Brandon called me again on Friday and asked if I wanted to head out with him on Saturday morning for some surf surfing. “Of course! Duh!” I said. We actually paddled out around 17th Street, but the current was such that we wound up at Dog Beach by the time we got out of the water. But we spent the majority of our time hovering around Goldenwest.
Surfline.com called for 2-3+, but it was a whole lot more than that today. Set waves were consistently coming in at the head-high and better range. I got to tie into a few of these dragons. We were out the when the tide hit the high point and started to receded. The back-swell from this tidal change caused quite the tricky take-off situation. When the ripple would come back from the beach, we had to time the take off just so to avoid total failure. Too early and the wave wouldn’t pick us up; too late and the back-swell will jack the wave up so steep that we needed a magic carpet to ride that out. And then sometimes it all came together and the take off was successful and utterly exhilarating.
After we’d been bobbing around out there for over two hours, this monster fog bank rolled North right over us. First we saw it engulf the pier, then the street lights on PCH started disappearing one by one. We took this as a sign that it was time to get out. Any thicker and things were going to start getting real dangerous with the size of the waves and the size of the crowds. But we did have one heck of a walk back after drifting so far.
We made a bee-line to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants and inhaled giant, two-pound burritos.