May 10, 2013 Friday

Bolinas	Groin
9:00 am to 10:30 am	1’ to 2’, sets to 3’
Mid upcoming tide	Slight offshore breeze to stiff west onshore wind
Overcast – June gloom like	Exercise session

“Drew, what are you going to say in your report this morning?” Drew the owner of the 2-Mile Surf Shop was coming up the ramp when I was heading down to take some photos. The 2-Mile shop puts out a morning surf report and posts it on their blog.

“I’m going to say it’s a very nice beach day.” That’s code for it’s flat. Here’s what he actually put –

Beautiful morning here in Bolinas.  Coastal overcast is burning off and already giving way to blue skies and sunshine.  Very smooth and very glassy ocean.  Very low, negative morning tide but already moving up! Great beach day.  Great day to rock pick or find some tidal zone treasures.  Great day to just walk on the beach and take in the beautiful surroundings.  Not such a great surf day at the moment.  Still a small south swell in the water but tide is too low to let it in.  Give it time and maybe later a few rollers will appear.

Stormsurf predicted a combination of local north wind swell and a 3 ft south at 14 seconds. We were seeing the south swell. The north portion was too north to reach into south facing Bolinas.

Mary was about to suit up and go out when I headed to the beach to take pictures. She had arrived at 6 am and waited for the fog to lift. She almost kissed it off but changed her mind when Susan who always wears sunglasses in the water pulled up. They decided to head for the Patch. Later when I walked down the ramp with my board, I saw Mary and Susan a 100 yards offshore paddling from the Patch to the Channel. The Patch was flat and they had given up on it. They continued onto Seadrift and stayed there all morning. Jacek showed up and since he had driven all the way here he decided to go out. He suited up and pulled out his 9’ 4” Fresh Pineapple longboard. Bill from Berkeley arrived, suited up and headed out on his wave ski. They joined Mary and Susan at Seadrift. All of them claimed that they caught a few decent waves there. Jacek raved about his long rides that took him right up to the sand.

I went out at the Groin, straight out from the Groin pole, to go for the fast breaking lefts. The waves weren’t memorable. I connected on a couple of good ones, dropped into several closeouts and missed a ton of waves. For me it was an exercise session – my arms got a good workout and I practiced on my timing of pushing into the waves and jumping up quickly.

Wind was an issue this morning. There was no wind and the surface was like glass when I stood at the Groin taking pictures. As I entered the water a stiff NW cross breeze had kicked up and put a texture on the surface. By the time I left the wind had shifted to the west and blew hard straight onshore and put a huge chop on the water.

Like all surfers, all of us agreed that simply being in the water made it a good session.