March 25, 2009 Wednesday

Torrance Beach	Base of the north ramp
9:00 am to 10:30 am	3' to 4' sets head high
High tide	Slight offshore breeze to no wind
Bright and sunny	Good session

I was at the same place as yesterday, same waves only a little smaller and the same surfers, an older friendly crowd.

The tide was high, the waves were steep and broke close to shore: long waits between sets, and the smaller waves were unrideable because they broke so close to the steep beach. I entered the water further south than yesterday to separate myself from the crowd. I was hoping to get a few waves to myself. The others were bunched to the north because this is where the waves broke far enough from shore to get a decent ride. I soon drifted over to join the others. The crowd was mellow and shared the waves.

Mike, who I remembered from yesterday, introduced himself. A longboarder, Mike sat way outside, went for all the set waves, paddled hard and surprisingly got into a lot more waves than I did. He had the place wired and was very comfortable coasting down head-high walls and skillfully straightening out at the last moment. I asked him if he had been surfing here a long time. All his life he told me. He grew up in the South Bay, was retired and now had the quest to surf everyday. Boy I could identify with that. I mentioned that I too learned to surf at Torrance Beach forty years ago. I commented that the water was much cleaner today than when we were kids. Mike remembered tar that used to float on the surface and covered the beach. They claimed it was natural oil seepage but funny how it disappeared once they stopped the oil tankers that docked at the oil refinery in El Segundo from empting their ballast tanks in the bay. Mike said the kelp was back and reminded me that in the old days there were “kelp cutters” that mowed the kelp forest off Palos Verdes like grass. He told me that as a kid he used to work on the sport fishing boats out of King Harbor.

“We threw everything overboard,” he said. “They wouldn’t dare do that today.”

Mike’s female companion, who was also here yesterday, was very good. She would sit inside of Mike and go for the smaller waves. She too managed to stoke into waves that I could never catch.

Karen was sitting way outside. Remembering yesterday that she didn’t make it out I assumed she was a novice who would get killed in the bigger, hard breaking set waves. Boy, was I wrong. I watched her glide skillfully down a head high emerald green wall with a lot of confidence. All morning she caught several waves, rode them all to the shore, paddled back out and did it again. As she paddled by said hello and she had remembered my name.

When showering off after my session I chatted with two older local boogie boarders. They commented on the cold water. I had to tell them how this was bath water for me. One asked what thickness of wetsuit I had. “3 – 4,” I said. They claimed that Karen, who was my age and who had only been surfing for three years, had a custom-made 7.0 cm wetsuit. Boy, that is thick. The locals refer to her as Karen 7.0 (seven dot oh).

The kelp was in today and I found out the hard way. Like yesterday the waves were hard to catch. The wind swells would build and build until they slammed close to shore and ran up the steep beach. I had to move inside and wait until they were critical, paddle hard and push myself into the wave. I would go straight for a second or two then drop over the edge of a steep face that broke continuously in one direction until reaching the shore. On one, I dropped into a good left face that cleanly lined up for me. I climbed high in the wave, stepped to the middle of the board, shot through a steep section, stalled an instance and leaned into the curl of the shore break. Suddenly the board stopped, the air brake had been applied and I flew off the front of the board into the foam of the shore break. I had hit the kelp and the board stopped. Last weekend’s high winds had ripped up the tons kelp that was now floating free. The high tide, strong wind waves and the steep beach had pushed loose kelp up against the shore to form a dense kelp soup. I couldn’t believe how thick it was and had trouble moving through it. I jumped on my board, started paddling and went nowhere. The several strands had wound around my leash. Twice I had to roll off my board, remove the kelp and attempt paddling again. I finally made it out again and avoided riding into the shore break the rest of the morning.

After an hour and a half I was spent. I showered off, warmed up in sun, chatted with the other guys, thought about my good session and drove away with that glow Professor Steve talks about.