February 11, 2013 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
9:30 am to 10:20	3’ to 4’, sets to 5’
Mid upcoming tide	Slight onshore breeze to stiff NW wind
Warm sunny day	Fun re-hab session

Today the waves were big and powerful. Per Stormsurf, a date-line swell from Japan was hitting California. It arrived this weekend and was still sizeable but decreasing today, resulting in 7.5 foot swells at 17 seconds. A high pressure front was holding 600 miles offshore and was pushing out low pressure sitting over the Sierras, creating a pressure gradient that set up offshore winds and warm temperatures for the entire state.

Nobody was out at the Channel; the waves were too walled up. The crew was out at the Patch: Mary, Marty, Hank, David who rides the Becker board, Jacek the tattoo artist, Ray the recently retired Petaluma fireman, Creighton, Russ the stand-up guy and a couple others. Everyone was connecting on long rides, especially Jacek. As usual, he sat fifty yards further outside that everyone else and patiently waited for “the big ones,” and his patience paid off. I watched him from the side as I paddled over a set wave calmly dropping down the face of a head-high wave, a wave he rode a long ways up to the shore break. Mary claims she is “re-learning” to surf after having missed a few weeks due to a bad back. But I saw her tucked in a tight crouch ducking under the curl of a fast inside wave. David also caught several long rides. That’s Ray in the above photo cutting across the face of a four-foot inside wall. Marty and Hank managed to catch their share of waves.

My “surf re-hab” continued and I made some progress. I caught four waves in 45 minutes. Three of them I took on my knees and managed to stand up at the end of the ride on two of them. On my second wave, while lying down and dropping down the face of a four-foot wave, I dug a rail, instantly rolled and tumbled into the white water.

Marty was going in, so I decided to follow after him. I caught my last wave and looked for Marty. Getting in was not going to be easy. The tide had come up and the waves were now pounding against the north seawall; making it impossible to walk in front of it. I watched Marty closely to see what he was going to do. He decided to paddle around the seawall and go in at the playpen (the sand beach between the two seawalls). He was 200 yards ahead and inside of me. I watched him flounder. Marty got trapped between the incoming four-foot pounders and the three-foot backwash rebounding off the wall. The incoming and outgoing waves would collide, shooting water about ten feet into the air. Marty was stuck in the middle of it. Between sets, he struggled to paddle past the wall and to finally come in at the playpen.

Seeing his ordeal, I went straight in to try my luck with the gangplank to walk along the top of the seawall. The end of the aluminum gangplank is tied to a retractable pulley that one pushes on to lower it the beach. I pushed hard and it came down allowing me to walk along its narrow path to the top of the seawall. At the other end are four ladder rungs and one hand grasp bolted into the concrete wall for stepping down to the sand. Climbing down these steps was also precarious, a real challenge for us old guys. I had to lower my board tail first to the sand and gingerly step down the rungs in my wet booties and sand covered gloves. But I made it.

Over coffee, Marty and I sat in the warm sun at the Coast Café and commented on how beautiful it was today and how going out into the water and waves was well worth the effort.