…The far outer sandbars…Rights and Lefts…No one else even interested…Major paddling power an absolute requirement…
(above) Here’s a guy on a nice one on the inside…
(above) These were what I’d set up for after riding in from 50 yards out...
(above) Word was out that real good surf had returned…My theory on days like this is to avoid the crowd all riding the same size boards and competing for the same waves that are the limit of that size board…I’ll take one of my stretched limos way out and do it my way…
(above) A good size wave for the Corner with no one equipped to take it on…
(above) Today had Fall / Winter size and power…The weird thing was the air temp was in the 80’s…Close to the elusive “as good as it gets”
(above) One more shot of the playground on a close to perfect day from the bluff above the beach…Things are much further out than the pictures above suggest…I hope that your day was just as much fun…
More later…
Paul
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