June 30, 2014 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
10:30 am to 12 noon	2', sets to 3', occasional 4'
Mid upcoming tide	NW cross breeze to no wind
Air temp: 65 degrees	Water temp: 57 degrees
Sunny with high clouds	Fun session

Birthday Tribute to Mary

Susan who always wears sunglasses in the water organized a birthday celebration for Mary, which turned out to be a gathering of our surf tribe. Susan set the time for 9:00 am, that period of overlap between the dawn patrollers and us of the gentlemen's hour.

Attendees: in the photo above (left to right) Creighton, Walt the photographer, Mary, Susan who always wears sunglasses, Frank the stand-up guy, Hank, Jack the Dave Sweet team rider, and Larry brother of Russ the other stand-up guy.

Other attendees: Martha with her new Dewey Weber board and Hans who just had his car broken into twice in the last two weeks.

Susan went all out. Check out the spread in the photo – foldout picnic table, two colorful table cloths with maps of California, two gallons of Starbuck's coffee and two homemade coffee cakes (blueberry and sugar), orange juice and bananas. With a lot of chatter about birthdays and age, the crew had their fill and cleared the table of all its goodies. General consensus was that we should have these gatherings more often. Happy birthday Mary and thank you Susan for putting it together.

"Check the calendar and check your watch, there has been a Jack sighting!"

I spotted Jack the Dave Sweet team rider coming up the ramp from checking out the waves shortly before the birthday celebration for Mary. I had not seen him in months. Per Jack a combination of lousy surf, fishing trips and a bad tendon in his shoulder had kept him out of the water. A small deck varnishing job for a friend, good weather and Mary's birthday had brought him back to Bolinas.

Over coffee cake we discussed the Kahuna Kapuna surf contest, the annual older guys contest held at Linda Mar in Pacifica. A few years ago, Jack talked me into entering the contest with him, which I did, and for three years in row we were there. We were in the same age group (65 to 69 year-olds) and were guaranteed a trophy because only five guys were in that age group. Neither one of us entered the contest last year or this year. Jack felt he was screwed out of first place by the local bias of the judges and thus didn't want anything more to do with these guys, and I wasn't going the enter if Jack was not there. Today we had a change of heart. Jack will soon turn 70 and so will I in May, thus we vowed to enter next year's contest because we would be the "young guns" in the 70 to 75 age group. Wish us luck!

After loading up on caffeine and sugar, Jack, Martha, Hans and I headed out to the Patch for a few waves. Fortunately the waves were good, especially the inside rights – a good time was had by all. 

June 27, 2014 Friday

Bolinas	Channel
10:00 am to 11:00 am	2', occasional '3
Mid upcoming tide	Stiff NW cross breeze
Lifting fog to sunny with high clouds and fog on the horizon	Exercise session

Wimpy waves with no size and no push – by the time I got up the ride was over. In an hour I caught four to six waves and only stood up on two of them. The rest I rode on my knees – leaning on the nose to stay in them.

I should have gone to the Patch. I spent a long time trying to decide where to go. Monday and Wednesday I had fun sessions at the Channel when a three foot 15 second south swell was creating some nice peeling lefts at the Channel. The south swell was still in and the sets looked good. The Patch showed promise. Mary and Mark had gone to Ladies Left (north of the Patch reef) and connected on a few good, long rides. Martha and Susan who always wears sunglasses in the water were heading out there. Bill from Berkeley had just exited the water carrying his wave ski.

"Where did you go?" I asked.

"All over. I started at the Patch and there were some good ones and then it died. I paddled over the Channel and then to Seadrift. Seadrift is your call."

That did it; I headed in that direction and paddled out to the furthest peak at the Channel. I didn't want to make the long paddle to Seadrift. The waves were frustrating and slow. I spent 30 minutes paddling around before I caught a wave. On Wednesday my hands froze, so today I wore my gloves – good move.

After our sessions, Martha claimed the Patch was good at first and then it died. "The last twenty minutes I just sat there."

When I entered the water Professor Steve got out and sat on the beach to watch his nine-year-old son Johnny, who is quickly learning how to surf. When I exited the water, Steve was still sitting there and Johnny was still in the water near the Groin pole going for the Malibo rights. I saw him connect on a good one. He took off by the pole, pushed into a right curl, jumped up and trimmed mid-board across the face of a long right peeling wave, and on he went until it collapsed on the sand at the entrance to the lagoon.

Steve and I chatted about the latest Shakespeare performances. He is a tenured professor of Shakespeare and poetry at Mills College. Both of us had read the New York Times review of Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth, currently playing in New York – a graphic production staged in a warehouse where the audience sits on a battlefield of dirt and fake blood flies into the crowd during battle scenes. It sounded great and we would love to see it. Steve is into all the Shakespeare movies; in fact in his course this past year he incorporated several movies and led discussions on the directors' interpretations of the plays.

The fog had lifted and the sun was out when I headed for home. The surf was lousy, but the scenery was good and the exercise and companionship were excellent. 

June 23, 2014 Monday

Bolinas	Groin
9:20 am to 11:00 am	2' to 3', sets to 4'
High tide (4 ft at 10 am)	Stiff onshore breeze to no wind
Air temp: 55 degrees	Water temp: 57 degrees
Overcast to patchy sun with fog on the horizon	Fun session

Last Monday I went to the doctor for a check-up. He looked right at me and said in a stern voice, "you've gained 14 pounds since last January!" I was afraid of that. The surf has been lousy for the last few months, I have only been in the water once a week, I haven't gone to the rec center to work out or jog, and the calorie intake was up, especially with beer. The solution was obvious – exercise more, stick to the high-fiber diet and cut back on the beer and wine.

All of this was going through my mind while standing at the Groin wall watching Hank, DB the Safeway checker and Francine go for some sloppy two-foot waves. I have to go out for the exercise. Then Hank connected on a good left and DB rode one all the way into the cove. The NOAA weather radio said that a 3 ft 16 second south swell was mixed in with a small NW wind swell, so there was potential for some waves. But the stiff onshore wind put an ugly texture on the water. Doug, Creighton and Ray the retired Petaluma fireman claimed that the waves on the Seadrift side were good earlier – before the wind. Russ the stand-up guy confirmed their assessment. Mary had just finished her session at Lady's Left (also known as Green-Africa, a peak north of the Patch reef). She had fun on some long, clean lefts – earlier. Martha had just checked out the surf and was discouraged. She was considering waiting in hope that the wind would die and the waves would clean up.

"Martha, I'm going out for the exercise," I called to her coming up the ramp.

"Good, I'll join you." She changed her mind.

My first two waves were small, mushy and slow. But the waves improved as the tide came in and after an hour the wind stopped and the surface glassed off. Martha, DB, Francine and Bill from Berkeley scored on some good waves.

I decided to use Jacek's technique of sitting way outside, waiting for the sets, positioning at the apex of the peaks, pausing until the last second, digging hard to glide into the tops of the waves and stay there. Three times I scored with this strategy. On my last wave I saw the set coming, paddled over to the peak and waited until the wind swell portion of the wave began to break. I paddled hard and glided into a perfect left peeling wall. The takeoff lifted me up and my board inclined allowing me to easily jump to my feet. I turned into the curl as it was feathering, dropped to mid-swell, stepped to the middle of the board, crouched down and hummed across nice smooth wall. After the initial section, DB paddled for my wave; her board was sticking out over the edge of the curl when she saw me screaming down on her. She quickly pulled back and I shot past her. I continued on, stalled to let the wave build up again, turned back into the curl, leaned into it and pulled out when it finally closed out, way inside the Groin wall and only ten feet from dry sand. What a great ride.

"Better catch some waves, here comes the surf camp," I said to a girl surfer who was sharing waves with us. Last Wednesday surf campers surrounded me at this very peak. I ended up scaring the hell out of some poor kid as I ran into his sponge board. Fortunately today the instructors herded the campers down the beach to the Patch, a good spot for them. As I walked up the ramp after my session I watched in the distance six of them riding a single wave.

I wrote up today's session at a picnic table at Stinson Beach. Kate's Camp (Kate was tutoring two neighborhood girls) was in session until 12:30, meaning I had some time to kill. After a few minutes twenty little kids, surf campers, surrounded me to eat their lunches. One of them looked up at me with a surprised and amazed look on his face and asked, "Are you writing in cursive?" Wow, have times changed.

What I thought would only be exercise turned out to be fun. It was a beautiful morning and I caught several decent waves. 

June 18, 2014 Wednesday

Bolinas	Groin
10:00 am to 11:15 am	2' to 3' with no sets!
Low tide (-1 ft at 10:30 am)	Slight onshore breeze
Air temp: 70 degrees	Water temp: 54 degrees
Sunny and warm, start of a heat wave	Exercise session

Josh the Bolinas fisherman was standing at the Groin wall unpacking his remote control surfer – a 12-inch high statue of a surfer in a bent knee position attached to an 18-inch hollow surfboard that was filled with an electric motor, a battery and a small weight for ballast. He had purchased it over the Internet from a hobbyist in South Africa, who also builds remote control boats. Josh set it in the water and off it cruised out to the line-up of one-footers. Via a hand held remote controller that looked like the handle of an electric drill, he swung the surfer around, accelerated it into a one-foot hummer, skillfully guided it across the curl, raced the breaking lip and launched the surfer up the face and into the air as the wave broke onshore. Josh repeated these maneuvers on wave after wave for the next twenty minutes until the battery gave up the ghost.

Mary was there in her wet wetsuit, having already been out. When the battery died Josh and I headed back to the cars and Mary entered the water to paddle around for some exercise.

On our walk back I asked Josh about the restoration of the Bolinas lagoon. A few years ago the county supervisors took up the issue of the lagoon filling in and the mouth sealing off tidal flows from the sea. A consulting firm hired by the county studied what would happen in the next fifty years if the county did nothing. They concluded that the mouth would not seal off, but the average depth of the lagoon would decrease to less than three feet. Their report did have a series of small steps that the county could take to impede the inevitable filling in of the lagoon. Being a commercial fisherman, Josh was very involved in this issue and wanted the county to dredge the entrance to insure passage of small boats. In his blunt and direct way of expression he filled me in on what was happening:

1. The Sierra Club had killed dredging.

2. The PhD's are straying salt water on the ice plant (an evasive plant) on Kent Island to kill it.

3. They were going to cut down some trees, but the environmentalists had stopped them because some birds were nesting in them.

4. Josh had pushed for them to remove the old abandoned dredge at the south end of the lagoon (an evasive structure), but they wouldn't do it. As he put it: go ahead and dig a 20-foot hole and see how long it takes for it to fill up. That would be a good scientific study.

Here's my opinion: with sea level rise, the issue of the lagoon filling in is over. Now our concern is how to keep the raising waters from flooding Highway 1.

Meanwhile the surf was terrible. There were no bodies in the water as Josh raced his remote control surfer, but when I returned in my wetsuit and board under my arm four surfers were out at the Groin. I paddled south of them and positioned between them and the river of current that was pouring out of the lagoon. With patience I managed to catch a few waves, all of them lefts.

But as usual it was a good morning. The weather was warm and sunny, the coastline was beautiful and I got in some good exercise.

Click on the link below to view more photos of Josh's little surfer.

https://www.icloud.com/photostream/#A153qWtHjFtmA

June 9, 2014 Monday

Bolinas	Groin
9:30 am to 10:40 am	2' to 3', sets to 4'
High tide	Onshore west breeze
Air temp: 65 degrees	Water temp: 54 degrees
Sunny and warm, fog on the horizon	Fun session

June gloom hit Marin with a vengeance. It arrived June 2nd and lasted through last Friday (June 6th) – every morning: fog, drizzle and wind that would not burn off until 3 to 4 pm in the afternoon. That and minus low tides and no swell wiped out any surfing. I came to Bolinas last Monday and there was no one here – no one, no cars and no bodies in the water. I went for an hour walk on the beach at Stinson for a little exercise. The gloom broke Saturday; Sunday was a spare-the-air, high fire danger heat-wave day, and this morning it had cooled off a little. But at 7 am it was already sunny and warm in Mill Valley when I took off for the beach.

David who used to ride the Becker Board had parked his car in his usual spot when I turned onto Brighton Ave. "David's here and he is in the water. There must be waves." I hadn't seen him for a long time. Word on the beach was that he had a bad shoulder and couldn't surf.

"Where's your Becker board?" David greeted me as I paddled out to the Groin on my 9' 2" Haut.

"This morning I got lazy and didn't want to strap my Becker onto the top of my car." My Haut barely fits into my Jeep Liberty, my Becker doesn't.

"The doctor says it's stretched tendons and that he cannot operate on them. So I had to come out here to insure that I can still do it. I'll go back in a couple of weeks to get a second opinion." Boy I didn't see any problems; David was his old self, constantly paddling all over the place and picking off several waves.

When checking out the waves I met Francine and DB the Safeway checker. Francine was recovering from a hip replacement and a bad back. DB was running her dog Viola on the beach. Since Francine lives in the City, they had planned on going to Ocean Beach, but it was terrible: small, windy, choppy, cold and nobody out in the water. So they came here to Bolinas. They suited up and went out on the Seadrift side of the Channel. I could see them in the distance. Francine claimed she had a great time – little by little it's coming back.

Conditions were not good – a 5 to 7-foot NW wind swell at 10 seconds with a stiff onshore breeze and a texture on the water. The Patch was flat and nobody was out there. The sand was in, the lower half of the ramp and all the rocks at the base were buried. On the south side of the Groin wall the currents had pushed tons of sand onto shore forming a steep beach with a deep hole in the water where the bottom consisted of rocks, not sand. Consistent 3 to 4-foot swells were coming in, but due to the high tide, the steep beach and deep hole, the waves piled up into thick peaks that slid from the top and smashed on the shore.

However, some good peaks did form and David was on them. If the swell peaked north of the wall, the "Malibo" peak formed and wave would break to the right. If the swell peaked south of the wall, nearer to the Channel, the wave would break to the left. Observing this I managed to connect on three good lefts and two long rights in the 70 minutes I was out there. The rest of the time I was paddling around missing the waves. After a couple attempts I learned to wait until the waves were breaking. They would curl at the top, slowly slide down the face while the swell continued to build as they approached the shore, where they would suck out in the shallow water and crash onto the steep beach. Five times I stroked into to top breaking curls and felt the waves beginning to push me along, I would stroke a couple more times to insure I was into the waves, jump up while still at the top of the swells, push into the building curls, hum down fast peeling faces and bail out when the waves began to suck out on shore.

After an hour David had gone in, the first surf camps of the season arrived, the fog rolled in and the wind picked up – time to go in.

I topped off this good morning by writing up this entry while having a late breakfast at the Bayview Cafe in Sausalito, one of my favorite spots.