Last night, I checked the local buoy, and it was measuring 12-13 ft swells, and the wind was blowing. That was as exactly predicated in the forecast. But by the dawn patrol time rolled in, the wind has basically stopped in Half Moon Bay, the sky was clear, and actually the swell ended up dwindling quickly. Because of the forecast, I was not intending to go to the usual, but instead, I picked the local Jetty. In terms of the choice of the location it was not too bad. I had some good waves.
One thing that I am starting to downed on me this morning was that I have never thought that I would be so much into riding short boards but now, I am really stoked about riding them for the last 2-3 months, and so it has been quite a while since I took out either the Takayama or the foam. Probably this will continue to be that way until next late spring when the things start to calm down, but then, I would change... There are two main aspects of riding short boards that I really like. One is the ease of getting out. This is approaching the ease when I used to boogie board. Another aspect of it is that I can easily get over powered by the board especially when I try to go for bigger + steeper waves. Shorter boards are much more forgiving in this area.
The reason I am writing about this is that at the very beginning, surfing was a very horrifying experience especially when I have not swam for many many years, and when I first go on the short board, I was truly panicked when I was swept a a bit further out when I could not longer touch the bottom. With a meager power in my muscled with very unskilled paddling technique, it seemed to have taken forever to get back to the point where I could touch the bottom with (even) just one foot. You cannot believe the amount of the relief I've gotten when that happened, I got off the board and walked back. So at that time, I thought I would never ever be able to ride a short board. I was wondering how these surfers can get out with so much ease, and let alone stand on these small board, because I was just tipping all over the places on a 8'6 board.
Back to today's session. The Jetty tends to provide some warbly section inside and that makes it especially hard to ride. It is really a funny and strange, it feels like the entire ocean is riding on top of another vehicle running on a rough unpaved road. The low frequency warbles are combined with the wave faces you are riding, and eventually you'd come to a bump or two ahead, and you'd either come to an instant halt or if you absorb the bump, like mogul skiing, you can actually go over it and continue a bit more ride.
But there were some good high-shoulder lefts that I took that were good feeling. So overall it was a good stoke level 7 session.
On the way to the office, I checked out both Montara and Linda Mar and places were both empty but actually turned out the condition was not too bad!
And there are 9 more sessions to go, so I might be able to do more than 250 sessions this year!
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