dawn patrol – Page 26 – Learning to Surf

June 26, 2013June 28, 2013

Test run

Surf: 3.9 ft at 14.8 s from the NW at 306Â°, low tide, calm.

JBird had been wanting to try my Vaquero out for a while. I figured we’d swing by Linda Mar and she’d get some cruisey little waves on it.

Well, plans change. We hot another spot that, in addition to being crowded, was about shoulder high+, steep, and short. Not the best waves to try out that board on. I have to pop up so fast and with the crowd and the low visibility, it’s hard to weave through people. I got a few fun waves on it (I figured I’d get a few rides and then I’d be able to tell her where to sit), but had to kick out of most due to people. I got one really fun ride on her board. Not surprisingly, people move out of my way a lot faster when I’m on a longboard vs a 6’10. I had a clear ride all the way in. Nice.

Sadly, Jbird didn’t get any waves on it. I think what she want is as far as a hull goes is more of a Andrieni Serena than a Andrieni Vaquero. They are supposed to be better in steeper stuff, better all-arounders. I love my Vaquero, but it deserves a long point-break wave. Short fast waves are a bit of a waste of all it’s cruisey goodness. It’s also 4 feet shorter than Jacob’s Andrieni. That’s a big change. It’s not that easy to just hop on a shorter board.

I’m hoping to get a chance to have her try it out again, maybe in something a little smaller and smoother.

June 25, 2013June 30, 2013

Waves!

Surf: 1.6 ft at 8.3 s from the WNW at 282Â°. Low tide. Offshore.

After weeks of serious slopsurf, it was nice to see something that looked like a wave. Sure it was small, knee high to waist high, but it was clean enough and there were rainbows on top of rainbows. This was Hawaii level of rainbow action.

Got some fun little ones in shallow water and a nice tour of the whole beach. Surfable enough for me. 🙂

June 20, 2013July 1, 2013

A Smooth Sea Never Made a Skillful Sailor

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

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.

June 19, 2013July 1, 2013

Desperado

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

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.

June 18, 2013July 1, 2013

Spicoli

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

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.

June 7, 2013July 1, 2013

Sick

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

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

May 29, 2013June 30, 2013

Grey

Photo by Darren

Surf: 3.9 ft at 10.0 s from the W at 265Â°. 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. 😉

May 21, 2013May 27, 2013

Catching up to the swell

Surf: 3 ft at 16s from SSW at 205Â° 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.

May 17, 2013May 27, 2013

Friday Morning

Surf: Thigh to chest high, long waits between sets. Clean and fun.

Last morning! I woke up early to check the surf. It was pretty much the same as it’d been all week. Good enough for me.

I wanted to get in one more surf on the fish before packing it up, but with conditions as soft as they were, I figured the Vaquero would have a better shot.

I got a few fun ones off the bat. Gotta love these clean waves.

Chatted for a bit with a gal from Palo Alto who seems to spend most of the year surfing in Mexico. We talked about the bay area and boards. People usually have a lot of questions about my little hull. I mentioned Sunset Shaper’s class. Hopefully they’ll wind up with another customer out of it. 🙂

Cruised around till breakfast.

May 12, 2013July 1, 2013

Sunday morning

Surf: Knee to Waist High. Little ruffled but plenty nice.

I took my fish out to try and get a little bit of time in on it. My rides were pretty short. I’m not sure if it’s the waves, or just me. I’m pretty sure there’s a big “me” factor in there.

I’m also missing so many waves. Beamer got a great shot by shot of what happens. Keep in mind that while it doesn’t look like I’m paddling, I am (just not enough.) I’ll be set up properly, but then I don’t quite get in and wind up watching the wave roll on by. Sad. Ahh well. Practice practice practice.

The mid-day winds came up. I decided to re-wax the fish in the shade. I really should have stripped both boards before flying, but laziness won out. After watching all my wax flake off into the ocean, I decided to do the right thing and clean up.