February 25, 2013 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
9:15 am to 10:20 am	2’ to 3’, sets to 3.5’
Mid upcoming tide	Offshore north breeze
Warm sunny day	Good rehab session

Here was the Bolinas Surf Report from the 2-Mile Surf Shop, written by Jaime the starving artist cartoonist: “With the upcoming tide there is still a bump rolling through the Clam Patch as well as at the Snags. This is all thigh-to-a-very-occasional-waist high slide. Six folks on longboards over at the Clam Patch are discussing last night’s Oscars right now.”

The Oscars were last night and Argo won best picture, Daniel Day Lewis won best actor for Lincoln and Ang Lee won best director for The Life of Pi.

Marty, Mary, Hank, Jaime, David who rides the Becker board and one other were at the Patch when I took my daily photos of conditions. As stated in the 2-Mile surf report, the waves were small. At 8 o’clock the San Francisco buoy reported 8 foot swells at 14 seconds, direction 320 degrees and water temperature at 49 degrees. The direction was too far north to come into Bolinas, and we had just a small wind swell on top of a remnant of this past weekend’s south swell, resulting in weak and infrequent two to three foot peaks at the Patch.

“Hey have a good time.” Jaime drove up in his truck, rolled down the window and greeted me. He was on his way to open up the 2-Mile surf shop.

“How’s the water?” I asked.

“Cold!” Then Jaime paused and thought about it. “Let me re-phrase that. It’s BLOODY cold!” and off he drove.

Only David was at the Patch when I entered the water. Shu-Shu came out a few minutes after me. All the others had left. Jaime was first. Mary was walking up the ramp as I came down. Hank exited the water as I walked across the top of the first seawall and Marty went in a few minutes after I had paddled out to the peak. Thus David, Shu-Shu and I had the Patch to ourselves on a warm sunny morning with small, no-fear waves in freezing water.

My surf rehab was going well. In one hour I caught eight waves. My best ride was a good right curl that I rode on my knees. I locked into the wave, ducked under the lip of the curl as it pitched over my head and maneuvered the swell all the way to shore.

As usual, it was another beautiful Marin morning.