July 10, 2013 Wednesday

Pacifica	Linda Mar
8:50 am to 10:00 am	2’, sets to 3’, occasional 4’
Mid upcoming tide	Steady onshore breeze
Overcast – June gloom like	Fun session

Today was a day of firsts for me:

• First time surfing away from Bolinas since my operation last August.

• First time using my friend Brad’s surfboard.

• First time going through the new tunnel at Devil’s Slide

My surfing rehab began mid-January. The operation was the last week of August 2012, followed by 58 days of recuperating, a couple of surf sessions at the Patch, followed by an internal infection that put me back in the hospital for four days and out of the water for another three months. In January I returned to the Patch with weak arms and legs and messed up timing, but slowly, little by little I regained my strength and confidence. I have surfed 37 times since January, now my arms feel strong, my timing (read that as ability to pop up) has improved and I felt I was ready to branch out. With the small swells and south winds of the past two weeks, I had talked with Hank about going to Pacifica. When my son Kevin called yesterday about surfing with him and his girl friend Tori at Linda Mar, I said yes.

Nothing spectacular to report concerning the waves, it was an overcast ugly day with choppy blown out waves, but it felt good to jump into a new environment.

Today I rode my friend Brad's board for the first time. Brad, a life-long friend who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, asked me to store his board and to use it whenever I wanted to. He and I learned to surf together as kids, were surf buddies through high school and were roommates for four years at UC Santa Barbara. Recently Brad's daughter and her family lived in Manhattan Beach, thus Brad purchased an old Becker board to use whenever he visited them. A few months ago, Erin's husband transferred to San Francisco and they purchased a house in Greenbrae. Erin informed Brad that he had to move his board because she didn't have room to store it at her new house.

So it's Lorenzo to the rescue. I now have use of a 9' 4", 23 inches wide classic Becker longboard that is longer, wider and thicker than my 9' 2" Haut. It's a real paddling machine. This morning Tori used my Haut and I was on Brad's board for the first time. It floats me higher and paddles faster than the Haut. I loved it. I was able to catch waves while they were still flat and cruise into them like Jacek does. I now have a new Patch board.

After our hour session, Kevin had to head south to go to work at Oracle in Redwood City. He suggested that I join them at the Half Moon Bay Coffee House at the corner of Main Street and Highway 92 for breakfast. I was all for it because I would get to venture through the new tunnel that cut through the San Pedro Mountain to bypass the treacherous Devil's Slide.

The Tom Lantos tunnel opened to the public last March 6 and consists of a pair of north and south bound bores that run 4,200 feet through the mountain, providing two lanes in both directions, has 32 ventilation fans, is well lit, took six years to build and cost $439 million. The project was fully funded by Federal Emergency Relief funds, secured by Rep. Tom Lantos, who pushed Congress for years to approve the project. Stating that a tunnel was not feasible, CalTrans in the early 1990's proposed a new inland route around the mountain. The locals objected and via a 1997 ballot initiative voted 74% for a tunnel. Nine years later funding was finally secured and construction began and last March it finished.

For six years, I drove by the project on my way to surf breaks in Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz and each time was amazed by the scope of the project. Boring into the mountain began at the south end above Montara, and crews built a 162-foot long arch bridge on over a canyon that runs along the north side of the mountain. It was well worth it. What an impressive ride over the bridge and through the long bore to the other end. The tunnel journey is faster and safer. No more nail baiting glimpses over the 1000-foot cliff that drops into the sea and the crashing waves onto the rocks below. And the project is not done. The final phase is to convert the old Devil Slide road into bike and hiking trails.

If you ever get the chance to travel south to Half Moon Bay or Santa Cruz, take Highway 1 and enjoy the ride.

July 3, 2013 Wednesday

Bolinas	Channel
8:45 am to 10:15 am	2' to 3', occasional 4'
High upcoming tide	No wind to stiff west breeze
Low fog to patchy sunshine	Fun session

Russ the stand-up guy was toweling off when I arrived at 7:40. He claimed that for 45 minutes continuous three to four-foot waves came through Green Africa (the outside peak north of the Patch reef) and that he was on them until they died. The biology teachers, Kathy and Clark, came up the ramp while I was chatting with Russ and stated they had connected on several fun ones at the Channel. Bibbit and Jason, also school teachers on summer leave, came by on their way to the Channel. From the seawall I watched David who rides the Becker board glide into a couple of nice lefts at a peak half way between the Channel and the Groin wall. This morning the San Francisco buoy reported a 3-foot south swell at 15 seconds combined with a 3-foot north wind swell. I decided to join David at that fun peak between the Channel and the Groin.

After floundering around for an hour, I finally figured it out. The trick was to wait patiently outside, past everybody else, for the sets. They came in groups of four to six waves, with the third and fourth ones being the largest. I would sit way outside, let the first two waves go by and then connect on the third or fourth wave. I managed to catch them while they were still fairly flat, like Jacek the tattoo artist does. A wind swell on top of a ground swell would jump up, I would stroke like mad to catch it and the momentum of the wind swell would carry me over the edge of the ground swell. This left me with plenty of time to stand up and position my board high in the wave as I dropped over the ledge, resulting in a good, long ride.

Twice I changed pattern and took off late. I jumped up to my knees as white water was feathering in front of me, ducked under the curl of the first section, coasted out onto the shoulder, stood up and trimmed through the inside curl near the Groin pole. After an hour and a half, my spent arms were telling me it was time to head in. On my last ride, a sizeable wall broke on my back, pushing me into a mountain of white water, I jump to my knees, turned the board left with my hands and shot pass the breaking part of the wave into the curl that was reforming on the inside. I stood up to glide through the last part of the curl before the wave died in the deep water near the end of the Groin wall.

What a fun session I thought to myself as I walked up the beach. I glanced back to see David on another good one. David, who never gets out before 11 am, still had another forty-five minutes to go. I don't know how he does it.