November 6, 2008 Thursday

Pacifica	Linda Mar
8:20 am to 9:40 am	4', sets head high
High dropping tide	Stiff offshore breeze
Sunny clear day	Frustrating session

Walled, that was the theme of this morning’s session, walled.

Kevin and I met this morning in the Linda Mar parking lot for a short surf session before Kevin went to work. From the shore the waves didn’t look that big, walled but not big. Every few minutes a sizeable set of waves would come through. Stormsurf had predicted a four-foot swell at nine seconds. The NOAA buoy report had six foot swells every nine seconds. From the shore it looked like the predictions were right on the mark.

Kevin wanted to head to the north end, the waves were bigger there. I suggested we enter the water here and work our way north. Done, that was the plan.

Once I started paddling out I realized the waves were bigger that I thought. I had to roll under one big one. I very seldom use this maneuver, only when there is some size. Once outside, Kevin started paddling to the north. My first wave was my best ride. Good size, definitely left, with my heavy board I coasted over the edge and dropped into a head high wall. I saw I had a chance to make it so I went for it. I stepped to the middle of the board, positioned myself high in the curl, crouched down and shot under a breaking curl, stalled for an instant and did the same thing on a second section of the wave. It was a great ride. I watched Kevin catch his first wave. I paddled over it, looked back and saw Kevin’s head drop below the breaking wave. From the back the wall of water turned from blue to green to white with plumes of spray arching high above the wave, and then Kevin re-appeared holding his board as he pushed over the top as the entire wave turned to turbulent white foam. Kevin had dropped to the bottom of the wave and immediately cut back up and over the top.

Right after that two enormous set waves came through. I scratched to get over both of them, huge walls of water from one end of the cove until the other. “What happened to Kevin?” I thought to myself. After several minutes he finally made it back out. I asked what happened.

“I didn’t make it over the second one. It was pretty bad,” he said. It least now he was safe.

From then on all of the waves were walled. I caught three more waves, each one closed out in front of me. I angled down big swells and coasted out in front of mountains of white water. Kevin caught several more, all with the same results. In an hour and twenty minutes, I caught four waves, that’s one wave every twenty minutes. So what was I doing all this time? Sitting, paddling around and going for waves I didn’t catch. No one else was catching any waves either. We were towards the north end of the cove. Several times I looked towards the south, it was a beautiful clear sunny day, and saw fifty to seventy surfers spread across a quarter mile, sitting there. No one was riding any waves. Like me, everyone was letting the huge walls go through un-ridden.

Kevin announced he was going to head north. I didn’t want to go because to me the waves looked better to the south. Kevin paddled some 200 yards north, maneuvered around, missed a few waves, caught one or two, which were walled, and finally paddled back. I caught one more wall, straightened out, rode the white water to shore and got out. Kevin came in a few minutes later.

Wave size is a matter of perspective. As we were drying off, I commented to Kevin that I thought those waves were big. They were certainly bigger than any I have ridden lately at Bolinas. To Kevin they weren’t big at all. Last week he rode overhead waves at Montara and Ocean Beach. “And those waves were big,” he exclaimed. “These waves,” pointing at the walls of Linda Mar, “are half the size of those two breaks.”

I think I will stick to the gentle waves of Bolinas.