July 9, 2012 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
9:00 am to 10:30 am	2' to 3'
Low tide (0.8 ft at 10:00 am)	Stiff NW cross breeze
Overcast to patchy sunshine	Exercise session

Today was one of those crappy days that Jack the Dave Sweet team rider tells me to not waste my time writing up. But I did write it up and here it is:

The waves just didn't break today. Beautiful peaks would roll through the Patch, but they just kept rolling in and never broke. We would paddle like mad thinking the waves were going to break on us, but instead they would go flat and leave us there fanatically flailing away at the water. Once in awhile a set of waves would break and then quickly die as they moved over deeper water. So why did I go out?

I almost went to Pacifica. I had sent my money in for the Kahuna Kupuna Surf Contest next Saturday and wanted to surf Linda Mar this morning to get a feel for the waves. The Internet surf sites convinced me that Bolinas would be better. Stormsurf predicted 2.6 ft NW at 8 seconds combined with the last of the New Zealand south swell at 2 ft at 14 seconds. Thus this morning was my last chance to connect with the good south swell that began last Friday - when I had a great session at the Patch.

The crowd was evenly split between the Patch and the Groin when I reached the seawall with my camera to check the waves. The Groin crew, that included Marty and David who rides the Becker board, sat fifty yards north of the Groin wall in perfectly flat water. Small fast peeling waves were breaking in the middle of the Channel but no one was there. After a long wait a set came through, both David and Marty caught waves - small curls that were breaking too fast. At the Patch were Mary, Hank, Dexter the Bolinas local, DB the Safeway checker, Hans and stand-up guys Walt the photographer, Frank and Russ. The set waves looked good, but were difficult to catch. Mary, Russ and Hank caught waves while I was standing there and all three were slow and quickly died out. That’s Frank on the stand-up and Mary on a slow one in the above photo. With the tide going out, I figured the Patch would get better, the Groin would get worst, and remembering the good time Friday I headed to the Patch.

All my early morning friends got out of the water while I was suiting up. DB was the first; she had to go to work. Next was Russ who told me I was too late. Frank was making the long paddle to the ramp as I reached the beach with my board in hand. Dexter had just exited the water as I walked along the beach. Next Hank and Mary got out. Of course they encourage me to go out even though I could not see any waves breaking. I watched Walt connect on a good inside curl. He skillfully used his paddle to stay in the wave as it reformed into a shore break wall. He exited the water shortly after that.

I paddled out to join Hans and Susan who always wears sunglasses in the water. Hans expressed some frustration, caught the next set wave, paddle to shore and called it a day. For an hour Susan, another older gentleman and I had the Patch to ourselves. But the breaking waves that I had observed earlier from the seawall had disappeared. The tide was going out, but the waves did not get any steeper as I had hoped. Both Susan and I caught three waves each, nothing to really write about - difficult to catch, slow and with no force. We had to keep going straight to stay in them. When we decided to go in, I told Susan about Jack's "paddle of shame" - that's when one paddles all the way to shore without riding a wave in. Fortunately we caught one that took us half way in, thus allowing us to avoid the "paddle of shame." My best wave was my last one. I connected on an inside right wave near the shore and managed to turn into a nice curl that peeled along the contour of the beach.

Of course we couldn't admit that we had wasted our time. We got some good exercise, and it was another beautiful Marin morning: with pelicans cruising a few feet above the surface, dazzling light patterns on the pools of water on the beach, two fishermen standing on the seawall with four poles set and four surfers going for the small fast peeling curls at the Groin.