May 28, 2008 Wednesday

Bolinas	Groin
9:00 am to 10:30 am	2’, sets to 3’, occasional 4’
Mid outgoing tide	Slight onshore breeze
High overcast	A So – So session

Scott who only surfs on Wednesdays and I were sitting outside during one of those long lows between sets when about twenty yards away something big broke the calm surface. Earlier while walking down the beach to the Groin, Marty mentioned that Mary told him that Professor Steve who was out earlier had a bad feeling about this morning. He saw something huge moving along the bottom and was afraid it was a shark, thus he got out. I reminded Marty that a shark attacked Lee Fontan here six years ago on the Seadrift side of the Channel on May 31, 2002, so sharks are around this time of year. “Thus we have three days to go,” was his response. 

This morning I had no expectations for waves. Kate and I had just returned from a great trip to Providence, RI to visit daughter Allison. I had not surfed for six days and I was anxious to get back into the water. Stormsurf.com had rated today a 0.5 on a scale from zero to five. Their prediction was: “No swell of interest forecast, 2 ft or less.” However, the morning’s buoy report had a SSW swell of 2.6 ft at 14 seconds with hardly any wind. South swells go right into Bolinas thus there is some hope. Also, the water temperature had risen to 54 degrees, up from 47 degrees during the big NW winds. Maybe there will be some decent knee-high curls. 

When I arrived at Bolinas, Mary and Marty were already in the water and Scott who only surfs on Wednesdays was suiting up. There must be something there. I charged down to the beach with my camera at the ready. Marty and Mary were into some good small left peeling walls. The above photo is Marty on a decent inside curl. Great I’m going. 

By the time I entered the water, Mary was leaving and Marty had moved from the Groin to the north end of the seawall. “Marty why are you here and not at the Groin?” I asked. “The current is too strong. You can’t hold your position there.” The outflow from the lagoon was at full strength. Even at the north end of the seawall there was a strong pull to the north. But the waves were smaller and walled here. After a couple of frustrating waves all three of us decided to return to the Groin. 

Marty waited on the sand while Scott and I paddled out past the Groin pole. My strategy was to locate a shallow spot and stand in the water to prevent the current from pushing me out to sea. Easier said than done; the shallow places were too far inside to catch the swells. I would have to paddle through the white water of the first wave of a set to be in position to catch the rest, but the strategy basically worked. I was able to remain more or less in the same location despite the strong current. 

The waves consisted of long two to three foot lines that stretched across the bay and broke in one direction. The surface was glassy smooth, the waves were beautiful, but they broke off too fast to make them. Scott and I kept trying to find that point in the bottom that would allow us enough time to make the waves. We never found it. We both managed to go down some fast curls for a second or two before the waves closed out. There were long lows between sets and then a good set of five would appear and then we would sit through another long low. I did connect with one really good wave. I got up fast, almost slipped, climbed high in the wave, planted my front foot two feet from the nose, crouched down through a well-formed curl, shuffled closer to the nose, my board was now parallel to the curl, gained a lot of speed, and felt for an instance my tail-block coming out of the water as the wave finally closed out on me. That was my best ride of the day.

During one of those lows is when it broke the calm surface. We could plainly see that it was an elephant seal and it was huge. We saw its complete body go by as it dove back under. “It must weigh at least a 1000 pounds,” I thought to myself. It surfaced a couple more times. Then it really elevated out of the water with a big fish in its mouth. It flung its head back and forth and slapped the fish onto the surface of water. Again it surfaced with the fish in its mouth and flung it around again and again. After a three or four such encounters, the fish began to break into parts. The seal repeatedly surfaced furiously chopping on another component of its prey until all evidence of the fish disappeared. After about ten to fifteen minutes the attack was over and the elephant seal did not resurface. 

Soon after that we headed back in. Onshore as we were taking off our wetsuits I commented to Scott, “Scott I didn’t want to mention this out in the water, but I think that elephant seal had a shark in its mouth.” 

“So did I. At first I thought it was a salmon, but no it was a three to four foot shark. I sure hope its mother isn’t around.”

To put it mildly, shark talk put a solemn tone on our after-session discourse.