May 2, 2011 Monday

Bolinas	Channel
10:20 am to 11:30 am	1' to 2', sets to 3'
Mid upcoming tide	Stiff west breeze
Overcast with patchy sunshine	Fun session

This morning I connected with Scott the chairman of the Marin County Surfrider Foundation at the Parkside Café in Stinson Beach. We were feeling good about Surfrider’s successful art show this past weekend at Studio333 in Sausalito. We had talked about having an art show for months and we finally pulled it off. Given how quickly it was thrown together and how unorganized we were, we were amazed and relieved how successful it was. Scott handed me the proceeds to deposit in the bank. We took in a considerable amount from donations and calendars sales. Our objective was to just bring people together; we didn’t expect to make money on the show. We attributed the show’s success to fabulous art, holding it in a professional art gallery, a great poster and the extensive email network of Marin’s surf community. Surfrider, Proof Lab, 2-Mile, Livewater and artists Tom, Mary and Nick got the word out. Scott estimated that over one hundred people came to the artist reception Friday night.

I moved onto Bolinas to check the surf. The weather had turned and was moving into a warming trend. I wore shorts for the first time in months. But the surf conditions weren’t good: 13.5 ft NW swell at 8 seconds and a 1.5 ft south at 15 seconds. Seven surfers were bunched together at the Channel, the only place that was breaking. Out there were Mary, DB the Safeway checker, David who rides the Becker board, Dexter the Bolinas local, Ray the Petaluma fireman and Russ on his stand-up board. The waves were small, flat and inconsistent.

I quickly wrote it off and decided to take pictures instead. I had started a photo class (Photo Essentials 1) given by Image Flow in Mill Valley and my photo skills had greatly improved in two short weeks. With this morning’s overcast the light was perfect. I decided to take some close up shots of the stenciled figures of famous images with a surfboard added painted on the side walls of the ramp. Have you seen them? There are twelve of them. Figures like the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, but instead of the flag they are raising a surfboard, or the famous shot of Raquel Welch from the movie 10,000 BC holding a surfboard. While shooting, Jacek the tattoo artist showed up to check the surf. I showed him what I was doing. He was interested. After I finished we walked back to the cars.

“I don’t think it’s worth it this morning. I’m going to take off,” I said.

“What do you mean? It’s always worth it. It will fill in and get better.”

“You’re going out?”

“Of course!”

Just then the sun burst through the clouds and sent a blanket of warmth over the hold area. “You know he’s right. The weather is warm, I need the exercise, and so I’ll go out for an hour.”

Walking down the beach with my board in hand, I met Mary who had just exited the water. Mary was one of the artists in our show with two fabulous paintings of water, foam and sunlight. She enjoyed the show and appreciated the exposure. Spoken like a true artist, she commented that my photos of her paintings that I had posted online had too much contrast. She was right; via Photoshop I had cranked up the contrast and heightened the colors. She also reported that the waves were fun. The sets were infrequent, but when they came there were five to six waves.

I ran into Dexter exiting the water. He too had attended our art show and enjoyed it. He mentioned there was another local Bolinas artist, Llewellyn Ludlow, who painted incredible waves and that we had to get his work into our next art show. Dexter confirmed Mary’s report that the waves were better than they looked. He also warned me about a strange side-wave on the inside that broke north towards the Groin wall.

As I entered the water I saw what Dexter was talking about, a one-foot breaking wave cruised by due north, perpendicular to the normal waves. On my first ride, the wave broke in front of me and I rode the white water with DB about ten feet in front of me. All of the sudden a side-wave swept me up and pushed me along. The slow wave had become a fast one as I rode on. Walking back to the line-up, I noticed that where the inside waves broke the water was only six inches deep, an island of sand sat in the middle of the impact zone. Pulses of energy that followed the contour of this island formed the side-waves.

Further outside a good left peak formed around a sandbar. Lines came through, broke at the apex of the sandbar and peeled continuous to the left. After a couple of rides, I figured out that the best waves peaked north of the sandbar, and I could turn into the peak and the wave would hold up due to the change in water depth as the wave broke along the sandbar. I would coast down small flat waves that would stand up when they hit the sandbar and I would cruise left off the sandbar into deeper water. I managed to connect on several good, fast, long left peeling waves.

So did Jacek, David, DB and one other shortboarder. For over an hour, we shared the waves and enjoyed another beautiful Marin morning.