week #003
maiden voyage at lawton st
sunday 9/10
randa:
we hit the channel in bolinas around 4:30pm, close to low tide - but - the tide was still pretty high flooding the boat launch. i was on my friend’s 7’6 and as soon as i started paddling i knew it was gonna be … tricky. i surfed a bunch of different boards in the 7ft range when i was in DR, but they must have had more volume and also i didn’t need to paddle as much. today in bolinas i literally spent two hours just paddling - i genuinely caught zero waves. i think i can mostly blame the board because there were lots of people who had horrible stances and seemed very beginner catching waves.
i think my takeaway is that i want an ~8 foot all-purpose board or something much floatier for bolinas. i am gonna try to figure out the volume for reference. i will let faiq describe the waves because he actually caught them 😂
faiq:
My body is finally recovered after all the paddling that Sunday required. The waves were pretty choppy and that made getting out and into position hard. As usual, the tide was high so you were required to do a paddle in to get to the groin. Wild name for a surf spot, I know.
The waves on Sunday were plentiful. I was lucky to catch a decent amount. However positioning was a little tricky. You can go both left and right from the concrete slab at the groin, but both waves end up dying down after a couple of seconds of riding them. This is likely due to the water getting deeper. I worked a lot on my turning to try and keep in the pocket. I was happy with how it turned out, but I should definitely try and put my feet further back on the board for faster turns.
In terms of staying high on the wave face I found that to be a little easier, but who knows if I was as high as I thought I was (probably wasn’t). All that said I think I need to work on staying closer to the pocket anyways for me to actually accomplish my hang 10 dreams.
I’m still happy with how it all went down, and I’m glad I got in all that paddle practice. Maybe it’ll make me stronger for when I want to transition to a shorter board like Randa.
saturday 9/16
randa:
OB at 6pm. it’s small but it’s OB so it’s choppy and shifty and dumpy and i have a hard time figuring out where to sit. i am using spenser’s boat-like longboard. i have been procrastinating getting my own board bc i want to get a good deal but today was the last straw… having a big board at a messy beach break makes me nervous. my strategy is to pick off corners of the smaller looking waves, which tends to work.
since i was generally spooked and anxious, i fell off in a really dumb way and the board slammed down on my head. being nervous makes bad stuff happen!!!!!
faiq:
I don’t get the opportunity to surf OB on a log often but it was small enough to give it a try. The tide yesterday was super low and required almost no paddling to get to where the waves were breaking. That was super nice. I caught a couple of small lefts and they went ok. I think the only one that I kept a decent line on was the one I tried catching in hopes my girlfriend would see me as she walked across the beach. Other than that I caught a couple that I fell towards the bottom on.
Other observations: the drift at OB is wild even on small days. The church is a good landmark for staying near Lawton st.