| February Overview | 1998 Overview |
| Date/Time: | Monday, February 16th, 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm |
| Location: | Stables |
| Weather: | Variable, beautiful morning with fast-approaching storm system. Afternoon rain and wind. |
| Conditions: | Peaky but clean, worsening into the arvo. |
| Swell: | Big on outer buoys, 20+ ft at 17 s. 12 ft at 17 s on Santa Monica, WNW groundswell and windswell. |
| Surf: | Bowling peaks to double overhead, inconsistent and small given the big buoys, that's what a more northerly angle and a heap of wind waves will do to your readings, turn them into misleadings. |
| Comments: |
Bailed on the 5 am wakeup plan for the first time in days,
and for the first time in days the early AM patrol was
the call. The rest of the day went much the same; drove
to Rincon and found it clean and overhead and perfect but
forgot my booties. Blown out by southerlies by the time
I got back. Continued on to Stables and had a pretty good time
but got out early again due to worsening conditions, only to
return by Rincon on the way back and find it had cleaned up!
Could have paddled out then, but the crowd was back on
it and the size had dropped with sets coming only rarely.
But I did get to surf. Stables was pumping with waves lumbering in and then bowling hard on the built-up sandbars from the past five weeks of storms. This became readily apparent to me on my first wave, made a clean drop on the 7'2" and hooted at the size and hollowness of it on the way down... stoked! Premature on the claim, though, as I spun out on the bottom turn and took a good faceplant. An inglorious treatment of such a fine wave, and it made me pay. Didn't penetrate on the faceplant but skipped and spun, spreadeagled on my back as the lip throws up, out, over and beyond me. I have enough time to enjoy that the lip didn't hit me right in the gut before I'm going over the falls, and it's a good fifty yards more down the line that I actually surface. With the wave shape fully sussed out, I paddled back and got a bunch more late drops with no spinouts at the bottom until the conditions got pretty poor. |