March 26, 2009 Thursday

Manhattan Beach	El Porto - 42nd Street
9:00 am to 10:00 am	4' to 5', sets to 8'
High tide	Offshore breeze
Sunny with high clouds	Thrilling session

“Look at those waves,” I shouted to myself as I drove down the steep hill to the parking lot at El Porto, which is the north end of Manhattan Beach. The town sits on a sand dune, and houses and apartments are stacked up the hill to Highland Ave, which is the main street that parallels the beach. The buildings block the view of the surf from the road. As I turned left onto the last street at the north end of town and dropped down the hill I got my first clear view of the waves. Beautiful well formed “A” frames broke with spray arching off the tops, head high curls with surfers streaking down the faces in both directions. I knew it was going to be good after seeing glassy blue peaks all along my drive from Palos Verdes to Manhattan Beach. Torrance Beach looked good but smaller than yesterday. Hermosa Beach had good waves but I didn’t see anyone in the water. Both sides of the Manhattan Beach pier were crowded with surfers going down some beautiful peaks.

El Porto has a huge public parking lot that holds two hundred cars and at 8:30 am on a Thursday morning all spaces were taken. By luck, some guy pulled out allowing me to grab his spot. Parking is Manhattan Beach is absurd. The meters only take quarters or a special key that locals can purchase at city hall. A quarter only buys ten minutes, but I came prepared with four dollars of quarters in my pocket. I jumped out of the car and asked two guys who were suiting up,

“What time do the meters start?”

“9:00 am,” they said.

Great I have thirty minutes to take some pictures, suit up and get into the water at 9:00. I was offended that the parking regulations were dictating my surf session: get dress, wax up and the last thing before locking the car, drop nine quarters into the meter for a 90 minute session.

As I was suiting up, a guy walked up to the car next to me, wet and board in hand.

“I see the thing to do here is to end your session at 9:00 am,” I said to him.

“That’s right. There’s quite a crew of us here every morning at 6:15,” he said.

“Dawn patrol. You beat the crowd and park for free,” I responded. Next time that’s what I’m going to do. But this time of year it was still dark at 6:00 am, sunrise wasn’t until 7:00.

Fortunately clean peaks formed along the length of the beach, the surf was consistent with short lulls between sets, producing plenty of waves for everyone. I entered the water in front of the lifeguard tower at 42nd Street where a left peak was breaking and only a few guys out. The shape was perfect; well-formed peaks that slid from the apex and peeled in both directions. The waves gradually became steeper as they moved towards shore ending in collapsing curls in the sand. On my first wave, I turned into a head high swell that gently cruised along and then became steeper and faster as I moved closer to shore and I pulled out just before it broke on shore. I caught wave after wave, both lefts and rights. The crowd did cause me to be selective, but half the fun of this morning was watching the others coming down beautiful overhead blue-green walls. A few big sets came through which I judged to be eight-foot faces. I let the locals have those.

Here I was on a bright sunny clear day, slight offshore breeze blowing, watching the panoramic view from the mountains over Malibu, to the tankers moored off El Segundo to the Palos Verdes hills to the south. The water was warm and the waves were ideal. After an hour I called it quits. I wanted to make sure I still had time on the damn meter.