August 20, 2009 Thursday

La Jolla	Windansea
7:30 am to 8:00 am	3', sets head high
Mid upcoming tide	Onshore cross breeze
High overcast	Just took pictures

Yesterday afternoon Kate and I checked into the La Jolla Travelodge on La Jolla Blvd at the south end of town. Our room was two blocks from the water and I was anxious to check out the beach scene. We walked down to the end of the road and to my surprise ten surfers were vying for a beautiful peak that peeled in both directions. I recognized the place immediately, Windansea, one of the best breaks in California. Kate and I had flown to San Diego to attend a dinner for my mother’s 90th birthday. Fly down, attend the dinner, spend one night and fly back. A quick trip, thus I had no plans for surfing. We’re at the Travelodge because it’s close to the dinner and it’s reasonable. I had no idea that it was so close to Windansea. This morning I sat on the wall above the break to have my morning coffee and muffin and to take a few photos. Six surfers were on it. The locals would consider it flat, but the sets were head high, with well-formed peaks that broke in both directions allowing surfers to drive right up to the shore. I took 63 photos but only kept the twelve best ones. The above photo gives a good perspective on the shape and quality of the peak.

The swell was small and all the other spots were barely breaking. But here at Windansea, the three-foot wind swell jumped up to six feet. Per Matt Warshaw in his Encyclopedia of Surfing, an offshore canyon funnels the swell onto a flat rock reef that amplifies the waves into a consistent well-shaped peak that is rideable year round from two to twelve feet and offshore kelp beds keep the chop down. Windansea is one of the most dependable breaks on the coast. It breaks left and right over flat sandstone shelves that are often covered with sand. North swells create better rights, south swells produce long lefts and medium and low tides are preferred. Today, set waves consistently peaked at the same spot about sixty yards offshore. The waves peeled both left and right without sectioning right up to the sandstone shelves on the beach.

Localism is the main negative of Windansea. A single world-class consistent peak located in a densely populated affluent neighborhood where the locals are fiercely protective of their break. The localism reputation started in the sixties with the Windansea Surf Club, a group of highly accomplished and hard partying surfers, and the locals have never let up since then.

I surfed here once when I was fourteen, fifty years ago. I was on the one and only “Surf Safari” that the Palos Verdes YMCA ever organized, a weeklong camping/surf trip down the Southern California coast. Fifteen teenage boys with sleeping bags, clothes, food and camp stove stuffed into a cattle truck with their surfboards sticking out between the slats of the rear gate. We were an instant “crowd” wherever we went. One afternoon we pulled up to Windansea and disgorged out into the water, fifteen beginners paddling out to a single peak of overhead waves. The locals didn’t welcome us. I remember successfully going down the first overhead wave of my life and to me it was a great day. From then on I had a love for Windansea and have always wanted to return but the opportunity never arose.