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.