Author: Tracey

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Sea and Surf Weekend

2013-PBP-06-22a

Surf: 4.6 ft at 8.3 s from the NW at 326°

One of my roommmates works for NASA. Her project is launching into space this week so NASA threw a friends and family day to come learn about the project and see the launch vehicle.

We made a roommate weekend trip out of it. A few of the girls went down early and had a surf lesson. The rest of us came down the next day.

The surf at the Pismo Beach Pier was looking fun (more fun than Linda Mar was all week), but I had to rush off to Vandenberg.

The presentations and the launch vehicle were super cool. This project uses a commercial jet that gets to altitude, then drops a three-sage rocket. The rocket fires off into space and deploys the satellite. A-mazing. If there’s anything I like more than learning about the ocean, it’s learning about space.

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After the NASA trip, we headed back to the beach. Kaitlyn and I surfed a while at the pier. It was mostly closed out, and a little mixed up, but rideable. Watching some of the locals long board was making me jealous, but my hull fit better in the hotel room and still managed to pull off some fun waves.

I’m always happy to check out other breaks, especially when my friends can hang out on a nice warm beach. 🙂

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A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skillful Sailor

2013-LM-06-20

Surf: 3.9 ft at 7.1 s from the W at 279°

This week has been a return to my surfing roots: making the most of terrible waves. These sessions are all about positioning, patience, and making unmakeable sections.

It’s been mixed up, choppy, and all around messy. These are the kinds of waves I started out surfing on. Since it’s been a desperate month with too much time out of the water, I’ve been willing to give it a shot.

These are great skill building conditions. It’s one thing to catch a clean perfect wave, it’s another to really work to make slop into a wave.

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Desperado

2013-LM-06-19

Surf: 3.0 ft at 7.7 s from the WNW at 293°

More desperado waves today. Brien didn’t want to haul all the way down to yesterday’s waves so we made the most of the usual hangouts. It was pretty much as expected: mixed up, sloppy, etc, but kinda surfable. I think we wound up chasing a few soft tops out of the water. I imagine it was more fun for them when they thought it was totally unsurfable. Then we come by and grab tiny meh wave after tiny meh wave and show them up… or they were tired of the nauseating wash and slop. Uff.

Can’t wait for the wind to take a break.

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Spicoli

2013-HMBD-06-18a

Surf: 2.0 ft at 8.3 s from the WNW at 291°

Having been out of the water almost two weeks, I figured I’d take a look at the surf.

I hauled Aaron’s 9’6 Junod roundtail to the beach. I’m holding on to it while he moves to a new apartment. It’s a big ole board. Heavier than mine. Round rails. A coat of housepaint from a previous owner.

While a little slow and probably better suited for nice Santa Cruz waves than dumping beach slop, it does have some good weight to it. I was able to sneak up pretty far towards the nose. I got some fun swinging pivoty turns that were unexpected.

The board will probably hang out at the office for a while, I don’t have the space for it. But nice to try something else.

2013-HMBD-06-18b

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Ding Repiar

dingrepair2

Did a little ding repair today.

My Vaquero survived the trip to Mexico. It survived a cobblestone point break. It survived boats and cars and falling coconuts. It unfortunately wasn’t able to stand up to me whacking it against the wall at the house like an idiot. Maaaaaan.

If I hadn’t just picked up a board from an Alex, I would have had him to the repair.

I also needed to do several repairs on my other longboard, so I figured I’d give it a go. I practiced first on the longboard, sanding, patching, sanding, patching.

When it came time to do the Vaquero, I took plenty of time. I cut off the lose chips of fiberglass with a razor. I sanded and sanded with tape to keep from going overboard. I filled, I cured, I sanded, I filled again, I sanded. It was hours of work, but I’m pretty happy with the result.

Just knowing I can do a repair that doesn’t look like a glop bomb is a big step forward. It’s not perfect, but I’m still proud.

Now to watch it like a hawk to make sure it doesn’t leak. :S

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Sick

2013-LM-06-07

Surf: 6.9 ft at 19.0 s from the SW at 219°

I’ve been sick as a dog the past week. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hand going down to Santa Cruz, so I opted for local waves.

This is one of those times when things I think should do and things I ACTUALLY should do are in total conflict.

I felt like I should go surf. I’ve been out of the water a while and I’d made promised to meet up with folks. However when I woke up, I felt HORRIBLE. Oh my god. Wow. The fact I got out of bed at all was kind of amazing.

I took my 7’0 quad out. It was actually pretty fun, between waves of agony.

I kept pushing myself to keep going, before finally giving up and washing in. I wound up spending some serious time in the parking lot sitting on the ground being miserable.

This was enough to finally motivate me to go to the doctor, so there’s some good in my bad decision. Doc said I have the flu and was really dehydrated. No surf for me till I’m 100%. In the mean time, I’m gonna crawl back in bed and be properly miserable for a while. UNNNGNGG

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Grey

2013-LM-05-29
Photo by Darren

Surf: 3.9 ft at 10.0 s from the W at 265°. Outgoing tide.

Smaller than yesterday, but pretty fun!

I took my stub quad out (it’s been a while) and wound up getting quite a few waves. I’m hoping that surfing this board as a quad for a bit will help me figure out how to surf my fish better. It’s the same thickness as my fish, with an extra 8 inches of length for more catching power. I got into a couple waves that I wasn’t expecting to get. It’s amazing how much easier some of my boards seem now. This board was really hard a year ago, but I seemed to be doing okay today.

It’s nice to feel like I’m getting somewhere, but I’ve gone back and forth with my shorter boards. One sessions I’m fine, the next I’m skunked.

I had planned to let Heather borrow this board for the summer. I might have to rethink that idea. 😉

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Quick Session

2013-LM-05-28

Surf: 4.6 ft at 9.1 s from WNW at 293°

Had just enough time for a quick session before driving to San Jose.

My original plan was to go to SC first, but with the negative tide the last few days, all I saw on the cams was bare rock.

While the session started out foggy, there seemed to be waves. The fog burned off while I was suiting up. The waves looked less fun once I was paddling out, but for a 30 min session, it wasn’t too bad. A little whomping and closed out, but okay.

Smacked my shin pretty good. Now I’ve got more dings to try to find on my performance longboard. I think I’m just going to dip that board in resin and call it a day 😉

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Almost like summer

2013-MT-05-26

Surf: Chest to head high+, pretty clean. 3.3 ft at 14.8s from SW at 215° with a W swell at 3.3 ft at 12.9 s mixed in.

Wooohooohoo. I did not expect actual surfable conditions today. This was quite the fun surprise.

Expecting windblown, jumbled slop, I took out my narrow longboard. Where this board really works well the kind of beach waves that start out mushy, then steepen up. That’s exactly what we found.

From the cliff it was looking clean, but a little bit big on the sets. We gave it a shot.

It was a little warbly here and there, but given what the surf’s been like lately, it was perfect. There was a moment watching a set go by that I watched the first wave roll by, watched the second, then realized a little too late the third was about to break on top of me. I started laughing to hard I could barely get a breath. Ohhh surfing.

One of my best waves today started out pretty unassuming. I paddled for a nice looking one, dropped in, then saw the whole wave stack up. It was over my head for sure. Waves like this are great on this board. It’s got speed and, even though it’s a big board, it turns well on the narrow tail. I swooped through the bottom turn, super fun top turn, second bottom turn and I almost kicked out thinking the wave was going to close but decided to stick with it, swoosh another top turn, another bottom, then it really looked like it was going to close out on me so I launched off the back. Wheeeeee. Oh man that was fun. I haven’t had a wave like that in a long time. Probably since the last time I surfed summer waves here.

Evidently my wave caught the attention of folks on the cliff. Quite a few more people paddled out, including one guy who said my wave saved him from driving all the way to Santa Cruz.

Surfed for a while, then bodysurfed when the fog came in. Oh man, it was exhausting but super fun.

I’m hoping this means summer’s on it’s way. I miss surfing this spot. It can be so fun in the summer and I really want to try my fish out on it.

Went home sunburnt and stoked.

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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.