Winter Solstice 10:08 pm
Bolinas | Patch |
11:20 am to 12:30 pm | 2’ to 3’ Small weak waves |
Medium fast outgoing tide | North breeze, slightly offshore |
Sunny, high clouds, cold water | Ok session. Not great but worth the effort. |
Earlier in the week I said ok to driving Bill, Kate’s father, around on Friday to do some Christmas shopping. Bill’s 85 years old and due to a bad right leg no longer can drive. I called Thursday afternoon to confirm and chatted with Ruth Anne. Since Bill was napping I told her about my driving Bill on Friday and wanted to confirm the time. She explained to me in a strong tone that she did not want Bill buying her some expensive present for Christmas and that she didn’t want Bill to go out on Friday. I asked her to leave me a phone message as to the time. When we returned from seeing the Christmas Carol at ACT in the city, there was no phone message for me. This morning I was up early and itching to go surfing, but no word from Bill. At 8:15 am Kate called her parents. “You can go surfing,” Kate shouted to me from the other room. “He’s doesn’t need to go out today.” Something is going on here, I don’t know what it is, but this was good news for me.
I got my stuff together to go surfing. I checked the latest swell and wind conditions on Stormsurf.com; big swell 13 feet and 14 seconds and a 10 mph north wind. Kate yesterday asked when was the Winter Solstice, the 21st or the 22nd. I look it up in the Tidelog. It’s the 21s at 10:08 pm. So today is the shortest day of the year, sunrise at 7:22 am and sunset at 4:54 pm. I also noted that for today there were extreme tides, 6.9 ft high tide at 8:16 am to a -1.2 ft low tide at 3:22 pm.
I stopped to check out Stinson Beach. The park was open and as I pulled in there were only a couple of cars and they weren’t surf vehicles. Scott Tye yesterday told me in a phone conversation that the sand bars were in and the waves had good shape. The waves were huge swells that stretched across the length of the beach, and there was only one guy struggling to paddle out. With the camera at the ready I watched this lonely surfer duck dive under five walls of white water to finally make it out. After a short wait, he turned and stroked into huge late breaking wave, jumped up, angled down an overhead wall of water and quickly straighten out as the wave exploded around him. I got a picture of it. Going straight off eight-foot walls of terror is not my cup of tea I think I will head for Bolinas.
There were several cars parked along Brighton Ave at Bolinas with lots of activity of surfers handling surfboards. This is a good sign. I met Mary Wagstaff who was suiting up to go out. She had arrived earlier but the tide was too high. The waves at the Patch were pushing up against the cliff. She waited an hour or so for the tide to back off. She stated that Marty had come and gone, not bothering to go out, but now the Patch was breaking, small-fun size.
From the seawall at the bottom of the ramp, I could see that the tide was still fairly high. Waves were pushing up against both the left and right sea walls, making it difficult to walk down to the Patch. Due to the extreme tides, water was rushing out of the lagoon. There was a river of current from the mouth of the lagoon, past the Groin seawall, out fifty yards, then bending north. One could see ripples of the current straight out from the ramp. I have never seen that before. Needless to say, the current destroyed all waves at the Channel and at the Groin. I took a couple of pictures, chatted with Robert the carpenter from Larkspur, watched professor Steve struggle paddling in around a few sizeable shore-break waves to reach the ramp, and then I headed back to the car to suit up.
When I first entered the water, which was cold, I saw Robert ride a long fast right inside right wave. Maybe the inside is the spot today. I paddled way out there where Mary and a couple others were. Mary caught a small slow wave that died after 20 yards. She then paddled south over to the inside rights. Maybe she knows something I don’t know. I had trouble catching the waves. The swells would peak way out there, start to crest and then die, thus it was difficult to be in the correct location to catch them. Also, the waves were weak with little to no push behind them. I kept creeping in and creeping in to catch one. I finally got one. It looked like a three-foot wave when I started paddling for it. By the time I caught it and stood up, it had dropped to two feet. I rode it straight in. I was watching to see if the swell would build into a curl. No way. After about 20 feet, the wave dropped to one foot, then six inches and then it died. After this disappointing wave I did the same thing Mary had done. I paddled to the south and in to catch the inside right waves.
Good move, this was definitely the spot today. The waves broke over the rock portion of the reef and then wrapped into the sand portion of the beach, continuously breaking to the right to finally to form into a small wall and break upon the shore. The rides were long. One could ride a sizeable wave for a hundred yards. They were slow, small and not threatening. Following my Patch riding rule of studying the white water, I positioned myself over the rock portion of the reef and on the inside where the waves initially broke. Most of the others were about ten to twenty yards to the south over the sand bottom. A couple of other surfers sat way out in front of me waiting for the set waves.
I caught several good long right waves. I waited for set waves that appeared to be walls that stretched to the south. One would think they were going to close out. But they didn’t. Due to the shape of the rocks and the sand bottom, the waves initially broke above the rocks and then continuously broke to the right all the way to the shore. On several I took off late with the wave feathering several feet in front of me, climbed to the top of the swell, stepped to the middle of the board to gain momentum, coasted pass the white water that was sliding down the wave in front of me to work back into the swell. Then it was cut back, let the swell build, move through a breaking section and then do it again and again until the wave broke on the sand.
Unfortunately the wait between sets was long and the water was cold. Definitely time for a new wetsuit and my booties have holes in them. The shape of the waves changed with the rapid out going tide. Soon the outside rock was totally exposed, and then the rocks of the inside reef began to appear. The force of the waves diminished as the water receded. I had been out for an hour, my hands were turning numb, and I had a million things to do for Christmas. It was time to go in. Once on the beach I looked back out at the surf. The people still in the water were way, way out there, far beyond the exposed outside rock. The entire Patch reef, which consists of hundreds of rocks, was totally out of the water and it was still another three hours until low tide.
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