February 26, 2008 Tuesday

Bolinas	Channel
9:00 am to 10:40 am	2’ to 3’, sets to 4’
Low tide, right at the turning point	Slight onshore breeze
Beautiful, warm, sunny day	Average waves, good exercise

As I drove over the crest of the ridge at Pantoll I got my first glimpse of the ocean. It was calm, flat, smooth, no white caps and no ripples. The sun was out; it was warm with no clouds and no wind. Yesterday the ocean was still stirred up from the storms that had passed over Marin Saturday and Sunday. This morning the NOAA buoy report had the swell at six feet every 13 seconds with a slight NW wind. The ocean had settled down. My expectations for some good waves were building. I had already collected water samples from Bay Front Park in Mill Valley to take to Jamie at Branson. I stopped at Stinson to collect another sample there. The waves at Stinson were clean, well formed, about four feet but walled due to the low tide. “Bolinas must be good,” I thought. 

Marty and Doug were standing by their cars chatting when I pulled up at Bolinas. “Conditions aren’t good; there’s nothing there,” was Doug’s greeting. We went to check it out. They were right it didn’t look good; merely ripples at the Groin and all the rocks were exposed at the Patch. I suggested we go up to the bluff above the Groin to check out the Seadrift side of the Channel. We stood there for several minutes watching these small walls of water peeling to the right. Further down the beach in front of the Seadrift houses we saw a couple of sizable left waves come through. 

Recently the direction of the current in and out of the lagoon had shifted. It now flows close to the Groin wall and turns nearly 90 degrees north after the Groin pole and runs along the beach to the ramp. The rights were on the other side of the out flowing current. The channel for the current was deep, but on the other side where the waves were breaking it was shallow, very shallow. 

“It’s too shallow,” Marty said with concern. “Marty, you only need six inches of water to surf. It will be ok,” I assured him. My guess was the waves were two to three feet breaking in two feet of water. In the above photo you can see the Groin pole, the deep channel for the incoming current and the shallow beach were the waves are breaking. 

We hesitated about going out. But since it was a beautiful morning so we decided to go. I suggested a strategy: enter the water at the Groin, paddle through the incoming current, once on the other side walk out to the waves and depending on the waves work our way south to the Seadrift breaks. 

The waves were bigger than they looked from the bluff and the water was at least three feet deep. The waves were “soft”, not much punch or speed. In the Channel there was a deep section that formed some nice makeable right waves. Marty and I keep drifting further south hoping to discover some nice left peaks in front of the houses at Seadrift. It never happened. The waves over there were ripples of smaller waves that mushed together to form shapeless walls that crumpled into a shallow beach. 

After a half hour I suggested to Doug that we drift back to the Groin. It looked like the waves were getting better there. In the short time we were out there, the waves did change. We drifted back to the Groin. By now the wind had shifted to slightly offshore, the waves were now beautiful, clean, fast breaking right walls with spray coming off the top. I was determined to connect with a good one, but it didn’t happen. The waves broke too fast. By the time I stood up the waves had already broken several yards in front of me. I did finally connect on one. I managed to catch it early, stand up and cut to the right before dropping down the face. I was positioned well at the top of the curl when it started to break, thus I managed to go quite a ways before the entire wall collapsed. 

Soon Marty had reconnected with Doug and I. What surprised us was that the current pushed us north of the Groin. The tide had turned a half hour ago but the current was still flowing out of the lagoon. We have yet to figure out the turning of the current. Now we were several yards north of the Groin. I caught one good three-foot left that carried me all the way to the deep water of the current along the beach. Being just a few feet from shore, I decided to call it quits. 

All three of us enjoyed the morning. The waves were average, but we got some great exercise and the day was warm, sunny and beautiful.