Session 224: Ocean Beach Sloat Session

The album from this session can be found at: http://www.culturewave.net/surfing/BlogPics/NOV04/16-SLOAT/

With a note of "dwindling" WNW swells, I decided to venture out the "OB" again this morning. It was still at a bit intimidating level. When I say I am intimidated, I am speaking of a fear and respect for the location, where so many people tell me that the OB is a difficult spot. Indeed it is, but the case like today, I can tell that I am slowly, but surely overcoming this fear. Today, there still was enough power in the wave that there was a modest amount of outgoing rip currents, and of course, the ever present side currents that changes with the tide.

So when I go out, the thing that I am most worried about now is about whether I can get back in easily. The size is, at least, no longer much of an issue, if I can handle the beating at Montara, I should be able to handle that. Also, the waves were not that pounding to me, and so far, I have not been pounded for the conditions I got out. Though, I am sure that for seasoned surfers at the OB, a condition like this is probably grom stuff. In fact, it should be, because when I was paddling out, there is this expert woman surfer passed right next to me as just being relaxed and having fun as she looked, while I was a bit more stiff and uptight in my paddling strokes.

I did play safe and caught some overhead size breaks that were inside, and that was fun just to stay a couple of feet ahead of closing out waves with lot of trimming and small cutback actions.

I saw the real lineup that was out about 300 yards out. Actually I did not intend to go out that far, but there was a period when bunch of large sets came in, and then a huge rip opened up right where I was. So I ended up in the outside. It is always amazing that if you are far out enough, it is like a night and day, the surface just smoothes out and it gets totally quiet.

For me, this was exciting challenging enough of a session it was a stoke level 8 session.