June 15, 2011 Wednesday

Pacifica	Linda Mar - South End
8:40 am to 10:30 am	4' to 5', sets overhead
Mid upcoming tide	Onshore breeze
Bright sunny morning	Good session

Yesterday morning I read an email from Marty stating that we should venture to Linda Mar on Wednesday. We have talked about doing this for months but conditions never seemed right. The Internet sights were predicting the arrival of a new south swell and they don’t get into north facing Linda Mar. Tuesday I went to Bolinas with high hopes of warm weather and clean south swell waves. What a disappointment, Bolinas was shrouded in an on-the-deck fog with a stiff onshore west wind. The surf was terrible: small, blown-out, crumbly, weak and ugly. I didn’t bother going out. Conditions for Wednesday looked the same, so I responded to Marty that it was time to give Linda Mar a try.

Things didn’t look good as we drove down the Great Highway on our way to Pacifica. Ocean Beach was totally blown out, a stiff onshore wind howled and nobody was out. They had closed the southbound lands of the Great Highway at Lincoln due to sand blowing onto the roadbed.

We managed to get one of the last spots in a jammed parking lot at Linda Mar. The ambassador of Linda Mar, Greg Cochran, greeted Marty and me when we got out of the car. Greg is a long-time local, about our age, founder of the San Pedro Point Surf Club and the Kahuna Kupuna surf contest and a great surfer. He was glad to see us and explained the reason for all the cars and the crowd of surfers at the south end of the beach. The San Pedro Surf Club just finished a memorial paddle out for one of the two San Francisco firemen that perished fighting an apartment fire last week. Greg pointed out the fire trucks and people in uniform gathered in the parking lot. Out in the water we did encountered remnants of Hawaiian leis from the ceremony.

“Gentlemen when you check out the surf walk slowly, take your time, there’s no hurry,” Greg stated.

“You’re referring to the tide. It’s too low and we should wait until it comes up, correct?”

“Yes, nine o’clock is my recommendation. It will get better then.”

To my surprise while Marty and I were chatting with Greg, my niece Heather from Ventura appeared. She teaches fifth grade, the school year had just ended, and she was visiting her cousin Erin (also my niece). Heather was here at the beach to go surfing with my son Kevin. Just then Kevin walked up with his friend Wes. What a pleasant surprise. By the way Marty was Kevin’s biology teacher in high school and Kevin claimed that his constant encouragement pushed Marty back into surfing after he retired. We all suited up and headed for the south end.

The surf had some size. The north end must have been ten-foot plus and closed out. That’s why the crowd was bunched up at the south end. I counted sixteen surfers at the one decent left peak, and thus wave selection was hampered by the actions of the other surfers. The waves were wind swells on top of ground swells and the take-offs were flat. We had to wait until the wind swell was cresting, paddle hard, jump up and push straight off to drop over the edge of the ground swell. For us old guys, the waves were ideal, the flat take-offs gave us that extra second or two to get up and position ourselves before dropping down the faces.

I saw Heather get a good one. I have surfed with her several times at Surfer’s Point in Ventura and know that she is good. Looking back I saw her head streaking along in front of the breaking curl as she cruised a long ways before straightening out. Heather usually rides a 9’ 6” board, but this morning she was on Kevin’s eight-foot Becker, a Mike Gee longboard model. She told me that it was a lot smaller and thinner than what she was used to. But from the number of waves she caught, it didn’t slow her down.

Marty had a great session. The crowd didn’t phrase him; he paddled for everything and caught several of them. He told me that he connected on three great waves where he cruised down the faces, cut back, let the waves build up again, shot through the inside sections and snapped up over the tops as the waves broke. I too managed to connect on a couple of good ones. On one I was able to push into a steep shore break, scream across a fast breaking curl and then buried the nose in the white water of the breaking wave.

All morning there was a mass of brown foam floating on the surface. At first it was outside beyond the breakers. An hour later we were sitting in the middle of it and thirty minutes later it was washing onto shore. Biologist Marty thought it was caused by wave turbulence and seaweed out by the point, high protein water being stirred up. All I could think of was the number of times I had read about the sewage problems at Pacifica. Health officials often close Linda Mar after heavy run-off storms. So far as I write this, there were no signs of skin rashes, runny nose or burning eyes. Lets hope Marty was right.

I took the above photo from the deck of the Taco Bell that sits on the beach. Marty and I gave considerable thought to where to have lunch. Pacifica offers some good choices. Denny’s was across the street with all-day giant and reasonable breakfasts, and a mile north was Gorilla Barbeque. Once Guy Fieri on his Dinners, Drive-ins and Dives show featured Gorilla Barbeque, and since that show aired, the place has been jammed. Because it was such a beautiful, summer like day, we opted for Taco Bell where we could sit outside in the sun and watch the surf. The beach scene from the deck was entertaining: great surfers out front, a surf school to the south and a summer camp for little kids to the north.

We congratulated ourselves for making the good decision to come here. It was a beautiful morning.