February 22, 2013 Friday

Bolinas	Patch
10:15 am to 11:20 am	2’ to 3’, occasional 4’
Mid dropping tide	Slight NW cross breeze
Warm sunny day	Fun session

Another surfer was walking several yards ahead of me as I headed for the Patch with my board in hand. My friends were out at the far peak near the outside rock. This guy was old school – a single fin longboard with a thin nose, no leash, no booties and no gloves. He paddled out to the inside right peak and immediately stroked into a wave. I didn’t even think about going out to this peak. While I was putting on my gloves, this guy caught another good one. He calmly paddled towards the peak as it jumped up over the rocks of the Patch reef, glided into the top of the wave, drifted left, pulled a huge fish-tail turn to the right, dropped down the face with his knees slightly bent and one hand in the air, cruised under the white water and climbed back into the swell. He quickly ran to the nose, wrapped five toes over the nose of the board, stepped back, switched stance (yes, right foot forward), and hung a big left turn as the wave collapsed on shore.

Yes, Rob, Mr. Malibu, was back.

I remember him from last summer when we had a string of south swells that formed a beautiful left peak north of the Groin. Rob has the Malibu style, which is the ability to hang five on a six-inch wave. Most of the time Malibu (at least 300 days of the year) is less than two feet. Due to crowds, all the good surfers learn to rip up tiny waves. As it turned out, Rob did learn to surf at Malibu and frequented all the other right point breaks along that stretch of the California coast. I hadn’t seen him since last summer; he was back and he ripped it up.

With Mr. Malibu dominating the inside peak, I decided to join the Bolinas regulars at the outer peak. Besides I was anxious to get some of the left waves that Mary and Marty were riding on the north edge of Patch reef.

“So Mary what would you write about this morning’s session?”

She thought about it briefly. “The fact that we waited for the tide to turn. That was a good move. The waves got better as the tide dropped.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Seven am.”

“But you didn’t enter the water until nine. That’s two hours. So what did you do for two hours?”

“Oh it was no problem. We sat around and talked.” High tide was 8:30 am (5.7 ft). The others who also waited were: Marty, Mark the archaeologist, Hank, Jaime the starving artist cartoonist and Bill from Berkeley.

I’m glad they did because I had a fun session and enjoyed chatting with them at the outside rock between sets.