January 11, 2008 Friday

Bolinas	Patch
9:00 am to 10:30 am	3’ to 4’, occasionally to 5’
Medium, incoming tide	Slight offshore breeze
Sunny, clear and warm	A good, fun session

Today was a much sunnier and warmer morning, also high tide wasn’t until noon, thus I was hopeful for some waves. When I pulled up to the parking spaces in Bolinas, I saw Mary, Marty and Ray’s cars there with their boards gone. Good sign. I grabbed my camera and headed down the ramp to the seawall. Andy and Claude were there checking out the waves. Andy is a civil engineer for the town of Petaluma and he owns a condo in Los Cabos. I saw him there last March at the Costa Azul Surf Shop. Claude is a big guy with a matching big board who I often see at the Groin. They were looking intently at the Groin and the Channel, which wasn’t happening. I walked to the north end of the seawall to take a couple pictures of Mary, Marty and Ray who were out at the Patch. The waves were small, mushy, slow and inconsistent. The above picture is Mary catching a one footer, which Marty misses and Ray looks on. Andy and Claude were discouraged and decided to go check out Stinson.

I’ll go for it just to say hello to my friends. While dressing at the car Robert the Oakland fireman pulled up. Since I was suiting up he didn’t even check it out, he also suited up. It was his day off, the weather was finally warm after several days of cold and rain, this was his only chance to catch some waves, thus he was going out.

Though it was medium tide and due to the sand being washed out, the water was up against the second seawall. Robert and I had to wade in water up to our waists and brace ourselves against the rush of on-coming waves to walk around the second wall.

The waves were a pleasant surprise. They were bigger and more powerful than I thought they would be. As the tide came up so did the waves. We knew the swell was building because last night as related in all the local news broadcasts Jeff Clarke had put out the “call” for the Mavericks Big Wave contest for tomorrow, Saturday. When I had watched Mary and Marty from the seawall the waves were two feet, if that. By the time I paddled out they were a consistent three feet with punch. After and hour, a few sets of four to five foot waves came through. I positioned myself a little further north of the others. There I could catch both left and right waves. The lefts are faster because they break directly over the shallow water of the reef. The rights are much longer because the swell breaks along the contour of the rocks of the reef and the adjacent sand. Thus from the same point I caught several good lefts and several long right waves. The sun was out, the air was warm, the wind died and everybody had a great time catching these consistent fun waves.

While I was out for an hour and a half, the tide came up. It was no longer possible to walk in front of the second seawall. To get back to the ramp I had to walk way in up a narrow ravine to the start of the seawall to climb up on it and walk along the top. Getting my board up there was not easy. I set the tail on some rocks, propped the nose up against the top of the wall, pulled myself up to the top of the wall and then gripped the nose of my board and arm-curled, hand over hand the board up to the top. There I was standing on a wet six-inch ledge balancing myself and a nine-foot surfboard. I was a little dicey but I made it. At the other end of the wall, I did the reverse, which including jumping about four feet to the sand and rocks below. Not a fun venture. But, all in all it was a great session and a great day.