July 23, 2009 Thursday

Bolinas	Groin
8:25 am to 10:40 am	1' to 2', sets to 3'
Low upcoming tide (-1.3 ft at 7:00 am)	North cross breeze
High fog - the June gloom continues	Fun session

I was starving for some good waves. Last week there was nothing. I came down Wednesday and didn’t bother going out. Monday I went out into one to two foot weak powerless waves. Stormsurf was predicting a big south swell would hit this afternoon late, peak tomorrow and continue through the weekend. Prediction was a four-foot swell at 18 seconds, that’s big. I got up early and out the door anticipating that the first of the swell would be appearing this morning.

The south swell was barely showing. The one surfer in the water at 7:50 when I arrived was Kathy the biology teacher who was out at the Patch, twenty yards past the outside rock. With camera in hand I watched her catch a couple of long slow rides, not my cup of tea. The Groin had some beautiful small fast peeling lefts, maybe too fast. The ebb flow was still coming out of the lagoon and was knocking down the waves at the Channel. Seadrift side had some good rights coming through. With the tide coming up, I figured the waves at the Groin would get better, thus I decided to try that first.

The tide was still low as I entered the water. I walked out on a finger of sand that went out twenty yards from the end of the Groin wall. The good left curls broke at the end of this sandbar, perfectly formed waves sucking out in six inches of water. I lined up with the lighthouse shape structure at the top of the cliff just north of the Groin wall where a slight edge had formed. At this point the waves paused an instant between the first section and the inside lineup. By getting into the waves early at this point, I just enough time to jump up and position in the wave to make the inside section. This strategy worked and I caught ten good fast knee-high curls in an hour. As the tide came up the waves got bigger and more makeable. The better waves were long, fast and ended in shallow water. I was sent flying on one when I drove the skeg into the sand causing the board to abruptly to stop. On the rest I had to fall spread-eagle to avoid slamming into the bottom.

After an hour Josh the fisherman came out. Just three of us were out there. Josh, who is my age, has a unique style; he rides a 9-foot longboard on his knees and is very good at it. He takes off late, paddles at an angle, jumps up to his knees slightly behind mid-point in the board, turns with his hands on the rails and shifting his weight and varies speed by leaning or backing-off on his arms to move his weight forward or back. After seeing him connect with a fast inside wave I commented that his knee style was perfect for these fast peeling-curls. He loses no time or momentum trying to stand up. He has been surfing for years but has never surfed standing up. I thought it was because he had injured knees or hips. No, he started out on a boogie board, graduated to a kneeboard using fins and just didn’t learn to stand up. He didn’t like the fins and the small board was difficult to paddle. Thus he moved up to a longboard, kept riding on his knees and perfected his technique. From inside I watched him take off late on a three-foot wall, he swung left, leaned forward to gain speed, the wave began to break, he stuck his head in the white water, hung on to fight his way back into the swell and then leaned into a fast inside curl. In the old days, we called that maneuver a ‘head-dip’.

During the long lulls between sets, we chatted about surfing, fishing and the filling up of the lagoon. He told me about his trip last March to the Witches Rock Surf Camp in Costa Rica. The surf was great: warm water and sand beaches. No worries about rocks, coral or sea urchins. He went to Boca Baranca, second longest left point break in the world with mile long rides. This year his fishing is doing great. He has never seen so much life in the water. Whether close to shore or twenty miles out, the sea is teeming with fish, sea lions, dolphins, whales and pelicans. He claimed that a few big corporations would soon have a monopoly on all commercial fishing. The Bush Administration had set up a cap and trade system for controlling the amount of fish extracted from the sea. The allocations are based on previous years’ catches, thus the big firms that were causing all the damage with their dragnets received the largest allocations. Fisherman may sell their allocations on the open market, and the big firms with plenty of money are buying up all the allocations. Despite this he is optimistic that he will be ok since he is such a small operation. He is the last commercial fisherman in Bodega Bay. I asked him about the filling up of the lagoon. He thinks that it is getting deeper. He should know since he drives a boat out to sea two to three times a week. His theory is due to climate change the sea is rising putting more water into the lagoon, and the hills around the lagoon are healing; meaning trees and grasses are returning and less silt is flowing into the lagoon.

The tide kept rising, the wind was picking up and the summer surf camp hordes had arrived. Josh and I decided to head in. We commented as surfers often do, “those were some good waves,” and were looking forward to the arrival of tomorrow’s south swell.