A Voyage with The Xanadau Rocky, Day 2

The M spot again with the Xanadu this morning. Today?s test was to see how the surfer and board together can make the best out of the junky situation. When I woke up in the morning, it was cold, foggy and soggy. It was definitely not an optimum type of day for surfing for sure.

I waited for my buddy on top of the cliff in the car, hoping that the condition might improve a bit. The enjoyability of the surf continued to be questionable. But my buddy was on a limited time basis so we had to go in.

To get out at this spot at this type of condition requires a bit of planning. First, there is a tremendous amount of side-going current present. Over the years, I have learned where there will be the start of the rip. One thing that I now need to mention is that rip currents sometimes do not go straight out like the diagrams on many rip current descriptions. Here the rip goes diagonal to the beach for some time, eventually dissipates out; and it is for very long distance. At least 400 yards. So if I mess up getting out, I would walk back out on the beach and try to catch the current to see if I'd get out. The tactic here is also try to paddle straight out, and in the direction of the side/rip combo current. If I did that I?d be in the inside impact zone in no time!

I must admit, that I was not that successful in getting out today, I did it a few times. We were there just barely under 1 hour but the workout was so tremendous that once we were out of the water we were just breathing so hard that made talking about the condition difficult!

But then, I did have a few fun rides. To some extent, a 5'10 board is really fun in this type of condition where the waves are popping up all over the places, and I love to ride all these bumps and now the board fits more into these nooks and crannies that making rapid turns to connect among these bumps were really fun. It is definitely very different type of ride than trimming on the wall of a wave on a long board.

Well, so in the end, it was fun and I was glad I went out. I think I can always get something out of a situation. In fact, I don't think I can remember any time when I went out and I had a bad time, even those on which I got injured badly.