March 15, 2010 Monday

Bolinas	Straight out from the north seawall
9:00 am to 10:30 am	2' to 4'
Low upcoming tide	Offshore (east) breeze
Bright sunshine with a cold stiff breeze	OK session

Dawn patrol … well sort of. The alarm went off at 5:30 am and it was pitch black outside. With the time change we set our clocks ahead one hour, thus 5:30 am was Saturday’s 4:30 am. Per my Tidelog, dawn was at 6:24 and sunrise at 7:21 am. At that moment I was just leaving Mill Valley on my journey to Bolinas. The earlier hour made a difference: the light was low in the sky, the hills were black silhouettes against the morning light, the cold offshore breeze shot through my sweatshirt and shadows danced between the swells.

“Loren, where’s the spot?” asked Matt with board in hand as I was taking pictures from the beach.

“Your choice is short and sweet,” I said gesturing at the peak straight out from the north seawall, the one with all the graffiti on it. “Or long and mellow at the Patch.”

Matt chose the Patch and went to join Mary, Russ, Hans and Frank the stand-up guy. I suited up and went for the short and sweet walls where Doug, David who rides the Becker board, Mark the archaeologist, and Marty were located. Clean wind swells would come together and the wind would push up against them to form fast peeling walls. With the right selection we could connect on good, fast breaking curls. Above is Doug on a short one. Just as I paddled out, David caught a good one. I got a great side view of him coming down a right peak with the spray coming off the top right behind him as he shot by me. Mark dropped into a fast left, with his back to the wave, I watched him hum just ahead of the lip of the breaking wave. On my second wave, I turned left into a steep face that was quickly forming in front of me. I leaned into it, climbed up high in the curl, stepped to the middle of the board, and shot through a fast section into an inside shore break that collapsed throwing me off in shallow water. That was my best ride of the morning.

Outside between sets, Mark told me about the nice peaks that he rode here yesterday. We both figured with the tide filling in the waves would get better. It never happened. As the water got deeper, the wind swells combined, traveled further towards the beach and formed thick 100-foot long walls that broke all at once across the impact zone. They were deceptive because the peaks would make us think that there was some chance of connecting on a good one, no way. We glided down peak after peak only to drop into free-falling, suck-out walls. With luck we could ride out the white water, however more likely, we were bounced off our boards as soon the walls exploded. Being optimists, for 45 minutes Mark, David and I paddled around and tried time after time to catch a good one with no success. Each one of us managed to catch a couple that had a brief second or two of shoulder before the bottom dropped out from under us. All three of us gave it up within a couple of minutes of each other and exited the water.

Of course we would never admit it was a waste of time. The scenery was beautiful with bright sun that was warming us up as the morning progressed, spectacular small waves sent spray arching off the top of the curls and a low mist hovered over the water at the Groin and the Channel. Last week’s rains had passed, and we were looking forward to several high-pressure warm sunny days that all the weather guys were predicting.