April 5, 2013 Friday

Bolinas	Patch
9:20 am to 10:40 am	2’ to 3’, sets to 4’
Mid dropping tide	NW cross breeze
Dense fog to overcast with light rain	Fun session

“Loren, don’t bother taking any pictures. You can’t see anything.” Russ greeted me at the base of the ramp, dripping wet with his big board in his hand and his paddle sticking in the sand. Russ was right I couldn’t see a thing – just a wall of white due to a dense fog.

“So how were the waves?”

“Good. I caught some good ones.”

“How big were they?”

“There’re waves. Some were shoulder high. The whole crowd is out at the Patch – Mary, Marty, David and Shu-Shu.”

I walked to the north edge of the seawall. Out of the whiteness I could the outline of the bluff, the downed tree and the shore break. I took two pictures just to historically record the conditions.

Jacek showed up. “Well?” he asked.

“Russ tells me there are waves, shoulder high, so I’m going.”

“Me too.”

Russ drove by while I was suiting up. “I’m going out because you said it was good,” I commented to him. “If it’s crappy, it will be your fault and you’ll be the subject of a future blog post.”

“Have a good time,” and off he drove. Fortunately Russ was right – the waves were good and I had a great time.

From the shore I couldn’t see anyone in the water. It was eerie paddling out. The whiteness shrouded out everything after the shore break. I paddled blindly towards where I knew the break was. After a few moments I saw a rider coming down a good inside wave. It was Shu-Shu. She cut back, let the inside curl build up and then turned into the shore break. I blindly continued paddling on and in a few more moments I encountered the crowd. It was like entering a room and I slowly continued until I could see everyone. There was Mary, Marty, Martha, David who rides the Becker board, Jacek the tattoo artist, Bill from Berkeley on his wave ski, Dexter the Bolinas local and DB the Safeway checker.

Since everyone was taking the rights, I had the lefts to myself. On my first wave I probably should have gone right, but I was anxious to go left, my comfortable side. I dropped down a fairly fast face, trimmed under the white water that was sliding down from the top of the wave, swung back into the swell and cruised. What a good ride; I knew I was into a good session. That was the first of a series of good left waves. I felt that I was back in the groove – climbing high in the curl, stepping to the middle of the board, crouching down and gliding across several steep faces. Near the end of my session I took a couple of rights and began working my way towards shore. Martha was on the inside connecting the good shore break right waves of Robinson’s Reef – named after the Robinson family (Martha, husband Jim and son Woody). Our tactic was to catch the waves over the Patch reef rocks and cruise right towards the sand south of the reef. When we connected the waves were great, but the wait between waves was long.

My last wave clobbered me. I connected on a good one over the rocks, was up early and quickly moving towards the shore break. My confidence was sky high; I was feeling like I was eighteen again, thus I was going to milk every inch of this wave. I pushed myself into the shore break and imagined myself running to the nose to trim across a fast shore break curl. The reality was I shuffled to the middle of the board and was caught in “no man’s land” when the wave sucked out; dry sand appeared below me and I free fell into six inches of water. I bounced off the top of my board, rolled spread-eagle off of it and bounced off the bottom. The wave was strong and threw me around under water and my board hit me in my calf. It hit me hard; reminding me that getting hit by your own board is the cause of most surfer injuries. When I surfaced the leash was wrapped twice around the tail of my board and I couldn’t get it loose. The next wave hit me and rolled me around some more. I had to pull the leash scrap off my ankle before I could stand up. Fortunately I was ok; but I was lucky.

To top off a fun session, I stopped at the Lunch Box in Stinson Beach and treated myself to my favorite sandwich, the BLT. I ate it driving over the mountain and stopped at the Bay Model in Sausalito to check out Surfrider’s Ocean Plastic Art Show. The show was opening tomorrow and it looked great.

It was just another beautiful morning in Marin.