August 1, 2008 Friday

Bolinas	Groin
9:00 am to 11:00	Consistent 3’ to 4’, sets head high
Low upcoming tide	Slight offshore breeze
Sunny and warm	Excellent waves, great session

“Damn! I busted my fin,” I said to myself. I’m standing in waist deep white water at the Groin examining the bottom of my board. My 9’2” Haut board has three fins, all the same size, six inches. The right one is split vertically in half, the front half of it, the sharp leading edge for cutting through the water, is gone. All that is remaining is the back half and the base which is still firmly screwed into the fin box. The bottom of my board has twelve patched holes and now a broken fin, which I will have to replace. 

I had just clobbered some kid going full blast. 

To my surprise the waves today were excellent, Bolinas at its best: three to four foot perfect, machine groomed, left peeling, fast waves, lines that marched across the entire surfing area from the Channel to the Groin to the beach with a slight offshore breeze that held up the curls. The Internet sites didn’t predict this. Stormsurf forecasted five-foot NW wind swells at nine seconds combined with a fading two-foot south swell. These are not unusual conditions, yet the waves were perfect. 

When I arrived I pulled into the last marked off parking spot; it’s 8:15 am and the parking lot is full, there must be waves. There were eight people out at the Groin and five at the Patch; Mary and Marty were out there. I watched Barry the good local longboarder score on three great rides within few minutes. The above photo is Barry on a good one. I went for the curls at the Groin. 

Josh the Bolinas fisherman was the furthest one out at the Channel peak. Josh who is about my age or maybe older has a unique style. He rides a longboard on his knees and is very good. I can tell from his paddling, positioning for waves, judgment and wave selection that he has been surfing for a long time. He sits at the center of the peak, waits for the sets and takes off late. Just before the wave breaks on him, he strokes once or twice, catches the wave, jumps to his knees, manually turns the board by grabbing the outside rail and leaning into the wave, locks himself in the curl and trims down the line. His technique is much faster for positioning in the wave than taking the time to stand up. Given today’s perfect waves, Josh was locked into curl after curl. 

I paddled over to Barry to tell him that I had a couple of good shots of him this morning. He told me that he had checked out my surf journal and enjoyed it. 

“I have a great shot of you from last January. So check out the January postings. It was on a Wednesday with a strong offshore wind and great waves,” I commented. 

“So who takes pictures of you?” Barry asked. “Someone should take shots of you.” 

“No one,” I responded. 

Last Monday Barry and I surfed the Groin and between then and today he had flown to Ohio, returned early this morning and was tired. “One wave and you are ok, right?” I commented. 

“Of course. As soon as I saw these waves, I was ready,” he responded. I too was exhausted from lack of sleep. Wednesday night Terry and I went to the George Thorogood – Buddy Guy concert at the Marin Civic Center, great show got to bed after midnight. Yesterday I was the “official” photographer for my wife’s writers critique group’s cupcake and champagne party. Cupcakes, champagne, late dinner in the City; again got to bed after midnight. We over sixty types cannot live the highlife like we use to. This morning feeling physically drained, I watched these beautiful waves coming through. I recalled many a time from my high school and college days going surfing with a hangover; merely stepping into cold water and catching one wave, the exhaustion melts away, adrenaline kicks in and one instantly perks up. It happened again this morning. One wave and I was into it. 

By the time I entered the water the crowd had grown to eleven and more were coming. With great waves and surrounded by good surfers, how am I going to get any waves? I reverted to my old tactic: sit inside, take off late and wait for an opportune moment, such as going for the second or third wave of a set or waves the everyone else lets go by. I used this strategy with great success. Once I saw a good wave coming, I would scan the surfers around me to see who else was going for the wave. I would watch their eyes, are they focused on catching the approaching wave or are they looking to paddle over it. Early in my session I caught three waves in a row where others decided at the last moment to let the wave go by. I would turned, stroke twice, push into the wave, quickly jump up, turn left, run to the middle of the board and crouch down through the initial section. For these three waves I made it through the first section, stalled a second and then shot through another steep section. For my two-hour session I used my tactic to catch one good wave after another. 

Near the end of my session, I was tiring, the wind was picking up and the crowd was growing. In came a beautiful wave, I carefully watched the eyes of the guy next to me. He was thinking about going for it, at the last moment he changed his mind and moved to paddle over the wave. That was my opportune moment; I turned, stroke twice and was into a great fast peeling curl. I climbed high in the curl, positioned below the white water sliding down from the top of the wave and crouched down in the middle of the board to shoot down a curl that was feathering twenty feet in front of me. There I was firmly locked in the curl, flying down a beautiful four-foot wave and two people, a young guy and a girl, are paddling out. I saw them and instantly calculated that I can make it in front of them. And I would have if they stopped to let me pass. But they kept paddling out. Now it was too late, I was going to hit them. They bailed out; the nose of my board went over the top and middle of the young guy’s board. “Wham!” my fin drove into the rail of his board, my board stopped and I flew off the front. Fortunately no one was hurt. I knew we hit hard so I examined the bottom of my board and saw that the right fin had broken in half. I paddled over to this kid, apologized for colliding with him, commented that we hit hard and asked if his board was damaged. He mumbled something and paddled off. 

I went back out for a couple more waves and then call it quits. This was one of my best sessions in a long, long time.