What you're missing.....

Just for contrast................

Pinballs in rotation.

The cycle of storms continues, this is a wet winter. Nothing subtle at all, like a free game of pinball we've won 3 more storms on the head. Weeks of onshores, followed by a short period of surfable weather. That in a nutshell has been our lot. Some years we could hope for a high pressure to settle in and give us good winds and the long period swells would clean up. This is not one of those years. But here is a shot from last spring............bring on spring, please.

Pearls amongst swine......

Pictures will tell a few lies..................by hiding a bit of the reality. There's no way of seeing the ten little Indians sitting on the peak, or the ebb and flow of their motions as they attempt to gauge the wall that reeled relentlessly off the take off zone. The constant shuffling of position in that lineup. Or the one in fifteen rides that was completed succesfully. The earlier thirty plus head count that coagulated in the water like a thick clot of custard and didn't help anybody's stoke.

But every now and then a pearl would drop out of the oyster and everything would look stellar...........

Ten Days To Remember

I was spoiled there's no other way to put it. I gave the local break a check every day for seven days before staying home to surf it. I drove with two boards those days till I was tired of driving.....longer and better waves beckoned from the south, so I followed like a happy puppy.

"The best this bank has been in ten years!"

"Haven't surfed this many good days in a row since I don't know when mate!"

"Where is everybody?"

The same size crowd never too many often just enough peppered the water. For a week straight it was double overhead on the sets and never less than shoulder high. By the end of the week it was a relief to get the 1/2 cord of wood delivered and move it to the shelter...........after finishing that I pulled into the lot to see A-frames splitting the local peaks.

No driving any further today.........................

Ten Days To Remember

This has been a winter of extremes it seems, two coastal snow falls before the end of January is not normal around here. The last one left snow around buildings for over a week. Three week stretches of wind and rain. Now a forecast of great winds and waves that are stretching out ahead of us for over a week. No consistency except for the inconsistencies, perfect!

Word is out and the lot has filled up, we enter from the rocks and after a short paddle we are between the inside and the outside peaks. Even with the thirty or so out there is plenty of room and waves to be had. The wind is light enough that unlike the last go out I take out the quad and not the bonzer, that wide nose isn't an issue today.

The quad is great in these overhead waves, backside it's a sweet board. The extra fins really hold well and the speed is phenomenal. But when the inside section gets wobbly the fish's wide tail seems to be a bit detrimental to control. The bonzer would have cut through the warble without a hitch as it had yesterday, chop is not the fishes friend!

After a couple of hours I paddle back to the rocks, getting out by timing the surge and reaching out and holding onto short stalks of kelp. It's not super difficult, but it requires trusting your feet and a avoiding the little pockets of urchins. I pull it off and make my way back to the car where N is waiting already dry and changed.

I ask her how she got out as it was her first time doing the rock dance and she points over at the cliff, Jesus! Turns out she had seen a few take a path into a cove, lost their track and found herself at the base of a cliff with a rudimentary path. Armed with a longboard she had climbed to the top at one point balancing the board over the edge........not knowing it was a drop off of 30' on the other side. I shake my head a bit awed by this dangerous climb and thankful she's come out of it unscathed.

Next time I think we'll need to plan the exit a little better..................

Ten Days To Remember.

The ocean threw bombs, that's all there is to say about it. Crap conditions persisted for a few days, nothing local was even remotely interesting, east winds were promised but delivered through the side door. Squirrely(yeah go ahead and check....it's not a real word, I know) side shore winds messed with a solid swell floating in roughly at 280 degrees. But the cleanest morning of the week was bumpy and a little sick looking. A phone call to the south had us moving out and driving for a break with a more promising report. Little did I know it was going to be the start to the best week and a half of waves in months.

We pulled into the lot and sure as shit, clean lines filtered in as a small knot of surfers worked into position. Steve's truck was empty and he was already amongst the pack, in fact the cars and faces all looked strangely familiar. A testament to the small cadre of week day surfers this far north of the Fiberglass Wall it seems. It's a suprise to me somehow, given the number of surf shops in the state these days. What may be more of a reason and unfortunate is that there really are just fewer breaks per square mile...........

This day is flawless as overhead waves sweep from the north-west over a beautiful left that peels into the rip that runs like a river alongside the headland. From this far away it's a tough break to read, the outside wave especially so as it throws slowly and the shoulders seem to give little hint of the speed needed to negotiate their slope. The inside is a lot more hollow than it appears from here.

Three different peaks are firing with a few waves connecting up and doubling the length of the ride. Ding and I find a couple of slots along the inside section amongst a handful of surfers. The crowd is spread out rather well throughout the water. We see sets approaching and the requisite scramble for positioning ensues, and yet there is plenty of room to move.

For the first time in weeks we have open faces to play with and walls to race. This is more point than beach break with a peak that lines up consistently and throws with a precision only the best sandbars ever deliver. Some run as far as the rip leaving a short choppy paddle to the edge of the rocks and the long paddle back to either the outside peak or the inside, whichever one you choose.

The outside is not unlike sitting in the middle of nowhere and waiting, just waiting..........then the horizon begins to lift and bump with indications of what's coming. And it's not hard to get caught inside here as swells cross from west and north and a board that paddles well is worth it's weight this far from shore. Suprisingly steep drops, I see both Steve and Mark take late drops on longboards and pull off critical bottom turns. Lurking on a fish I pull back on a few as I see a nose sneak out of the foam and gain speed to the shoulder, but there is no shortage of waves. This swell has good power and the 6'6" finds plenty of juice to tap into even this far out.

The length of the ride is deceptive, not so much on the lefts but definitely on the rights. On one ride a smoothly lined double overhead peak, it's a race for the shoulder full speed into three bottom turns and three slaps off the descending lips before a fourth bottom turn and a drift off the shoulder. Lakota sits at the take off spot, now a small speck. Bloody waves are long! I attempt a paddle back out but a set rolls in halfway back and I get to do the beach walk and rip ride out again.

More room to move

Mind surfing is fun, that unavoidable chemical change that morphs your brain when you order a new board. I have it at the moment, a new board is on the way. Tied off and cruising 101 northward atop a friends' car, a new ride and a new way of riding for me. Stand up paddling, hell am I going to taking a rash of shit for going in this direction! But it'll be hard to hear it around the points and capes around here as I spoon out toward them though................get used to some solitude baby!

Back to mind surfing tho', it happens every time you get a new board. No matter how you surf, a new board will make you surf better.............. at least until you get up on that first wave. If you're lucky and get a "magic" stick then the fun begins, a board that truly lives up to the dream. I've had a few over time, one that wasn't mine, just a board I had frequent access to was not even shaped to be what it became.

It had started life in the Islands a 7' 6" gun shaped by Owl for a trip he took to Australia from what I gathered. But the board got trimmed down while in Oz to meet Owl's new found understanding of the local conditions., in it's latest incarnation it had become a stubbier looking 6' 4" round pin. All the body of a longer board but none of the nose, it surfed incredibly well. Paul, an Aussie friend of mine had somehow gotten possession of the board because Owl needed cash and sold some things to keep cruising along, such a classic surfer. No amount of wheedling on my part could pry that stick out of Paul's hands, for God's sake he barely surfed the thing and I was in love with it! So I just kept riding it till he pulled it away from me, literally. You could feel the weird genius of Owl's handiwork in the turns that flowed under your feet and the ease in which it found the sweet spot in sections and raced to daylight when pressed.

This is what a new board does to me , even before I get it all the memories of past surf craft unroll like a carpet and I get to walk on them again, and I ramble............. So the new board has me thinking of new ways to ride old waves.

One of the common complaints we have here is that there are so many rideable waves locally that are tough to impossible to get to. Beachies that have no channel to aid the paddle through numbingly cold water. Resulting in achingly long and fruitless attempts to reach the outside, while walls peel off like sirens, just out of reach. One way to do it is with an engine of course, another could be the stand up paddleboard, I'll see. At least I'll be able to get away from what amounts to a crowd around here and find peaks far enough out of reach of prone paddling. And that bommie that rears up and does a wonderfull impersonation of south shore reefs is well within reach and the paddle will help me stay on the peak that shifts. This is the mind at work today.

There is something that is so Polynesian about this way of riding, it actually spooks me a bit and I don't know why. In some way I feel like old ghosts are going to be keeping an eye on me, gaurdians of their purview. There are many Third World examples of stand up craft, all of utilitarian use, none purely pleasure with a healthy dose of exercise and meditation. This unearths memories of Islanders, throwing tools and tasks aside to chase waves and an afternoon into the twilight, smiling as boards are dragged up the sand out of reach of the sea.