August 29, 2014 Friday

Bolinas	Patch
10:00 am to 11:30 am	Consistent 3' to 4', sets to 6'
Mid upcoming tide	NW cross breeze to no wind
Air temp: 70 degrees	Water temp: 63 degrees
High overcast to patchy sun	Great session

From the furthest peak at the Patch, I connected on a wave that made my whole session. Two set waves had gone by, George the Branson parent had just taken off north of me, and I was by myself when a larger wave was cresting in front of me. I turned and dug hard. The wave began to break; I jumped up, cut hard right, stayed high in the curl and dropped down the face of an overhead wave. What a sensation. I felt I was a kid again on my old balloon tire bike coasting wildly down a steep hill. I looked up at the lip feathering above my head, leaned forward to gain speed, climbed back up to the top of the swell and hummed across a long section. I cut back and now had to maneuver around five surfers frantically paddling out. I coasted around the first one and cut right again to climb back into the swell. Julie was sitting outside with a raised fist for "nice ride". I hummed through a second section, cut back while the wave built up again, turned sharply right into a third fast section which worked into the shore break where I pulled out over the top as the wave crashed onshore. What a ride.

Now my confidence was high and I had no hesitation paddling into late breaking waves. I caught two really long lefts and several more good rights on the inside. After an hour and a half my arms were spent and I had to go in. When I entered the water, seven surfers were at the Groin and ten were at the Patch. When I left, thirty-five bodies were spread across the Patch and twenty were at the Groin. The wind had died, the surface had glassed off and the waves were clean lines of water. The short boarders were challenging the fast crashing lefts at the Groin and the longboarders were having a ball on perfectly formed rights at the Patch.

The big south swell from Hurricane Marie that arrived on Wednesday was still pumping this morning – 5 ft south swell at 13 seconds. Though the surf had been big in Bolinas the last two days, by this morning we were hearing the stories of giant waves in Southern California.

The Marin IJ had a photo of a boogie boarder in complete free-fall on a monstrous wave at the Wedge in Newport Beach – surfer, board, feet and swim fins were all out of the water dropping over the falls of a crushing wall of water. When I see photos like this I wonder what happened to the surfer. Did he survive?

Frank the stand-up guy was down south visiting his daughter and new grandchild. He reported that San Onofre was completely closed out. It was so big that no one even attempted to paddle out.

Malibu was huge, one surfer drowned and no one knew how he died. Set waves were breaking beyond the end of the pier – something that never happens. Normally the waves begin breaking at the point and continue breaking into the cove and peter-out near the highway – several hundred yards from the pier.

YouTube had a photo of an enormous wave breaking into the end of the pier with a speck of a surfer riding it. The caption claimed it was Laird Hamilton. Rumors on the beach boasted that he shot the pier – a tale difficult for me to believe. Jay the architect from Manhattan Beach, an experienced surfer and good friend, related that the pilings of this pier are fairly close together. Pairs of pilings (one on each side) spaced every eight to ten feet form the foundation of the pier. To ride a wave through it, Laird had to be flying at great speed parallel to the beach. But if anyone could do it, Laird Hamilton could. Most likely this is merely another myth swirling around this legendary surfer.

The paper also reported that two to three feet of water had surged over the sand berm of the beach into a hundred homes in Seal Beach. The city was desperately bulldozing the sand to form a new berm to protect the houses from the next high tide. Was this a preview is sea level rise? With raising seas, the ocean is going to reclaim the wetlands and Seal Beach is a town built on fill dirt.

Epic tales from a once in a lifetime epic swell.