Saturday, October 15th, 2011

Hilux Surf

Surf: Waist high, clean, crisp. Little crowded.

Fun loggy surf this morning. I carpooled with Robert and the Hilux, tossing all the gear in the truckbed. Lots easier than tying things down. Plenty of sunshine out on the water and not too shabby wavewise. Fun smooth waves on the longboard.

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Wednesday, October 12th, 2011

Full moon swell

Surf: Waist high, a few standouts. Little junky.

What a moon this morning! Plenty beautiful sky, but the surf was not terrible clean. Waves were rideable and all around not bad. Hopefully things will clean up with some of the new fall swells.

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Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Friendly Bolinas

Surf: Thigh high and a little ragged.

I haven’t been getting that much weekday time in. Too many morning meetings, too little motivation, and well, kinda junky surf.

Andrew decided it was time for his quarterly surf session so we headed to Bolinas. Ran into quite a few people in the lot. Waves were small and a little rough, but rideable and good for catching white water. You can’t really argue with sunshine.

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Saturday, October 1st, 2011

Saturday crowd

Surf: Waist high. Closed out.

Met up with the guys for a later morning surf. Plenty crowded. I struggled for a while and picked up a closeout here and there. I wound up staying out for about 3 hours before giving up. Might be time to get back on the longboard for a while to stay positive.

To make up for my grumpy surf, I got snacks:

Hit up the Noriega Street fair after. Fun!

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Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Catching up

Surf: Windy. Waist to Chest.

Snuck out for another post-morning meeting surf. The surf wasn’t especially thrilling, there were a lot of closeouts and trying to fight my way into the wind with my newly repaired 7 was hard. The tide went out fast, turning makeable waves into wash. Post surf I ran into Max, back from some very exciting travels and Daniel who was headed out to see what he could make of the outgoing tide. Always nice to catch up with folks in the lot.

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Thursday, September 22nd, 2011

No Wax

Surf: Thigh to Waist high. Clean. Slow.

My 7’0 is in the shop, and my 9’4 had a ding I’ve been meaning to repair. With new swell supposedly on it’s way, I grabbed my 9’0 and headed down to the beach.

As I unzipped my bag, I had the sinking realization that before I’d sent the 9′ to Alex for a bunch of work I had stripped all the wax. Stripped all the wax and not put any back on.

Crap.

I found myself standing in the lot with a very smooth and shiny board gleaming back at me. There was no way I was going to turn around and head home. I dug half a bar of wax out of my bag and spread that little lump of wax as thin as I could trying to cover the board.

I wore the wax down to a tiny tiny nub, but it worked.

The first half of the session the tide was too high and things were slow and plodding. The second half, things picked up. Kinda fun to see what I’ve started to learn on the quad translating to a try fin. I managed a few tighter cutbacks digging in.

Not an epic day for sure, but happy to have made it work.

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Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

The start of Fall

Surf: Thigh High, clean.

Fall is here. Warm temps, lower winds, lovely mornings.

Plenty crowded out there though. Wow. 2 waves in and my board was dinged crashing into a dude dropping in. Thankfully no one was hurt, but I wasn’t ready to get out of the water just yet.

After a few too many close calls, I headed up north to throw myself into some closeouts. I got a few waves that made me feel slightly more competent on the 7′ (which I badly needed after the earlier tangle up.)

Nice to have the warm weather.

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Friday, September 16th, 2011

Lunchbreak

Surf: Crumbly Waist-Chest high surf.

Looked better than I’d expected and, given that I was taking a very long scenic route back from a way too early client meeting, I gave it a go.

Surprisingly not awful. I’ve surfed way worse. Wasn’t junky, wasn’t too closed out, it wasn’t all that bad it just wasn’t all that great. The sun was out a while and there were even a few moments the onshore winds stopped blowing and I got a couple smooth waves in. huh.

Thank you, o ocean, for a little bit of something in an otherwise desperado session.

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Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Windy

Surf: Waist-Head High. Closed out, Crowded.

Got the stubby back from the shop. Now that it’s old dings are fixed correctly, I took it out for a spin. The waves today were crowded and womping shut. Not ideal for struggling with a board. I had quite a few duckdive attempts that went wrong and false starts on waves, but FINALLY finally managed to land two. One was pretty respectable and linked up all the way to the inside.

Afterwards got sandblasted by the sideshores a while. All my gear is sandy.

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Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

Backwards Waves

Surf: Waist-Shoulder high. Backwards. Closed out.

Ahh, physics. Physics does not always do what you think it will, or what you want it to, or even really what it should. Today it was reflecting waves pretty strongly off the beach, jacking up waves into steep closeouts left and right.

Every time I get a little air on a longboard it tends to be accompanied by a considerable amount of surprise. Usually me getting air on a 9’4 means something weird is going on.

Today’s surprising air move was brought to you by me catching an outgoing wave while paddling out, ramping the incoming closeout at pretty good speed, and launching myself back into the lineup. If you wanted exciting, ungraceful chest high waves, they were out there.

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