The N wind picked up again this morning and also the buoy reported 8 ft at 20 seconds. Plus we had low tide condition this morning, so I decided to look into the Jetty carefully, and sure enough it was ridable, but a bit smaller than yesterday. After surfing these local spots a lot, I am starting to get a hang of how wind and the tide would affect my style of surfing so that's another happy aspect of gaining more knowledge of surfing.
As it turned out we had some good overhead size breaks to the Jetty side and the crowd was minimum so I actually had a lot of fun. One annoyance was that this guy with a Kayak showed up and followed me around for good 10-20 minutes, and I was trying to get away from him but he kept coming to where I was moving away from and then took a wave at one time and dropped in when I wanted so that made me a bit mad, so I decided to follow him around paddling pretty much next to him for a bit, and looking like I was going for waves that he was going for. I think he got a message and finally decided to stay put where he was as I paddled further. Speaking of this, though, I think I had much less run-in like this with Kayak riders. All I ask of them is to respect surfers because they got so much more power that they can catch more waves than paddle in surfers can do. I usually give waves to lot of people but when my favors do not get returned, that's when that gets into my nerves.
In terms of catching the waves, the Jetty provides me with a bit more challenges than usual and also often with much less variations, and also I tend to avoid the area close to the rocks as it is always crowded and the take off spots are narrow. The basic challenge is that the waves tend to hollow out more. This is, in general, true of other Half Moon Bay locations.
What happens a lot in these situations to me is that I cannot set up a line quick enough that the board slips out ahead of me, and other times, the front tip get buried in and basically do a late pearling. I have occasional success so I need to analyze a bit about what is happening when these things happen. For me, this is actually a significant improvement than the past when I am simply not taking off. I am taking off, I am getting into the wave, I just cannot continue to be up on the board for whatever the reasons. I guess the main thing of this is that my body does not feel and gauge the jack up rate and the slope or something to that effect. Once I master this though, that's yet another door that opens up for taking on faster and hollower waves, that means, yes, yet more choices of places and conditions that I can get to surf!
OK, 8 more sessions to go for this year's self-imposed quota!
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