April 16, 2012 Monday

Bolinas	Channel
9:00 am to 10:30 am	2' to 3', sets to 4'
High dropping tide (4 ft at 9 am)	Offshore breeze to stiff cold NW wind
Sunny with high clouds	Fun session

Last Saturday's sailing tragedy was the topic of conversation in the water. Friday and Saturday a big swell had come in along with a high-wind front, causing rough seas. But that didn't prevent the San Francisco Yacht Club in Belvedere from running its annual Full Crew Farallones Race, a 54-mile race from San Francisco to the Farallon Islands and back. At the halfway mark, the yacht Slow Speed Chase, a 38-foot racing yacht, was swamped by two15-foot freak waves that swept five sailors of a crew of eight overboard. The remaining three attempted to turn the boat around to rescue their companions when it ran-aground on a rock near the Islands. A coast guard helicopter rescued the three crew members who remained on the boat and recovered the body of one of the crew members that were swept overboard. As of this morning the other four were not found and were presumed dead.

Update - as of Tuesday April 17, the coast guard has called off the search for the other four.

By this morning the swell had subsided. The 6 am NOAA weather radio buoy observations were 4 ft N swell at 11 seconds with an underlying 2 ft S swell at 16 seconds with a NW wind at 10 knots. Yesterday the wind blew like hell all day, and just as I suspected, small wind swell waves were hitting the beaches this morning. I had no expectations for waves but I would go to Bolinas to check and to chat with the crew.

From the Panoramic Highway, a textured surface was on the ocean that was on the edge of becoming white caps from the shore to the Farallon Islands. Stinson was barely breaking and there was no white water at the mouth of the Bolinas Lagoon. Bolinas was in the shadow of the north winds and the surface was mirror smooth - great, perfect glass and no waves.

Driving into Bolinas, I passed Hans driving out of town with two dry boards mounted on the roof of his SUV. He tooted and waved. More evidence that there weren't any waves. However, several vehicles of the regulars were parked at the tennis court with no boards to be seen. My buddies were in the water. From the overlook above the Groin I saw twelve surfers at the one and only peak going for some nice looking three to four-foot waves. No one was at the Patch. At the Channel peak were: Mary, Marty, Hank and his wife Gail, Jaime the starving artist cartoonist, David who rides the Becker board, Jack the Dave Sweet team rider, DB the Safeway checker, Steve the Bolinas local who is my age and grew up in Santa Monica and Frank the stand-up guy. Though the waves were infrequent, they were having fun, so I had to join them. That's Mary on a good one in the above photo.

Back at the cars, Jacek the tattoo artist and Randy had arrived and inquired about the waves. "Small but clean" was my response. Separately, both went to check out the waves, and both concluded that they would go for the Patch. Randy just prefers the Patch and Jacek thought that with the tide going out the Patch would get better.

Just my luck, while suiting up, the wind shifted from offshore to an onshore west wind - a common plague of "gentleman's hours." The beautiful glassy surface was gone when I paddled out to the line up.

Jaime took one look at me and said, "It must be lunch time!"

"No it's time for all you dawn patrollers to get the flock out of here," I responded.

The waves were mellow and we all had a good time. Because the sets were infrequent, two or three of us would be on each wave. Slowly the early ones went in and after forty-five minutes only Jacek, who had come over from the Patch, Marty, David, two others and I remained. The waves were flat on the take-off and difficult to catch. But Jacek could do it. I saw him stroke into a nice four-foot peak at the apex of the Channel peak, fad right and then swing around left and cruise down a long section, cut-back and turn right again into a good curl on the inside. I had to move inside and wait until the waves were breaking to catch them. Twice I caught the white water of breaking waves and rode them into swells on the inside.

At the hour mark, the current started pouring out of the lagoon. Before we knew it, the current had carried us outside of the impact zone and we had to paddle in some fifty yards. Meanwhile, the wind had continuously picked up speed and was now a steady, stiff and cold wind. White caps were everywhere. Cold, exhaustion, and infrequent waves, it was time to head in. I caught one more and milked it all the way in.

But as usual, it was another beautiful morning in Marin.