Bolinas
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Groin
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10:00 am to 11:15 am
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2' to 3' with no sets!
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Low tide (-1 ft at 10:30 am)
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Slight onshore breeze
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Air temp: 70 degrees
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Water temp: 54 degrees
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Sunny and warm, start of a heat wave
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Exercise session
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Josh
the Bolinas fisherman was standing at the Groin wall unpacking his remote
control surfer – a 12-inch high statue of a surfer in a bent knee position
attached to an 18-inch hollow surfboard that was filled with an electric motor,
a battery and a small weight for ballast. He had purchased it over the Internet
from a hobbyist in South Africa, who also builds remote control boats. Josh set
it in the water and off it cruised out to the line-up of one-footers. Via a
hand held remote controller that looked like the handle of an electric drill, he
swung the surfer around, accelerated it into a one-foot hummer, skillfully
guided it across the curl, raced the breaking lip and launched the surfer up
the face and into the air as the wave broke onshore. Josh repeated these
maneuvers on wave after wave for the next twenty minutes until the battery gave
up the ghost.
Mary
was there in her wet wetsuit, having already been out. When the battery died
Josh and I headed back to the cars and Mary entered the water to paddle around
for some exercise.
On
our walk back I asked Josh about the restoration of the Bolinas lagoon. A few
years ago the county supervisors took up the issue of the lagoon filling in and
the mouth sealing off tidal flows from the sea. A consulting firm hired by the
county studied what would happen in the next fifty years if the county did
nothing. They concluded that the mouth would not seal off, but the average
depth of the lagoon would decrease to less than three feet. Their report did have
a series of small steps that the county could take to impede the inevitable
filling in of the lagoon. Being a commercial fisherman, Josh was very involved
in this issue and wanted the county to dredge the entrance to insure passage of
small boats. In his blunt and direct way of expression he filled me in on what
was happening:
- The Sierra Club had killed
dredging.
- The PhD's are straying salt
water on the ice plant (an evasive plant) on Kent Island to kill it.
- They were going to cut down
some trees, but the environmentalists had stopped them because some birds
were nesting in them.
- Josh had pushed for them to
remove the old abandoned dredge at the south end of the lagoon (an evasive
structure), but they wouldn't do it. As he put it: go ahead and dig a 20-foot
hole and see how long it takes for it to fill up. That would be a good
scientific study.
Here's
my opinion: with sea level rise, the issue of the lagoon filling in is over.
Now our concern is how to keep the raising waters from flooding Highway 1.
Meanwhile
the surf was terrible. There were no bodies in the water as Josh raced his
remote control surfer, but when I returned in my wetsuit and board under my arm
four surfers were out at the Groin. I paddled south of them and positioned
between them and the river of current that was pouring out of the lagoon. With
patience I managed to catch a few waves, all of them lefts.
But
as usual it was a good morning. The weather was warm and sunny, the coastline
was beautiful and I got in some good exercise.
Click
on the link below to view more photos of Josh's little surfer.
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