June 8, 2009 Monday

Bolinas	Channel
7:50 am to 10:30 am	2' to 3', sets to 4'
Low upcoming tide	Offshore (N), to cross-wind (NW)
Overcast, high fog	Fun session

The rights were firing today. At 7:00 am nobody was out as I stood south of the Groin wall to take some photos. The minus 1 foot low tide had just turned, ebb tide was still flowing out of the lagoon but was slowing. At mid-Channel, two to three-foot walls were peeling left and right. The south swell was still with us. The rights looked good with long continuously breaking fast curls shooting into the bay towards Seadrift. The lefts were sucking out in six inches of water, impossible to ride. The rights could be breaking too fast to make, but with the tide coming in conditions should improve.

Back at the cars, the crowd began to arrive. Kathy the biology teacher with board in hand headed for the Channel. Hans was suiting up. I told him the Channel looked better than the Patch. Doug and Jim pulled up and were glad that the call was the fast breaking Channel instead of the slower breaking Patch. Marty arrived and was ready to go. A couple other surfers showed up and by the time I entered the water we had a small crowd of eight at the mid-Channel peak.

The waves were tricky to catch. The swells were true ground swells, not wind waves. They stretched across the impact zone, approached flat and would jump up when they hit the sandbar and would break quickly to the right. On my first wave, I took off late on a two-foot wall, jumped up and was quickly dumped as the wall collapsed all around me and sent me flying. Then I knew I can’t take off late; I’ll have to get into the waves early, stay high in the curl to make the first section. This meant going for them when the swell was flat before they hit the sandbar and paddling hard to gain board speed to get into them as they jumped up. The sandbar forced all the waves to break to the right. Don’t even think of going left (my favorite direction) because they all are going to start breaking at the apex of the sandbar and quickly peel to the right. Each wave I caught proved I was right. I kept positioning myself closer to the apex instead of sitting on the shoulder. With board speed I could get into the wave early, turn sharply to the right, hang at the top of the curl and shoot through the first section. Having locked in my strategy, I had one of the best sessions that I have had in weeks.

The others got good rides also. Marty and Kathy caught several good ones. Doug took the strategy of sitting on the right-hand edge of the peak, waited for the sets, connected with the four-footers and cruised on several long, long, rights until then died out on the Seadrift side of the Channel. Jim was having a difficult time with the fast peeling rights. Many a time I saw him bear hugging his board as the nose pearled coming down three-foot peaks. But he also connected with a couple of set waves, got up cleanly and shot down long clean right walls.

After two hours, I worked my way in. The tide had come up and the lefts were now rideable. Joe the unfriendly local surfer was at the north end of the peak straight out from the Groin Pole. From a distance I saw him connect on two fast left breaking curlers. I’ll go for a couple of those to end my session. I caught two of them. First one was slow and the second was a sucking out two-foot curl that I made. I rode that wave for all it was worth, driving through the small curl, straightened out, dug my skeg into the sand and stepped off in a few inches of water. It was a great session.