July 12, 2012 Thursday

Pacifica	Linda Mar
9:00 am to 10:30 am	3' to 4', sets to 6', occasional overhead
High dropping tide	Offshore, NW cross wind to stiff onshore breeze
Overcast, drizzle to patchy sun	Fun session

Email to Jack "Powermouse" - a Dave Sweet team rider

Jack -

This morning I ventured out to Linda Mar as a tune-up for Saturday's Kahuna Kupuna surf contest. I was determined to go out regardless of conditions. Saturday they could be lousy - like the last two years - late in the afternoon, low tide, strong onshore winds, chop and overhead walls. So I was going out no matter what.

Internet predictions were poor, same old stuff we have been getting for the last couple of weeks and guess what? Predictions for Saturday are the same - local north windswell, 5 ft at 8 seconds with NW wind at 5 knots early. Weather predictions are also the same - early morning cloud cover to patchy sun. Only positive is the tide - 4 ft high tide at 10:30 am. Lets hope we are in an early heat.

You and I have often said we don't care for Linda Mar. This morning confirmed our assessment - choppy, wind blown and big. The north end was closeout boomers with nobody out. A crowd of twenty was at the very south end of the beach where a left peak was breaking. I went down there.

The wind was all over the place. In the 90 minutes that I was in the water the wind shifted from offshore, to stiff NW cross breeze, to full in-your-face onshore wind to light offshore wind. As I was leaving it was back to full onshore wind that was cold.

As I was paddling out through the chop I though of you. We hate this place, so tell me again - "Why are we doing this?" Is it just for the glory of a trophy? Well I have paid my $70 thus I am committed. I won't waste my money, thus I will be there.

To my surprise, Jacek showed up. He now lives in San Francisco, Ocean Beach was a mess, and so he came down here. Of course he the right board and managed to stroke into every wave that he tried for.

The waves were better than they looked. The bottom forced all of the walls to break left and the rides could be long. Typical Linda Mar, I could see the sets coming way, way out there; the waves would build but wouldn't break until they were close to shore. The take-offs were flat, you had to go straight initially to let the wave build, then swing left and hum down a long wall … or have it collapse in front of you. I caught about ten waves, and a couple of them were long, high in the curl rides. All in all it was a fun session.

Back at the car, Roy Earnest, head honcho of the contest, was trying to talk the guy parked next to me into signing up. Roy took off before I got a chance to speak to him. He was talking to Archie, an old surfer like us, who learned to surf in San Diego, went to college in Northern California and froze his ass off surfing up here before the days of decent wetsuits. Like me, career, marriage and kids got him out of surfing for several years. Then, when he was 38, he took a business trip to Hawaii and from the 20th floor of his hotel he watched the surfers at Waikiki and decided to rent a board. After four hours in the water, he was hooked and decided to return to surfing. On the fight home he stressed about how he was going to announce to his wife and grown up kids that he was going to take up surfing again. They thought he was nuts. But since that moment he has surfed steadily for 30 years, loves it and agreed that it was the best decision he ever made. If Archie joins the contest he will be in our heat; he's 68.

So if today was any indication, most likely, come Saturday the waves will be crappy, the wind will be blowing, it will be cold, but we will have a good time.

Let me know what you are thinking.

See you there,

Lorenzo