March 6, 2009 Friday

Bolinas	Groin and Channel
9:00 am to 10:00 am	1' to 2', sets to 3'
High outgoing tide	Stiff onshore wind
Sunny, high clouds and a cold wind	Frustrating session

Strong outgoing current, stiff cold onshore breeze and no waves was the theme today.

When I arrived at Bolinas my friends Marty, Doug, Mary and Jim were out at the Groin. The Patch was flat and the outgoing ebb tide had just begun to knock down the waves at the Channel. I stood on the Groin wall to get some shots of them riding some knee curls. The waves looked like fun. The above photo is Marty in a small curl. There was no wind and the surface was smooth. Knee-high curls, my kind of waves.

By the time I put the camera away and dressed, the wind had changed. A stiff cold onshore breeze greeted me when I entered the water. The nice little waves that I had just photographed had disappeared. I paddled out to the peak just south of the Groin, caught one small well-formed wave, coasted to the bottom and the wave died. That was the story of all of them, no push, no power. Doug and I moved around looking for the right spot and never connected. The out-flowing current knocked down everything inside the Groin wall to the Channel. We drifted north and found nothing. We paddled further north and again nothing. By now the onshore wind had really kicked up, white caps formed on the outside, the peaks disappeared and my hands were getting numb. Time to give it up.

Everyone in the parking lot concurred that I had missed it by one hour. Maybe next time.