May 14, 2008 Wednesday

Bolinas	Groin
9:00 am to 11:00 am	2’, sets to 3’
High dropping tide	No wind
Hot and sunny	Fun session

There’s nothing like a heat wave to get a surfer’s juices flowing, that’s beach weather: hot sun, no wind, tee-shirt, shorts and sandals. It was 72 degrees in our house at 6:30 am this morning. Kate quickly closed up the house to keep the heat out, windows closed, shades down and the curtains drawn. A low pressure to high pressure gradient caused our recent big NW winds. The low pressure has moved on and the high pressure has settled in. The San Francisco Bay Area was in for four days of record high temperatures. 

With high pressure the wind dies and so does the swell. All we have is residual wind swell left over from last week’s big winds; eight feet, eight second NW swells, which little if any reaches into Bolinas. 

Marty, Doug, Robin and two other guys were out at the Groin when I arrived. It was high tide (four feet) and turning. A small peak was breaking about fifty feet out from the end of the Groin wall. They were going for the infrequent, soft-mushy two to three footers. The surface was glassy, the waves looked beautiful but they had little force. 

Doug was smart. He was way on the inside catching the Malibu like rights that formed next to the Groin pole at the end of the wall. Often with a high tide good inside right curls form. In the above photo Doug is on one of them. I was standing on the Groin wall, which is buried in sand, as Doug came cruising by. He had positioned himself at the peak of the wave as it was breaking. He caught the white water as it was starting to slide down the face, swung right and worked back into the swell and then cruised for a long ways. I watched Doug catch three such waves in a brief period. 

I joined Marty and Robin at the outer break. I caught a few nice lefts but was unable to connect with the inside curls. The waves just didn’t wave any power. All my effort was trying to force my board to stay in the wave, which meant pretty much going off straight. 

About 10:00 am Marty and Doug got out and starting heading for the Ramp. I had to catch up with Marty to give him the water samples I had already gathered that morning to take them to Branson for processing. Marty had injured his back, which was why he was getting out so soon, a pulled muscle or muscle cramp. While we were standing there, Robin came up still in her wetsuit completely frustrated. She had just locked herself out of her van. It was a pure accident. She had just opened the door, threw her keys on the front seat when the woman in the car next to her startled her, Robin jumped and shut the door in the locked position. We helped her out by calling the Triple A, who responded quickly by sending a truck from Point Reyes Station, a mere twelve miles away. 

I went back out. By now the tide and current had turned. There was a strong out-flowing current that had knock down the outside peak. I moved inside to catch the rights that Doug had ridden. These too were impacted by the current. I did manage to catch a few that built into good fast right curls and several others that did not build up but just died. I lasted about forty minutes at this and at 11:00 am I called it quits. 

The enjoyment of the morning was the weather, beach weather, the kind that compels you to get in the water. The water temperature had improved. This morning’s buoy report had the water temperature at 49 degrees, which is cold. But at Bolinas the sun warms the water in the shallow lagoon and at low tide pours all that warm water into the sea. 

It was just another typical heat wave in paradise.