March 18, 2009 Wednesday

Bolinas	Groin
8:30 am to 10:45 am	2' to 3', sets to 4'
Low outgoing tide (0.6 ft)	Slight onshore breeze
Low cloud cover	So - so session

Scott, who only surfs on Wednesdays, reappeared at Bolinas after months of absence. Scott is a child psychiatrist who arranges his appointments to leave Wednesday mornings available for surfing.

“Scott, rumor has it that you downsized to a smaller board and have been going to Cronkhite,” I greeted him.

“Not quite,” he said. “I did downsize and have been going out at Ocean Beach and getting pounded. Today I decided to go for fun in the mellow waves of Bolinas on my longboard.”

I could have told him that. Scott ripped them up at the Groin, that’s him in the above photo on a small good one.

The theme for today was contact with my surf companions. Lou the Viet Nam veteran was having a great time on his boogie board challenging the clean fast breaking, suck-outs waves that broke in shallow water. If you made one it was a great ride and Lou made several of them. I made one long, fast left at the Groin that was a clean, crisp curl. Walt the photographer was out there and as he put it, “Getting wet and good exercise.” Professor Steve was there for his morning outing before heading over the hill to class. Jim, the jazz guitarist, caught his share of good ones. Carl from Petaluma had a good session. Carl, who is my age, was born and raised in Honolulu, learned to surf on Oahu and went to elementary school with Gerry Lopez. He had just returned from a week of visiting relatives and surfing the east side of the island.

While taking pictures before going out I met Pamela, Jim’s friend. She introduced herself mentioning that Jim told her to look for me. I would be the one taking photos of the surf. She too had a small digital camera taking shots of the waves and the gray overcast beach scene.

Before going to Bolinas, I stopped at Stinson to check out conditions. I chatted with Clint the sports photographer who was taking pictures of one of the local surfers in four-foot walls. I said hello to Mike, head of maintenance of the Stinson Park, and asked him if he had seen any federal stimulus money I keep reading about. Not yet was his response. The stimulus money will be for the big projects, not the day-to-day small ones that he is in charge of. Back at the car I ran into Jimmy, the Stinson carpenter and avid surfer. I gave him some photos I had taken of him during the super high tide last December. I noted that he had his old board in the back of his truck, not his new one. Jim is a craftsman who makes most of his boards. After a long search on the Internet, he selected a Gordon and Smith longboard because of the rocker and rail dimensions. But today he told me he was disappointed in his new board, had switched back to his old one, which he had built, and was going to make a new one. The only way to get the rocker and rails right was to build your own board. He had just ordered a foam blank through Nate at Proof Lab. No question about it, Jim is a perfectionist, which is an ideal trait for an artisan.

The waves were mediocre, but the connecting with friends made it a great morning.