The Drifter 8-14-05

I met Brett and Joe at seventeenth street on Sunday morning. The promised swell had begun to show. Waves were chest high on the sets, with a few nice standout waves less frequently.

Joe was a newcomer to the surf. He was the husband of a girl that I work with. He’d tried surfing in Hawaii on a big kahuna board, and decided to take up the sport. Through email, I’d advised him a bit during his board buying process. Joe was a good sized individual, and for learning, I told him bigger was better. He’d picked up a nice big 9’ plus board, plenty wide and thick.

Joe had met me for dawn patrol one other time, during the long flat spell where the waves were indistinguishable from the oil tanker boat wakes.

Brett had spent two of the last three weeks in Texas on business, cheerfully doing his part to help design bigger and better instruments of death for the Department of Defense, so that no future developing country might be deprived of the opportunity to sacrifice their young to the corpse pool. Needless to say, he was desperate for a few waves.

We jumped into the warm water and paddled into the whitewash. Having suffered the pain of weak arms the day before, I was prepared. I set my concentration out to sea and paddled over a few waves and through a few more. Minutes later, I sighed and sat upright.

Brett was to my left by several yards. I looked right and left. Joe was nowhere to be seen. I looked back to shore, and found him. He was well to my right, struggling with the inside waves, and rapidly drifting away from us. I looked at my position relative to the shoreline. I hadn’t realized how strong the northbound current was during my paddle. It was pretty strong.

Brett and I dabbled, catching a few waves as we drifted northward. After my second wave, I’d completely lost track of Joe. Then, I saw him walking at the shoreline. Brett and I waved our arms to let he know where we were. He matched our position on the shoreline, and entered the water a second time.

“You know” brett said. “he should’ve kept walking. He’s going to drift right past us again in the whitewash.”

I shrugged. Sure enough, the current at the shore being much stronger than the current outside the break, Joe drifted right past us. This time, however, the waves cooperated. We were between big sets and Joe was able to paddle out. He then turned south and swam back to our position.

“Man.” He said, recounting his ordeal. “The first time, I didn’t even make it past the insdide break. I looked up and saw the cliffs, and said fuck it. I got out and walked back.”

We drifted a bit longer. Brett caught the wave of the morning, a long left. Then, I made my suggestion.

“Hey guys, you feel like walking?” I asked. “The grass is defiantly greener back there. We’ve drifted too far.”

Brett agreed. Joe hesitated.

“Come on.” I chided. “We got to get you to paddle out one more time! Only this time, in bigger waves.”

I clumsibly caught a small wave, riding it on my knees. Brett came in just after me.

“Boy, I’m telling you.” I said. “I could have been a kneeboarding superstar.”

We sat in the sand to wait for Joe.

We’d drifted nearly a half mile, so the walk was long back to lifeguard tower 12. We’d met at 6:00 a.m. and it was nearing 7:30. Both Brett and Joe had places to be in the morning. By the time we to tower 14, Joe had made up his mind.

”I’m taking off.” He said.

Brett stuck it out, pushing the clock for an extra couple of waves. His morning appointment was to help a friend of his wife move, so my egging him to stay must have reached receptive ears.

I stayed even longer after Brett left, because I saw Venice on shore and I waited for her to paddle out to say Hi before I took a wave in. I hadn’t seen Venice in weeks. Dan was on shore with a camera shooting pictures of her.

Back in the Water 8-13-05

Finally, on a Saturday morning after what seemed like an eternity of flatness, we got a little bit of surf. I woke up late and looked at the surf report, but debated with myself whether it was worth my time. I was headed for the office for the day to put in some unpaid overtime, a depressing reality that cast a gloom over my whole attitude and shaded the surf reports towards hopelessness.

I went our to my car. I had “forgotten” my cell phone there the afternoon before in a deliberate set up to close the blinds and watch movies all evening with no phones ringing. On the phone were three messages from Chase, one from the night before and two from the morning.

I called the voicemail to get the story. Chase had called the night before to say he was going. Then he’d called at 5:30 in the morning to say he was on his way. Finally, he’d called at 6:15 to say that it looked promising.

“Hopefully, I’ll see you out there, bro. Looks a lot better than we’ve been getting lately.”

The pep talk was well all I needed. I put the funboard in the truck and headed for the ocean.

Having a beach pass is pretty nice. I knew that there was an event going on at the pier, so I decided to go to the state beach by the power plant. As I drove through the gate, displaying the annual pass hanger from my rear view mirror, I got a smile and a nod from the girl in the booth.

The state park system in California knows how to plan beaches: showers, restrooms, nice sidewalks, retaining walls to hold the sand, long beaches to prevent erosion.
I suited up and paddled out into a light crowd. The water was warm, almost too warm for my full wetsuit. But, the most immediately obvious factor was that my arms were useless gelatinous matter, incapable of paddling through a wave. I was going to hurt later, I knew. But, it was all for the best. If the predictors were accurate, this light surge in wave size was going to build into a full utility swell over the next four days. Best to get the arms moving as soon as possible.

The waves at Magnolia Street are a little bit faster than their northern counterparts. On this morning, they tended to be walled. Still, there were waves to be caught. Most of what I caught were very short rides to the bottom of the face with no turns. But, there were a few stand outs. I caught one pretty good left where I managed to outrun the shoulder for a few seconds.

It felt great to be back in the water. Between sets, I flopped off my board and lounged floating on my back or dove to the bottom for long leisurely underwater swims.

Though the clouds were thick, the summer heat came through. I unzipped my wetsuit to let in cool water. An Australian fellow next to me was in shorts only, and flatly told me that the water was too cold for it. I, on the other hand, was overly warm in my long sleeved and full legged outfit. I made a not to bring the Costco spring suit the following day

(I bought my spring suit for $40 at Costco a few summers back. I think it’s designed for water skiing or the like. It’s a horribly ugly and conspicuously off-brand light blue and black monstrosity which I rarely use, as I prefer to wear trunks when I can. But it does have its days.)

I surfed for about an hour and a half, showered and dressed in the parking lot, and drove to the office to work alone on a weekend. Pity to waste a perfectly good free day helping somebody else get richer, but at least there were some waves.

Profound Flatness 8-11-05

For what seems like the opressive majority of the summer of 2005 so far, surf has been scarce. My favorite forecaster at stormsurf.com has consistantly issued depressing forecasts. He's spoken of the southern hemisphere being "locked down in low pressure", having "no swell producing activity", and has even commented on the state of "profound flatness". Surfrider's daily report and photo taken at the San Clemente Pier have been flat and empty, with captions like "again, nobody is surfing today due to small size".

Not that this put a damper on the OC Regiseter's excited coverage of the Honda US open of Surfing, presneted by O'Niell, a small part of the Bank of the West Beach games. Look here, here, and here. You can use my login/password, communitst/charlie if you want. It quite funny, knowing that the whole time the surf at Huntington was complete and absolute shit!!

I'd gone to the beach last week and surfed in some ankle to knee high waves. the red tide was still in the water. I caught three waves in forty minutes and got out, not having gotten the fix from surfing that I'd craved.

On a rumor of possible incoming swell, Chase called me last Friday, and we met at the beach Saturday morning. We never even unpacked our wetsuits, and ended up sitting on the bench at 17th street, staring out at the water and talking about work, kids, family, and life in general. I got to see Chase's new board - dry, that is.

"It's always a shame to drive down here and leave without surfing" he said as we both got back into our cars. I tried to make use of the morning: got an oil change, took my wife's minivan to the radiator shope.

I still watch the surf forecasts daily or every other day, hoping against hope. Yesterday, I thought I saw a bump coming in for this morning. So, I paked up my truck last night and drove to the beach this morning.

There was nothing.

I ran into Dan, cruising the beach on his bike in the gray dawn.

"You know." he said. "I've been surfing for a long time, and I can't ever remember it being like this." Dan talked about surfing the day before. "I took my friend out to teach him. I caught like two waves."

"Well." I told him, heading back to my car. "In these last weeks, I've always come ready to surf. But, I've learned to also bring a book."

The beach can, after all, be quite calming in the morning, even if there are no waves. And these days, there are no waves.

There's some storm activity going on in the south, some say it's bound to break the spell. One can only hope. I need some frickin' waves, man! (Unfortunalty, when they come, I'll be so damn out of shape!)