Thursday, March 24, 2005

Session 5054

The last session was this Monday, but I feel like it has been quite a while. This past rain and wind almost seemed like lasted forever since it lasted both day and night.

I usually like to sleep with the window blinds a bit open, so that when the morning comes, and when it gets a bit brighter out, I can get out of the bed (but I am usually up before then.) This past poor weather was enough of the incentives for me that I finally could complete the re-write of the back-end of my web site, and I am quite happy now that I can, at a glance, tell the current Half Moon Bay area condition even better than before. Now that that's basically behind, I can now get back into surfing again.

So, this morning, the sky has beaten my wake up time, because there was no cloud in the sky, and that's great! As soon as I got up, I checked current conditions to both make sure that the new web back-end is functioning, and also, of course, to check to see how it would be. The buoy has read 6 ft at 10 seconds, plus the wind has nearly completely stopped. It is really amazing; as if someone has turned off the fan and turn on the light at the same time this morning.

I sent a short message to my local buddy, who just got back from a trip to Rio, and shortly we are comparing our notes on where it would be the best. I am really starting to get a hang of our local conditions; we talk about the wind, the tide, the swell height, the period and the direction. Still, this just sets our mind as to where we'd expect things to happen, and we still end up doing surf checks and another round of cell calls, but we are now starting to work this like a routine. A buddy A who lives near Montara goes and check there, buddy B who likes to surf another local spot goes and checks it out, and myself, I am usually checking out the Jetty. After a few phone calls, though we will usually end up in one or the other spot.

On a day like today, when things get smaller then places where we cannot normally surf opens up as fun places, and this morning, we picked Montara. As usual a surf check from the bluff top looks like it is only about ankle high. Of course, when we paddle out, it is easily overhead, and even though we know how it would be, it is always more than what we expect. And for a magical reason, it always gets bigger especially when I paddle out.

I am, still not at any level closer to these locals I am now "allowed" to surf with, today, I had a real blast since the waves were fast all right but not the usual dumper kind. We were creamed sometimes with close outs, and sometimes we got in to fast shoulder to wall actions.

I had couple of remarkable drop downs today. I will describe one of them, which was about 1.5 overhead by the time the thing jacked up.

It was one of those, that because of the position where I was I had to take it, or I'd be totally creamed, it was just jacking up very fast right where I was, and so I paddled as hard as I could. Then I was going up on an elevator like ride and then ejected out of the wave really fast. I was on an up position, but basically both the board and I was just skimming over the water, and rather than surfing on it, we were basically flying in the air for a moment. Then finally the board and my feet meet half way down the wave wall. I was still somewhat out of control, or at least felt that way, but once I touched down on the board, I started to crank a strong left turn and then I was on a smoother part of the wall that was still continuing to form, and I kept riding and riding on that wave. It was really an amazing ride? only at Montara!

Stopping before smashed into the beach break was kind of fun too. This was on an another ride, but basically when the wave in front of me started to build up at the beach signifying the end of the ride, I just kept going up in the back face of the wave to stop and as I tried to stall, the wave kicked up fast and thrown me and board up in the air. Unintended, but got a mini aerial move! Of course after this another beach break was coming so I was frantically trying to paddle back out!

After a while, the onshore wind started to kick up a bit, and basically that was the end of it, but it was so much fun! Stoke 8 today!

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