Aaron and I got up early to Hit Sayulita again. The sun doesn’t come up till 8am, so “dawn” patrol is pretty relative.
There was a fleet of French women out, swooping in on all the waves. I snuck in a few as ALL of the women would take the same wave at the same time so I could pretty much pick up the next wave.
I was still struggling tho.
The first day had been so easy. Now I couldn’t get into anything. I was paddling so hard and getting nothing. I don’t know what happened. :\
I hadn’t been to this break since the first Mexico trip. In fact the last trip, I drove right past it. With the guard tower and the fancy new fence, I’d assumed it was closed off to the public. Turns out the property owners decided to meet the surfers somewhat halfway. Rather than block off access, they made a rule that you had to have a surfboard or boogie board to get through the gate. They’re trying to keep people with picnic gear, beer bottles, and diapers away. I suppose it works, the beach was pretty clean. They also won’t let you in if you have an umbrella.
There’s pretty much no shade on this beach. If you don’t have an umbrella or a surfboard, you’re gonna be hot.
I was hot. The water was the same temperature as the air and I was boiling.
I like to surf early morning and late afternoon, but with all of us and logistics of getting to and from places, we got there at high noon. Yeow. I was floating under my board during lulls trying to keep cool.
I struggled quite a bit in the soft waves. I also was extra weary of the rock in the lineup. Perhaps a brand spanking new board wasn’t the best thing to bring to reef-bottom mexico.
I did managed to get a few waves and a kid in the lineup yelled FINALLY! I laughed. That was exactly the kind of session I was having.
After sufficiently frying ourselves in the heat, the 5 of us piled ourselves and the boards into a pickup and headed home. I laid in the ac in the dark for almost over an hour trying to cool off. Missing 55° water right about now.
Picked up some DaFins before this trip, just for beachies like this. Too whomp to surf (tho there were some local kids picking off rides that ended on dry sand more times than I’d care to take on) but plenty fun on your belly.
Above picture if of Johan bodysurfing a right, and Scott boogie boarding a left. I kinda kept chickening out. I did NOT want a face full off sand. I did finally manage to get some real rides in.
After wearing myself out, I opted for the beach. I peeled off my rashie to find that at some point during thie bodysurf bonanza, I’d scooped up a minnow in my shirt. Poor little dude. Back to the sea you go.
Wonderful dinner. Scott and Steve caught hundreds of pounds of tuna on their fishing expedition. We had tuna steaks, tuna sashimi, tuna sushi, tempura tuna and tuna salad, all on one meal, all deliciously prepared. A-mazing. We listened to the guys tell their sailing and fishing stories till well after the sun went down.
We tacked on a quick surf trip to Jesse’s boyfriend’s fishing trip in Sayulita. The usual house was booked up for a wedding so we stayed at the house of a friend of Jesse’s boyfriend. I’m not sure what I thought Johan’s house would be like, but it’s a full estate. It’s beautiful. We have a little house on the hillside. There’s a little moat to keep out jungle crabs and other crawlies. The main house is amazing. Beautiful views, lovely architecture, amazing.
The only drawback being that we’re not walking distance to Burros. Ahh well, it gave me a change to finally surf Sayulita. The waves were clean and slow, and the crowd pretty mellow. There were a few kids on longboards just tearing it up. Nose ride after nose ride. One little girl was barely big enough to paddle the board and she was still getting waves.
I got lots of fun swooshing rights. Jesse’s friend Scott got a few seconds of me on his gopro (see blurry image above.)
The water is SO hot here. It’s in the upper 80’s. I was cooking in my rashie-suit. Whew.
Other excitement for the day, I was waiting out a lull when I noticed another surfer waving to me. I couldn’t hear him but I say him pointing to the beach, then a Panga out in the water, then the beach again. I got the basic idea that he was telling me to move, so I moved.
The Panga turned, revved and screamed in to the beach. Wow. It looks something like this:
I hadn’t really thought about how they got the Panga’s up there, but (except for some clueless gringo surfers in their way,) it works!
A 6’10 Andreini Vaquero came up used at Mollusk. I’ve been drooling over these boards for a while and extra drooling since I tried out Mike’s Vaquero a few weeks ago.
Yeah, in the land of beachbreaks, it’s not that practical but man is it fun. Paddles easy. I got into waves right off the bat (which I wasn’t expecting AT all) and it did some fun swishy things to get around sections on the inside. Coming from a longboard and singlefin background, the board feels good. I only got one frontside wave to really feel the slide these boards have, but so far so good.
I’m taking this board to Mexico. I bet it’s gonna be fun in those right hand point breaks. 😀
Ran into Jessie in the parking lot. Always nice to put a name to the face. 🙂
Caught a few mid-north, but there was a bit of a crowd and north north was looking a little interesting. Watched Jesse get a few, watched a bodysurfer get a really nice long one yeeeeew. But other than that, the waves were a little funky. There are days when it seems the waves are ONLY breaking in the rip. It’s weird.
Surf: 5.9 ft at 13.8 s from WNW at 292° SLight texture and wind.
Went hunting for some waves. The usual spot was crowded and uninspiring. The second usual spot was big and mean. Another spot was warped and weird, but the last spot on the hunt seemed okay. It seemed a little large, but workable with a few folks out.
By the time we’d suited up, everyone else had gone in and the waves had come up. I’m not quite in shape for this kind of stuff yet. My first attempt paddling out, I got tossed pretty good trying to get through a closeout. I’m not sure what happened, but I couldn’t catch my breath. I had to dive the next two waves without a good lungful of air. As the fourth wave approached, I called for a do-over and bellied in.
Huffing and puffing and coughing up water on the shore, I briefly though going back to uninspiring usual spots might be worth the wet car ride of shame. Chris seemed to be doing fine, so I put my fears aside and paddled back out.
I got one good, fast ride down the line into closeout city. BOOM. The rest of the time I spent dodging outside waves and bailing out of other waves like a big ole chicken.
Saw a guy get a really nice hollow one as I was getting out (or rather, struggling to get to the beach on the inside), but as soon as we’d packed up the gear all the other folks were gone too.
I think I need to hit the gym a little before heading back out in conditions like that again.
I hit the beach early to borrow Mike’s 8’7 Vaquero. I’ve been wanting to try a hull for a while, but hadn’t been able to get the stars to align to be at the beach on the right day when a friend had theirs for me to try.
It was pretty fun. The board paddled as easy as my 9’4 and cutback smoothly. As it was crowded (and I was worried about dinging Mike’s board) I got mostly short waves. I managed few longer ones where I could see more of the swoosh factor in action. I’d probably need to change up my stance to surf something like this regularly. I’m a little too…braced for impact. I’m digging in when I should be squiggling.
When Mike was packing up, Chris said he was on his way, so I hung out in the lot a while. A dude in the lot was teasing me for taking pics of the meh surf and offered to take a picture of me instead.
Eventually Chris showed up and I took out my 7′ to pick up inside waves as the crowd thinned. I got a few slow ones, nothing fancy. We moved to a larger area of the beach, but I was too tired to get anything decent. After 4 hours of surfing, I opted to belly one in and finally get to work.
