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| Date/Time: |
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Saturday, 19 July 2003 6:30-8:30am |
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| Location: |
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PCH |
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| Weather: |
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Tropical-ish. Warm dawn rain and clouds. |
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| Conditions: |
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Really Clean and glassy. Small but fun sets. Long Lulls. |
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| Swell: |
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2.0' @ 14s @ 190° |
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Tide: |
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0.8 @ 8:11 |
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| Surf: |
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Knee to Thigh High |
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Board: |
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Walden |
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Comments:
The rain woke me up at 5:22 a.m. Right on, I was hoping we'd get some crazy summer weather and here it was. Tried to compact as much sleep as I could in until my alarm went off at 5:40 for the dawn patrol. On the walk to the car I was pelted with big, warm drops of rain. In flip flops, trunks and a shirt I was plenty warm and it wasn't even 6am yet. Managed to get to our parking spot before Unkle and Steve, a near first for me. We don't even bother to check the waves anymore, we know it's gonna be small and we are going out no matter what. By now the rain had stopped but it was still cloudy. We walked down the beach a little to our little peak, the tide was low and the wave were breaking very close in.
Once out there we thought there were no waves. It turned out there were some, but the lulls were really long and painful. I could imagine you could pull up in your car and watch for 10 minutes and think there were absolutely no waves on the California Coast today. There were though, and we caught them. The waves in themselves were nothing too exciting. I caught a few longish ones where I tried to get the to nose, and did a little bit of side-slipping. Unkle caught the wave of the day, an almost waist high one that took him into 6" of water. Steve was the most consistent at catching the long ones.
Steve soon raised the topic of the "dismount" since he's only been in this sport for a year or so and was looking to improve his style by not just jumping off his board when he pulls out. Why he asked me is a mystery since I have about a 50% success rate at gracefull pull outs. I told him my approach of stepping back and pivoting as your board pops up and trying to grab it. Since he probably seldom sees me do that, he was distrustfull, so I said I also like to just set my weight back and basiclly sit back down on my board. The next wave that Steve caught closed out on him and he pulled his best pull out ever. He faced the wave and basiclly "hugged" it as it broke on him. It made the sound of a painfull belly flop and Unkle and I nearly fell off of our boards laughing. It turned out, according to Steve, that the wave was breaking so shallow that he wanted to make his body as paralel to the bottom as he could, thus his approach. Bravo.
Afterwards was breaky at Art's followed by the Real Cheap Sports sale. On the drive back up to SB the weather appeared to be clearing. Right about noon, as I was riding my bike down State St. to head to the Outrigger Canoe races at Leadbetter, the big, warm drops started falling. By the time I got there it was in full effect and there was no point to stay dry. The Outrigger Canoers pride themselves on their Hawaiian-style traditions which they try to keep up by calling things by there Hawiian names and wearing a lot of lei's...so needless to say they were STOKED on this Hawaiian style weather gracing their races. A really great day to be alive.