January 19, 2009 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
8:45 am to 10:30 am	3' to 4'
Mid outgoing tide	Strong offshore wind
Sunny and clear	So - so session

The swell readings looked promising but the theme of this morning’s session was too much offshore wind. White caps far out to sea greeted me as I drove over the ridge at Pantoll. I saw plenty of white water at the Channel and the Patch and plumes of spray coming off the lines of surf at Stinson Beach. Per the buoy report the swell was 6 ft at 14 seconds with a 15.5 knots East-South-East wind (110 degrees). What a strong offshore wind I thought to myself.

Because of the Martin Luther King holiday, several cars were already parked on Brighton Ave at 8:00 am. Ten surfers were at the Groin scratching for four-foot walls that were breaking too fast. The current was pouring out of the lagoon and impacting the waves. Four people were at the Patch where the incoming lines looked good. Marty and Mary were there, thus it was an easy decision to me; I went to the Patch.

Matt pulled up while I was suiting up. He had not been in the water for five weeks due to illness, new job assignments, holidays and the cold weather and was anxious to get back into the water. When we entered the water, the waves were stacking up on the inside; line after line of white water. I said to Matt to wait for a lull, which never came. We finally launched ourselves into the on-coming waves, paddled through several small waves until reaching the calm past the first line of waves. Cathy from the Russian River area and Mary were paddling in. A little early for them to be coming in I thought. Russ and Marty were sitting in the middle of the impact zone. Russ decided to paddle in. The surf must be lousy; everyone is paddling in. Marty joined Matt and I as we continue to paddle out to the furthest peak. Hank was there. A set came through and Hank was on it, a three-foot wave that closed out in front of him.

The waves were difficult to catch. All four of us paddled for several waves but only caught a few of them. The waves consisted of small wind swells on top of ground swells. The wind waves would peak and start to break way out there and then reform, merge with the ground swell and break again. We would see something peaking and feathering way outside thinking a big set was coming in only to discover wind chops breaking on the top of flat ground swells. The trick was to catch the ground swells as they were breaking. But to do it, one would have to catch the wind swell on top, gain some speed and then drop into the ground swell. This required timing and luck. Luck to be in the right position, because the wind swells were everywhere, and timing to catch a wind swell steep enough to propel you into the groundswell.

I did manage to catch a couple of good waves. Marty and I caught one together and rode the white water a long ways. On another, I took off on a steep peak, turned left into a well-defined curl, shot through one section, cutback to let the wave reform, went through another section on the inside and ended up in waist high water. Later a big set came through; Marty caught the first one and got a good long ride. I caught the third wave, a head-high wall that broke in front of me; I stayed in the broken wave while it reformed into a steep inside curl. While riding the white water, I saw water boiling around an exposed rock, I cutback, went around it and continued on into the inside north edge of the Patch.

“What am I doing?” I said to myself. “I have a brand new board and am driving it over shallow water and rocks. I’m going to ruin it.”

It was cold out there. The water was 52 degrees and with a constant wind blowing, evaporation was sucking the warmth right out of me. After an hour my toes and fingers were beginning to get numb, despite wearing 5 mm booties and thick gloves. A half hour later we all came in.

By now the crowd at the Groin had swollen to twenty-five. Nobody was getting any decent rides. Though breaking cleanly to the left, the waves were peeling off too fast to make them. They were beautiful; it was sunny and warm and the offshore wind was sending plumes of spray off the tops of the waves. Yet no one was getting any rides.

Marty felt good about his three hours in the water. Matt caught a couple of good waves and stated that his disposition and general outlook on the day already had immensely improved. I too felt good about the exercise. We agreed to try it again Wednesday; maybe conditions will improve by then.