March 1, 2010 Monday

Bolinas	Straight out from the Ramp
8:50 am to 10:00 am	3' to 4', sets to 6'
Mid upcoming tide	Onshore breeze (south wind)
Cold and gray, threatening rain	Fun session

In a brief one-hour session this morning I connected on five great rides, two lefts and three rights. Surf predictions were mediocre: 6 ft NW swell at 12 seconds. The tide conditions were favorable: mid with a fast upcoming tide cresting at 6.2 ft at 11:30 am. When I arrived several of the regulars were already in the water: Mary, Marty, Doug, Jim, Russ, Frank, on his stand-up board, and Creighton. Mark was suiting up to join the pack in front of the north end of the seawall. Above is Creighton on a good inside curl. I was surprised to see Mary and Frank at the peak south of the ramp. Mary prefers the Patch and two surfers were out there. She told me that she had paddled out there and it was awful, thus she moved south to the breaks at the ramp. The waves were bumpy, not clean and walled. A cold NW cross breeze put a texture onto the surface. According to weather reports, today was the day to go: rain was coming this afternoon that would last until Wednesday and on Friday another big storm would arrive. By the time I had suited up the wind had turned onshore and the crowd had moved to right in front of the ramp.

The 6 ft plus high tides of the last few days had deposited numerous small boards, logs and piles of kelp onto the ramp, which I gingerly stepped over. In a couple of hours water would be rushing up the ramp again. I paddled out to join Mary and Matt who were left of the pack going for the rights. Annette had paddled all the way from Stinson on her stand-up board. She said here there were rideable waves, implying that Stinson was closing out. Earlier I had seen Mary catch two long rights. The take-offs were flat and slow, Mary had to go straight for a second or two to let the waves build, then dropped over the edge down steep inside curls.

The swells were walled and stretched across the entire impact zone, but the bottom gave them shape. The north side of the ramp broke to the left and the south side broke to the right. As the tide filled in the shape improved. Between sets Marty and I chatted about how the peaks had shifted. The Groin and Channel were flat and the peak had moved here. My guess was the storms had washed the sand out leaving the Channel and Groin too deep for the waves to break. Last year at this time, the peak was here, straight out from the ramp.

The waves were wind swells on top of ground swells. The wind swells would peak, break and slide over the edge of a breaking ground swell. I learned quickly after having missed a couple of waves, that I had to select waves with a well-formed, steep ground swell. The wind swell alone was not enough to propel one over the edge. Paddling out I watched Marty come down a good four-foot right wall for a long ride. Sitting outside a wave approached that had a powerful and quickly building ground swell. I stroked into it, turned left and crouched down to build speed, white water was sliding down the face in front of me, I drove underneath it, climbed back into the swell, locked the rail mid-face as the wave jumped up and my speed picked up. I stalled briefly to maneuver into the shore break, leaned into the curl and drove the nose of my board into the breaking white water, which sent me flying. Two fishermen standing on the seawall with poles set grinned and gave me the thumbs up. It was a good ride.

I moved over to the other side of the peak to join Matt and Annette. The rights were improving as the tide came in. Paddling out I saw Matt get the wave of the day. He dropped into a head-high curl, crouched down just behind the mid-point of his board, picked up a great deal of speed and shot through a fast curl with the lip of the wave just behind his right ear. He cut back to let the wave build and he did it again on the inside curl. Matt stated that this wave made his day. Paddling out again I saw Annette on a couple of big ones. On a stand-up board she can get into the waves early. She would paddled hard and just as the swell would begin to move her, she would step to the middle of the board, push her weight forward and with two more quick strokes with her paddle would glide into the wave and immediately shift her weight back as she dropped down the face. She would cruise along the wave for a long distance and wisely pull out over the top before dropping into the steep shore break.

After an hour the cold was setting in, my hands and toes were going numb and the surge was beginning to push up the ramp. I caught my third good right wave and worked it as far as I could. I pulled out in six inches of water and five feet from dry sand. “That’s it, time to call it a day,” I said to myself as I waded in waist deep water to get to the ramp.

Surfers are always optimistic and never admit to having wasted their time in the water. All of us, Mary, Marty, Russ, Mark, Matt, Frank, Jim and I had caught some decent rides and claimed we had a good session despite the onshore breeze, bumpy waves, cold water and threatening dark clouds overhead.