March 14, 2011 Monday

Bolinas	Patch
9:30 am to 11:15 am	2' to 4', sets head high
Mid dropping tide	Slight offshore breeze to onshore breeze
High fog and misty rain	Fun session

I arose in total darkness, we had switched to daylight savings yesterday and sunrise wasn’t for another hour. I wasn’t sure if I would go surfing today. It had rained most of the day yesterday and in the middle of the night with lots of wind. The rain had stopped but raindrops filled the skylight in our bedroom. Stats on the Internet looked good: 10 ft swell at 14 seconds from 290 degrees with a NW wind at 5 knots. I hadn’t surfed in ten days and weather wise today was the best day of the week, two more fronts were coming in bringing rain and a drop in temperatures. I had to go.

At the Groin the waves looked big, powerful, thick and walled. David who rides the Becker board and three others were out there. I stood on the cliff above the Groin with camera in hand for ten minutes and watched several sets come in that went unridden. The crew scratched for them but failed to push into them. Finally David stroked into a thick overhead wall, dropped to the bottom, cut left and was promptly buried by a ton of white water. The Groin didn’t look inviting.

Six surfers were out at the Patch including Bolinas regulars Marty, Novato Pete, Hans and standup guys Frank and Russ. The Patch was smaller, mellow and low keyed. Hans sat way inside going for the close to shore rights while the rest were at the far outside peak waiting for the larger sets. Within a couple of minutes, Hans scored on two good right waves. That’s him in the above photo on a set wave that he worked into a fast right curl close to shore. I saw Marty trim down a good head-high left. That did it. I chose mellow and joined the regulars at the Patch.

Paddling out I stopped at the inside peak to say hello to Hans. On the outside Marty streaked down another head-high left wall. “That’s what I want,” I said to Hans and paddled out to join Marty and Pete. The waves weren’t that good but I did manage to connect on a couple of long lefts that had some size and speed. The surface was bumpy, a combination of small wind waves on top of larger ground swells. The best waves were when a wind wave peaked on top of ground swell. By catching the wind wave, we could push over the edge of the ground swell. Marty and I paddled for several where the wind waves mushed into nothing and quickly died. Pete moved around from peak to peak with some success but ended up with Marty and I at the outside rock. As the tide receded, the top of the outside rock slowly emerged. It was difficult to imagine that just last Friday the tsunami that originated in Japan had sucked out all the water and left this rock totally exposed. We were now back to normal, swells would peak as they approached the rock and we were next to it catching waves as they jumped up near the rock.

Pete, Marty and I had this peak to ourselves. For an hour we shared the waves and hooted each time one of us dropped down a well-formed peak. It felt great being out in the water again, connecting with a couple of waves and conversing with my friends. It was just another beautiful morning in Marin.