| Bolinas | Groin |
| 9:30 am to 11:00 am | Consistent 2' to 3', sets 4' to 5' |
| Mid up-coming tide | Stiff south breeze |
| Fog, overcast, gray, cold | So - So session |
“Morning sickness, that’s what we call this, morning sickness,” explained Pete to Jeff and me as we were checking out the Groin. He was referring to the cold, overcast, dreary morning. There was a good swell but the surf was blown out. Pete’s sickness consisted of a high fog, a cold stiff south breeze, gray skies, a croppy surface and white caps out at sea.
We watched Marty, Jim and another young guy catch some decent waves. The young guy was a good longboarder who surfed without a leash. He caught two long, fast, nose-rides, which peaked my interest. Then on a four-foot wall, he fell during the take-off and his board came all the way into the shore. This is why one wears a leash, to prevent long swims. The leash was a great invention and for the safety of others, a surfer should always wear one. The above photo depicts the retrieval of the board.
Meanwhile the gloom discouraged Pete and Jeff from going out. They kissed it off and left. The weather pattern has been like this all week. I came down on Monday and it was the same: cold, windy, blown out and the waves half the size as today’s waves. On Monday as I walked back to the car after deciding not to go out, Ray was there taking off his wetsuit.
“Man, are you hard up for waves,” I greeted him.
“What do you mean? Conditions were great earlier: no wind, glassy smooth and a good peak in the Channel,” he said. “I moved over to the Seadrift side and caught a couple of good rights. While paddling back out, the wind started blowing. Where did it come from? Within thirty minutes everything turned to junk.”
Doug came walking up from the beach still wet and his board under his arm. “It’s all Ray’s fault. If it hadn’t been for those two good rights, I would have never gone out,” he said. “By the time I suited up and got out there, the wind had come up. It was terrible, just terrible.”
Mark Twain was speaking about this August gloom when he said; “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” Fog and wind are typical of this time of year. Per the Chronicle article, Fog Heaven, by Carl Nolte, the Bay Area fog is caused by:
- Winds around the Pacific High, a semi-permanent area of high pressure, circling clockwise due to the Earth’s rotation, push ocean surface waters south and away from the coast.
- The resulting current causes an upwelling of cold water from the ocean depths.
- The cold surface water cools the air above it causing moisture to condense into fog.
- Warm air in the sun-heated Central Valley rises and is replaced by cool ocean air, which draws the fog inland.
With the fog came this ruinous south wind that brought the crop and the white caps. The San Francisco buoy reported northwest winds at six knots, but the buoy is located several miles off the coast. At Bolinas, the wind was from the south and was much stronger than six knots. Had the wind been offshore, conditions would have been ideal. Stormsurf had predicted the first pulse of the season from the Gulf of Alaska would arrive today and they were right. It arrived this morning. Per the buoy report, at 4:00 am the swell was WNW four feet at eight seconds, and at 5:00 am the swell jumped to five feet every sixteen seconds out of the west.
I had expectations of good waves when I left my house; a sixteen second west swell would go right into Bolinas. Despite the morning gloom, crop and white caps, I decided to go out. The swell was building, the tide was coming up and often the fog lifts and the wind dies by 10:00 am. Stormsurf stated this swell would peak today and then subside over the next three days. I hadn’t surfed for a week and was anxious to get some waves. The fog, wind and crop remained constant while I was out there. I did manage to catch a couple of head high waves, big drops into bouncy rides, nothing of note to write about.
During a low, I paddled over to the Professor, “Professor is that your car I have seen parked for a week in front of the tennis court?” His ancient Volvo with a board locked inside hadn’t moved for days.
“You mean my storage unit?” he said. “I went camping for a week and when I returned the car had died. I’m waiting for my mechanic to return. It’s got a bad fuel pump.”
“The battery must be dead by now,” I added. “Yeah that too,” he said.
Surfers never admit they wasted their time. I did manage to catch a couple of sizable waves, got plenty of exercise and enjoyed connecting with my friends. When walking back to the car, a guy who was suiting up shouted out to me, “You’re smiling, it must have been good.”
It was. It always is.
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