October 7, 2011 Friday

Bolinas	Patch
8:30 am to 10:20 am	Consistent 3' to 4', sets overhead
High tide - 5.3 ft	NW cross breeze
Sunny and clear	Good session

"Loren, your face is all red and you're bloodied. What happen?" Jack the Dave Sweet team rider noticed my wound as I was changing after my session. Marty and Mark the archaeologist were also curious.

"I got clobbered on my last wave. Often I would catch the white water to get into the waves while they reformed. A big wave broke in front of me and I turned and stroked into the white water. It was big and buried me. I was traveling along at great speed, I jumped to my knees, tried to maneuver over to the swell, and as I went to stand up my hand slipped off the right rail and the board turned upright and my jaw slammed into the rail."

I didn't tell them, but it hurt. I was stunned and immediately checked to insure all my teeth were there. I wiped my jaw and had blood on my hand. Time to go in.

"You're the second one to do that today," Jack exclaimed. "Doug did it too. He had this big gash under his eye. But it was the same thing - his hand slipping off the rail as he was jumping up."

"Well you guys are always razzing me about too much wax on my board. But see, I didn't have enough."

"No, you got that wrong. You just need to put it in the right spots." That was Jack getting in the last word. I rub wax on my board before every session and never clean it off, thus I have a two-year build up of dirty black and gray wax covering the deck of my board. However, there were two places with little wax, right where my legs wrap around the rails when sitting waiting for the waves. Those two spots, which are located at the midpoints of both rails, are where I place my hands when jumping up.

Once home I exchanged emails with Doug about his experience. Here's a summary of what he went through this morning.

Scott who only surfs on Wednesdays and Doug were alone on the Seadrift side of the Channel scoring on lots of chest to shoulder high rights. After an hour Scott said he needed to get to work and was going to take one more and go in. Doug concurred. Scott connected on a long left that took him all the way in to the Groin area. Doug caught another good right and decided to go back out to connect with a left. A good size wave came through and Doug paddled at an angle to get into it. As he moved to stand up his left hand slipped, the board rotated and his face slammed into the rail. There was blood all over his board, and since he was alone 400 yards from the Groin pole he couldn't assess the damage. When he reached the parking lot, Scott, Russ, Mary and Dan checked him out. He had a two-inch laceration on his right cheek. With the help of a car mirror, Doug opened up the cut to clean it out. He thought that he could get by with a couple of butterfly bandages, but it would not stop bleeding. By the time he got back home in Petaluma, it became evident that as soon as he took the pressure off the wound, the blood would start flowing again. Doug went to the Kaiser emergency center where they did him up with eight stitches and told him to stay out of the water for a week.

In Doug's own words, "Thank God, it was my last ride. It would have really been irritating to have something like that ruin a good session." Spoken like a true surf warrior.

By the way, the surf was good today. Both Doug and I had good sessions. I was out at the Patch where a few overhead sets came through. That's Jack in the above photo on a good inside curl at the Patch.