6 September 2006

Note, this turned up on my old NEO Alphasmart. It appears to be around September 2006.


Last week, I was looking forward to on more day of smooth south swell surfing, but the wind turned SW overnight, and when I checked the Jetty, it was already blown out. But today, the Highway 1 opened up so once again, we had a lot more options to locate spots to surf. A neighbor buddy called me up and said that he would want to go, so we decided to head to Pacifica, and that was probably the best pick for today. Here the SW wind is basically "offshore." And there were some NW swells which were actually kind of big.

I must say, though, I actually don't like offshore conditions here. What happens is that the waves jack up OK, but they do not pitch forward until much later than I'd expect, and in most cases, they just end up closing out in places I surf a lot. More often than not, when the offshore condition is that it can tolerate a much higher level of the wind than onshore conditions, and the surface of the water looks much smoother and easy to paddle out even when it is blowing like 15 knots.


Then there is something about big and small waves too. I've spoken to numerous surfers regarding this topic, and I am starting to appreciate why "bigger" waves can take less effort to catch than smaller waves. A lot of them say they get more tired at the end of a session going after smaller waves.

On things about this is that it still all depends on the shape of the wave, more so than actually they are big or small, plus as always, my own skill and the strength. Or even, sometimes, the proper choice of a board does matter in these cases. In fact, when waves are over a certain size and shape, a good long board is the only way to go.