SURF REPORT
10 February 2010
The jerk working the line at the Arlington looked around in mock-frustration at the masses in front of the theater and said loudly: “ Why are the crowds so hard to manage when we have a surf flick?”
Phaneuf and I hear this like the starter’s pistol for the 100 word dash.
“ Uh, maybe because it’s best to ignore each other when we’re in large crowds.”
“ He should know by now that most surfers have an aversion to authority.”
“ Is this the line for a movie? We just want a burrito.”
“ The lineup is always like this when the surf is small.”
Dada-adada-ya-da.
Judging by the age and demeanor of the crowd, few expected the usual surf-flick skatepark-at-sea entertainment, full of snaps, punting aerials and busy daring-do. When confusing a pack of model citizens, however sun-burnished, for rowdies, the jerk was accidentally complimentary, and having some fun at his own expense.
Surfers waiting in line could empathize with the guy’s surprise. The world premier for Chris Malloy’s beautiful 180 South brought in a huge SRO audience, the largest by far to attend a 2010 Santa Barbara Film Festival event.
The film is an elegy to place, capturing feelings like reverence and joy in its visual selectivity, teaching without preaching, and mediated by a nicely unintrusive sound track.
180 South follows a hallowed forty-year template cut by passionate wilderness existentialists Yvon Chouinard and Doug Tompkins when they traveled south overland from California to southern Chile in 1968. Footage from the documentary of the original 1968 trip, Mountain of Storms, is occasionally cut into 180 South. The first film seems worth being revived, according to people who have seen it. Surfing and mountaineering their way south, the trip and the spirit that brought it off blueprints the irresistible lifestyle now followed by legions, including the voyagers of 180 South. Relating to that inspiration is easy: a long trip down Baja California I made in the same year began my own forty-year enchantment with nature.
The 1968 journey made by Chouinard and Tompkins assured the social path the 180 South participants would choose later, championing the environment, being faithful to the spirit of discovery, unwilling to yield to the status quo. In 180 South, Chris Malloy elected to have chief protagonist Jeff Johnson travel by boat, perhaps knowing that retracing a 5,000 mile land trek would lead to 10 movies, not just one. Johnson personifies the kind of unrepentant thrillseeker that the charismatic Chouinard and Tompkins were and still are. At the age of seventy, Chouinard impulsively joins the climbing team headed upriver. Johnson, an environmentalist documentarian, is only just one part-time job away from another life-affirming adventure.
According to many of the people who created the film, 180 was hard to get done because it seemed to keep on creating itself: what happens inadvertently on the journey, like the breaking of the boat’s mast en route to Chile, ushers sudden content into the mix that could not be ignored. The dismasting creates an unforeseen opportunity to introduce important philosophical structure for the key theme in the film and leads to the addition of an important character in the story. The delay for repairs on Rapa Nui (Easter Island), causes the climbers to fail in reaching their ultimate goal, the peak of Corcovado in Patagonia, because the snow has melted on the now-crumbling crag when they finally arrive.
What began as a documentary becomes more of a personal drama that gradually becomes a warning against continuing the rapacious resource destruction wrought by cancerous cities against the surrounding wilderness. Rapa Nui’s Makohe, the impulsive athlete who joins the crew of the Sea Bear, exemplifies the apogee of a natural human, whose life within the wild is seamless, uncomplicated by Western culture. The story of her island’s antecedents serves as a perfect allegory for the world-wide despoilation of the environment. The tragedy of Rapa Nui which was mindlessly destroyed by its inhabitants long before Western discovery, underscores the seriousness of global circumstances once only perceived by a handful of iconoclasts. To give formal emphasis to the relevance of the island disaster, Malloy effectively references the Rapa Nui chapter in Jared Diamond’s 2005 book Collapse.
Chouinard and Tompkins’ 1968 trip was both motivation for the new film and prism for the present: 180 South is an eloquent call for all of us to work to save wild places. The principals are drawn down a southern line to less complicated and cluttered places, both then and now. They independently discover the clean clarity of wild seas and pristine Andean peaks never visited but by guanacos and condors. Doug Tompkins, founder of both North Face and Esprit, is so devoted to this part of the world he is spending his fortune on its preservation. Chouinard lends his estimable credentials to the project. Over two million acres have been acquired, which Tompkins intends to turn over to the governments of Argentina and Chile if they can guarantee the land will not be violated. Yet Conservacion Patagonica is assailed on all sides by pulp mills and hydroelectric dam projects which bring broad havoc to an unspoiled ecosystem.
Malloy’s film gets its title from a recent comment by Tompkins, who suggested that when facing unredeemable change to the environment, only one choice remains: “ When you get to the edge of the precipice, you can still move forward by doing a 180. Turn around and take the next step forward.”
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A New 7'7"
SURF REPORT
16 JANUARY 2010
For my sixtieth birthday all my friends ponied up the cash to buy me a brand new 7’7” Towers performance board from Anacapa Surf. I am sure Ryan cut Phaneuf a good deal on it because it was listed at $500 in the shop. John had observed me admiring it in the fall.\
We held the party down at low tide Knucklehead. Quite a rock climb for some of the folks who are not used to that dangerous clamber.
I was supremely moved by the gift. It was a talisman bespeaking a more active, a more optimistic effort in the water. As if I did in deed have some good days ahead, and I do. They are not to be doubted.
16 JANUARY 2010
For my sixtieth birthday all my friends ponied up the cash to buy me a brand new 7’7” Towers performance board from Anacapa Surf. I am sure Ryan cut Phaneuf a good deal on it because it was listed at $500 in the shop. John had observed me admiring it in the fall.\
We held the party down at low tide Knucklehead. Quite a rock climb for some of the folks who are not used to that dangerous clamber.
I was supremely moved by the gift. It was a talisman bespeaking a more active, a more optimistic effort in the water. As if I did in deed have some good days ahead, and I do. They are not to be doubted.
The Real Rubicon
SURF REPORT
22 October 2009
When things go better sometimes there is a lot less to say. Different equipment lead to other results. Hung up the 4/3 until colder water calls for it and parked the Yater for when the waves are knee-high. The Rusty has enough paddle in it to float some 2XXL. The cut-down 2/3 wetsuit made for lighter action in the water, until a comber unzipped me and I sat back in the froth trying to get closed up before another wall rolled over me.
Pisser stayed down off the kiosk at C Street and I roamed around middle stables. Every now and then I would meet up with him and ask him what kind of bait he was using. He was sitting way out waiting on the Big Uns. The swell was forcusing more on Surfers Point than at Pipe or Stables, but there was a very good peak going off at Stables at one to two feet overhead. Then it would close before rolling into the zone where Greg had staked his claim. Three or four waves came to a set, and the crowd looked a lot worse from the parking lot than it acted in the water.
Compared to the previous day, I couldn’t recognize myself. I had two waves that were walkbacks from the shower pad and felt a lot more comfortable on the smaller, more maneuverable Rusty. When you start talking of deep on overhead surf on a 9’6”, getting down and going can be doubtful and can always be concerned about what will happen if the log gets loose.
Like my nighttime visitor said: get in shape. I need to surf a lot more if I am going to surf at the advanced age of 60. It’s the real cut off. Fifty is take it or leave it. You don’t have a real excuse. But 60 is the real Rubicon. Can’t finesse 60. All you can do is hang on to your shit and see what happens as you head toward 70.
See, 60 is 70’s neighbor. And 70 doesn’t sound like it takes many prisoners.
22 October 2009
When things go better sometimes there is a lot less to say. Different equipment lead to other results. Hung up the 4/3 until colder water calls for it and parked the Yater for when the waves are knee-high. The Rusty has enough paddle in it to float some 2XXL. The cut-down 2/3 wetsuit made for lighter action in the water, until a comber unzipped me and I sat back in the froth trying to get closed up before another wall rolled over me.
Pisser stayed down off the kiosk at C Street and I roamed around middle stables. Every now and then I would meet up with him and ask him what kind of bait he was using. He was sitting way out waiting on the Big Uns. The swell was forcusing more on Surfers Point than at Pipe or Stables, but there was a very good peak going off at Stables at one to two feet overhead. Then it would close before rolling into the zone where Greg had staked his claim. Three or four waves came to a set, and the crowd looked a lot worse from the parking lot than it acted in the water.
Compared to the previous day, I couldn’t recognize myself. I had two waves that were walkbacks from the shower pad and felt a lot more comfortable on the smaller, more maneuverable Rusty. When you start talking of deep on overhead surf on a 9’6”, getting down and going can be doubtful and can always be concerned about what will happen if the log gets loose.
Like my nighttime visitor said: get in shape. I need to surf a lot more if I am going to surf at the advanced age of 60. It’s the real cut off. Fifty is take it or leave it. You don’t have a real excuse. But 60 is the real Rubicon. Can’t finesse 60. All you can do is hang on to your shit and see what happens as you head toward 70.
See, 60 is 70’s neighbor. And 70 doesn’t sound like it takes many prisoners.
Hurricane Rick and Typhoon Nepartak
SURF REPORT
21 October 2009
Once Hurricane Rick bloomed off southern Mexico, I nearly forgot that waves were coming from the northwest around the same time the hurricane swell might arrive. Rick was generally a fizzler, but may have been the source of some lefts breaking at Ventura Point today. Category Five Rick, with up to 185 mph winds, was the second most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Pacific and a spineless party-pooper. I had enjoyed the fantasy of Rick parked 300 miles off Baja, swigging Tequila, doing no one any harm as he stalled in our swell window for four or five days launching surf at California. But Rick forgot to take his Viagra. Wind shear from the west carved him up quickly into a tropical depression and he slunk off to the east to rain on Texas.
At 3 PM the CDIP was 6.9 at 17 from the 290, a northwest swell courtesy of recurved Typhoon Nepartak. I was startled and started to pine, inwardly of course. Something from the 175 was also registering, but I doubted if it was from Rick, who had played peek-a-boo in our window on Monday for a few hours at 155 degrees. I went late with the wrong gear to Ventura Point with the Popcorn Prince of Oaxi, Greg Prinz, AKA The Pizzer. I pushed the Yater out into the bathwater at Stables wearing a 4/3, boots and cap. The wind had blown all day at the farm, but there was glass at the beach. I could have, should have trunked it. Surf was running mostly head high to a little over. It would be an afternoon to forget, but not without sufficient adventure to report.
The Pizz was on fire but I had one of my most depressing go-outs all-time. There was a lot of deceptive windswell on top of the groundswell which I struggled mightily to ride, but was prone to misjudge too early or too late, provoking plenty of flailing in the No-Catch Zone or circus clown late take-offs into the swirling soup. Greg came steaming back out mid-session barking about the “ bottom turn of his life!” On the other hand I felt like I was surfing in oatmeal.
I got a fair left, then spent quite a while either fruitlessly paddling or taking off into closeouts. Then I took off with Greg on a frothy comber going right, and thus fastened on the idea of employing the buddy system in order to get some waves, just turn off my brain and rotely follow whatever he did-not that he was not frustrated as well, but he was catching a lot of waves and going from mid-stables to the showers frequently. That’s a twenty second ride. On one such exemplary tandem wave event, I rolled forward in slo-mo standing up for a full over-the-falls cascadia, remaining upright so I could keep up with Greg, who was flying on the face of the wave many yards from me by then. I crashed in an explosion of white water, still gamely on my feet while beneath me the turbulence roiled. There were far too many people in front of me, wide-eyed with horror, to merely jump off, so I dropped down and grabbed the tail, and proceeded to calf-wrestle the nine and half foot fiberglass beast into submission. I felt like I pulled my shoulder but it was just age-trauma no doubt. The medics remained seated ashore.
The crowning touch was a rebirthing escapade on an overhead left, which I dropped into late, of course, and just as I completed a disturbingly awkward backside bottom turn, beginning to go out of control, I found myself enveloped in what we will here identify as the tube, though within it there was little space or visibility. It was a good place to be, but all very wrong. It was like a blind date with a pretty girl who openly wishes you were not there. I rested there in the whiteout, gently skimming now on one knee, pelvis on the moon, and felt like I could cry. When I came out, I stood back up, lost my balance in full flail then fell backward. Judges on the shore held up scores of 9.9, 9.8 and 10.0. I had come so close to a full kook. But there was still plenty of daylight left. I could give it another shot-if I could catch a wave.
That night, as usual, I dreamt many things. The final dream was at one of my dreamworld surfspots. I have been there a number of times. It’s a combination of Haleiwa and Hanalei, with a really good series of breaks fronted by a carnival-like beach town. I was surfing small surf. Mostly just admiring the scene. An older surfer paddled up to me and told me I needed to get in better shape if I wanted to surf. He did not scold. He was more like a life-coach from God. Then on the beach he presented me with a large black idol with a one-eyed face on it and a thick dark headband carved on it. He said it would help. I sat on the floor of some busy camera shop and opened the idol up, discovering that there was another identical, smaller idol within. I opened that one, and inside it was also replicated in miniature. I kept opening and revealing smaller and smaller idols, until the idol was too small to open. I tried and tried to pry the tiny thing open until a loud city-slicker type came barging up and asked me why I was playing with army men on the floor like that. I found it impossible to defend myself or put back all my little idols in the next biggest one, so I just opened up a floor tile and hid them all under it and left.
21 October 2009
Once Hurricane Rick bloomed off southern Mexico, I nearly forgot that waves were coming from the northwest around the same time the hurricane swell might arrive. Rick was generally a fizzler, but may have been the source of some lefts breaking at Ventura Point today. Category Five Rick, with up to 185 mph winds, was the second most powerful hurricane ever recorded in the eastern Pacific and a spineless party-pooper. I had enjoyed the fantasy of Rick parked 300 miles off Baja, swigging Tequila, doing no one any harm as he stalled in our swell window for four or five days launching surf at California. But Rick forgot to take his Viagra. Wind shear from the west carved him up quickly into a tropical depression and he slunk off to the east to rain on Texas.
At 3 PM the CDIP was 6.9 at 17 from the 290, a northwest swell courtesy of recurved Typhoon Nepartak. I was startled and started to pine, inwardly of course. Something from the 175 was also registering, but I doubted if it was from Rick, who had played peek-a-boo in our window on Monday for a few hours at 155 degrees. I went late with the wrong gear to Ventura Point with the Popcorn Prince of Oaxi, Greg Prinz, AKA The Pizzer. I pushed the Yater out into the bathwater at Stables wearing a 4/3, boots and cap. The wind had blown all day at the farm, but there was glass at the beach. I could have, should have trunked it. Surf was running mostly head high to a little over. It would be an afternoon to forget, but not without sufficient adventure to report.
The Pizz was on fire but I had one of my most depressing go-outs all-time. There was a lot of deceptive windswell on top of the groundswell which I struggled mightily to ride, but was prone to misjudge too early or too late, provoking plenty of flailing in the No-Catch Zone or circus clown late take-offs into the swirling soup. Greg came steaming back out mid-session barking about the “ bottom turn of his life!” On the other hand I felt like I was surfing in oatmeal.
I got a fair left, then spent quite a while either fruitlessly paddling or taking off into closeouts. Then I took off with Greg on a frothy comber going right, and thus fastened on the idea of employing the buddy system in order to get some waves, just turn off my brain and rotely follow whatever he did-not that he was not frustrated as well, but he was catching a lot of waves and going from mid-stables to the showers frequently. That’s a twenty second ride. On one such exemplary tandem wave event, I rolled forward in slo-mo standing up for a full over-the-falls cascadia, remaining upright so I could keep up with Greg, who was flying on the face of the wave many yards from me by then. I crashed in an explosion of white water, still gamely on my feet while beneath me the turbulence roiled. There were far too many people in front of me, wide-eyed with horror, to merely jump off, so I dropped down and grabbed the tail, and proceeded to calf-wrestle the nine and half foot fiberglass beast into submission. I felt like I pulled my shoulder but it was just age-trauma no doubt. The medics remained seated ashore.
The crowning touch was a rebirthing escapade on an overhead left, which I dropped into late, of course, and just as I completed a disturbingly awkward backside bottom turn, beginning to go out of control, I found myself enveloped in what we will here identify as the tube, though within it there was little space or visibility. It was a good place to be, but all very wrong. It was like a blind date with a pretty girl who openly wishes you were not there. I rested there in the whiteout, gently skimming now on one knee, pelvis on the moon, and felt like I could cry. When I came out, I stood back up, lost my balance in full flail then fell backward. Judges on the shore held up scores of 9.9, 9.8 and 10.0. I had come so close to a full kook. But there was still plenty of daylight left. I could give it another shot-if I could catch a wave.
That night, as usual, I dreamt many things. The final dream was at one of my dreamworld surfspots. I have been there a number of times. It’s a combination of Haleiwa and Hanalei, with a really good series of breaks fronted by a carnival-like beach town. I was surfing small surf. Mostly just admiring the scene. An older surfer paddled up to me and told me I needed to get in better shape if I wanted to surf. He did not scold. He was more like a life-coach from God. Then on the beach he presented me with a large black idol with a one-eyed face on it and a thick dark headband carved on it. He said it would help. I sat on the floor of some busy camera shop and opened the idol up, discovering that there was another identical, smaller idol within. I opened that one, and inside it was also replicated in miniature. I kept opening and revealing smaller and smaller idols, until the idol was too small to open. I tried and tried to pry the tiny thing open until a loud city-slicker type came barging up and asked me why I was playing with army men on the floor like that. I found it impossible to defend myself or put back all my little idols in the next biggest one, so I just opened up a floor tile and hid them all under it and left.
The Wet Mandala of Melor
SURF REPORT
15 October 2009
I started watching the swell event from a week out. Surfline was calling for a 10 foot swell out of the 250 a week ago. The NEPA animation filled out the sector with storm. Then the Weather Service began to get excited about rain. Typhoon Melor, recurving out of the northwest Pacific after maiming Luzon and bashing Japan, moved east into the Gulf of Alaska as an extra-tropical low. Hurricanes in the Atlantic do that occasionally as well, circling from the Antilles to Ireland.
So, for five or six days, the grand expectation of a future event seemed to put the present into slow motion. Like when you are five and the Christmas Tree is so big it fills up half the living room and the pile of presents gets about chest high and the house is filled with the scent of Douglas fir. You sit and watch the fog linger outside the front window on the crummy ivy sprawled on the edge of the asphalt, wishing Santa would get the lead out of his britches. I had stuff to do in advance, like take five tons of butternut squash out of the field before it got soaked, and I wished some cloddy fields could have been planted beforehand. But its not like I have major slack going.
Every time I was near a computer I would sit and watch the wet mandala of Melor cranking slowly southeastward toward Point Conception on the AVN at < http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/loop-avn.html> I would pick out particularly loaded blue and gold swirls of moisture and try to time which one might strike my farm. Sometimes you know that its going to be a dry blow the minute a low does a little bump to the north and your favorite package of squalls heads into someplace like Corvallis, which does not need the rain, because over time it will usually get more than it can handle. The weather poets at NOAA kept chanting about the significant early season event, warning equally of high seas and flash flood warnings for the burn areas, so I was double jolly about the imminent chaos impending out of the west.
The fact that swell was aimed at us reinforced the likelihood of rain. The downside is that rain-runoff into the sea from populated areas usually spikes the coliform and enteroccoci values in the intertidal zone, particularly the first heavy rain of the season. You know how the weather girls warn you about how greasy the road will be during the first drizzle? When the bar breaks on the Ventura River mouth on the first event of the season, most surfers are happy to sit and watch the latte-colored walls crash shoreward, knowing that they are filled with what makes the ears ache, the skin itch and the chest fill with vile thick green emulsions.
We got the orographic drazzlers first, as forecast, on Monday afternoon, then all day Tuesday the rain fell beautifully, into the night, with no more than four tenths falling in a given hour. We picked on Wednesday in a good rain because by the time I got to the farm Francisco had already filled up a few boxes with sweet corn so we grabbed some kale and collards out of the soggy beds anyway. Four and a half inches fell on Ojai. Nine or so up in the Matilija, and the NWS hydrology map recorded seventeen inches on some mountain in Big Sur. The swell came in behind the rain. CDIP displayed some crazy images, like nine feet of swell from 250 degrees west at 11 seconds. Then it went 12 from the 295 at fourteen seconds on Thursday as things dried out.
Phaneuf got off early and started wandering the coast at low tide. He started texting around two, like a fisherman cutting up pieces of barracuda in the bow of his boat before putting hooks on the seabed for halibut. “ 6-8 foot at the pier…( later)…At Faria. Looks fun….Just saw someone get a long one…”
Pisser came in the office to sell some Meyer lemons.
I let him read Phaneuf’s memos. “ You want to go?”
He wrinkled his nose. “ Naw, I just got over being sick”
Now, a word about that nose-wrinkle, because my question begged an appropriate response and Pisser nailed it. We know too much about pollution in the Ocean for our own good. Basically, we are in denial, because we know its flat-out loaded with the nasty. Rain just exacerbates the pollution times ten or fifteen zillion. The poop of 15,000 dogs is headed your way, and countless cats. Not to forget the homeless crapping free in the riverbottom for love of God.
There is nothing more definitive than the surfer nose-wrinkle when surfing after rain is suggested. This is generally because the wrinkler’s nose has smelt some bad ocean in the past. The notion of submerging within it is more than repulsive. When Greg Prinz does the wrinkle, his version is a whole face wrinkle. His wrinkle spreads across his face like he had just been forced to eat five pounds of unripe Hachiya persimmons. Nothing could have been more emphatic unless he had given me a double no-way bullfighter push off with both wrists spinning at the same time.
“ Ok. I think I am going to Pitas.”
“ You let me know…”
The idea that Pitas was good, and fairly free of run-off, had incited a severe case of surfalgia dridokitis. Its almost as bad as being in love. You can get pretty spun. I had not been in the water since San Clemente, which was years ( two weeks) ago. There had been no surf, or there had been but the wind got it before I could pull away from my shackle. Now the storm had come, gone and, abnormally, not been followed by the big blow storm-trailer out of the west. There was some wind, but not howling Victory At Sea white-capping madness.
By the time I got to Pitas it was actually a little offshore. We walked up to the Tudor Takeoff and paddled out there because there was still some sand for Seed to hang out on while we were surfing The water seemed fine and smelled of nothing. The waves were green and backlit with gold. Three or four guys paddled in as we went out, leaving a total of seven surfers with lots of head to shoulder high waves. A flashback to 1977 in other words. We got some good ones, even though it was mostly a semi-windswell, and closing out here and there. There was one section that was tubing. Phaneuf got a real long ride staying high in the pocket on his little yellow flash. I stayed inside mostly and rode waist-high grinders on the bar on the Yater. Danny’s brother Keith was out, sweeping around on his mighty cutbacks. Another, pleasant, older guy I have seen forever on this coast paddled by and said:.
“ Great way to pass a Thursday afternoon!” he hollered to me as he went out to the main lineup.
Sure was.
This afternoon I started to crum out, but its probably this upper respiratory deal all the kids are hacking on. I sent one home yesterday and another today. Its definitely not el crudo. I am eating ginseng and drinking Echinacea so I can go out tomorrow after I pick for the farmers market. There is going to be a firm south coming up, and I can kick this shit before it kicks me. The little Ginseng Man is already dancing inside me, warding off the evil intruder.
15 October 2009
I started watching the swell event from a week out. Surfline was calling for a 10 foot swell out of the 250 a week ago. The NEPA animation filled out the sector with storm. Then the Weather Service began to get excited about rain. Typhoon Melor, recurving out of the northwest Pacific after maiming Luzon and bashing Japan, moved east into the Gulf of Alaska as an extra-tropical low. Hurricanes in the Atlantic do that occasionally as well, circling from the Antilles to Ireland.
So, for five or six days, the grand expectation of a future event seemed to put the present into slow motion. Like when you are five and the Christmas Tree is so big it fills up half the living room and the pile of presents gets about chest high and the house is filled with the scent of Douglas fir. You sit and watch the fog linger outside the front window on the crummy ivy sprawled on the edge of the asphalt, wishing Santa would get the lead out of his britches. I had stuff to do in advance, like take five tons of butternut squash out of the field before it got soaked, and I wished some cloddy fields could have been planted beforehand. But its not like I have major slack going.
Every time I was near a computer I would sit and watch the wet mandala of Melor cranking slowly southeastward toward Point Conception on the AVN at < http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/goes/west/nepac/loop-avn.html> I would pick out particularly loaded blue and gold swirls of moisture and try to time which one might strike my farm. Sometimes you know that its going to be a dry blow the minute a low does a little bump to the north and your favorite package of squalls heads into someplace like Corvallis, which does not need the rain, because over time it will usually get more than it can handle. The weather poets at NOAA kept chanting about the significant early season event, warning equally of high seas and flash flood warnings for the burn areas, so I was double jolly about the imminent chaos impending out of the west.
The fact that swell was aimed at us reinforced the likelihood of rain. The downside is that rain-runoff into the sea from populated areas usually spikes the coliform and enteroccoci values in the intertidal zone, particularly the first heavy rain of the season. You know how the weather girls warn you about how greasy the road will be during the first drizzle? When the bar breaks on the Ventura River mouth on the first event of the season, most surfers are happy to sit and watch the latte-colored walls crash shoreward, knowing that they are filled with what makes the ears ache, the skin itch and the chest fill with vile thick green emulsions.
We got the orographic drazzlers first, as forecast, on Monday afternoon, then all day Tuesday the rain fell beautifully, into the night, with no more than four tenths falling in a given hour. We picked on Wednesday in a good rain because by the time I got to the farm Francisco had already filled up a few boxes with sweet corn so we grabbed some kale and collards out of the soggy beds anyway. Four and a half inches fell on Ojai. Nine or so up in the Matilija, and the NWS hydrology map recorded seventeen inches on some mountain in Big Sur. The swell came in behind the rain. CDIP displayed some crazy images, like nine feet of swell from 250 degrees west at 11 seconds. Then it went 12 from the 295 at fourteen seconds on Thursday as things dried out.
Phaneuf got off early and started wandering the coast at low tide. He started texting around two, like a fisherman cutting up pieces of barracuda in the bow of his boat before putting hooks on the seabed for halibut. “ 6-8 foot at the pier…( later)…At Faria. Looks fun….Just saw someone get a long one…”
Pisser came in the office to sell some Meyer lemons.
I let him read Phaneuf’s memos. “ You want to go?”
He wrinkled his nose. “ Naw, I just got over being sick”
Now, a word about that nose-wrinkle, because my question begged an appropriate response and Pisser nailed it. We know too much about pollution in the Ocean for our own good. Basically, we are in denial, because we know its flat-out loaded with the nasty. Rain just exacerbates the pollution times ten or fifteen zillion. The poop of 15,000 dogs is headed your way, and countless cats. Not to forget the homeless crapping free in the riverbottom for love of God.
There is nothing more definitive than the surfer nose-wrinkle when surfing after rain is suggested. This is generally because the wrinkler’s nose has smelt some bad ocean in the past. The notion of submerging within it is more than repulsive. When Greg Prinz does the wrinkle, his version is a whole face wrinkle. His wrinkle spreads across his face like he had just been forced to eat five pounds of unripe Hachiya persimmons. Nothing could have been more emphatic unless he had given me a double no-way bullfighter push off with both wrists spinning at the same time.
“ Ok. I think I am going to Pitas.”
“ You let me know…”
The idea that Pitas was good, and fairly free of run-off, had incited a severe case of surfalgia dridokitis. Its almost as bad as being in love. You can get pretty spun. I had not been in the water since San Clemente, which was years ( two weeks) ago. There had been no surf, or there had been but the wind got it before I could pull away from my shackle. Now the storm had come, gone and, abnormally, not been followed by the big blow storm-trailer out of the west. There was some wind, but not howling Victory At Sea white-capping madness.
By the time I got to Pitas it was actually a little offshore. We walked up to the Tudor Takeoff and paddled out there because there was still some sand for Seed to hang out on while we were surfing The water seemed fine and smelled of nothing. The waves were green and backlit with gold. Three or four guys paddled in as we went out, leaving a total of seven surfers with lots of head to shoulder high waves. A flashback to 1977 in other words. We got some good ones, even though it was mostly a semi-windswell, and closing out here and there. There was one section that was tubing. Phaneuf got a real long ride staying high in the pocket on his little yellow flash. I stayed inside mostly and rode waist-high grinders on the bar on the Yater. Danny’s brother Keith was out, sweeping around on his mighty cutbacks. Another, pleasant, older guy I have seen forever on this coast paddled by and said:.
“ Great way to pass a Thursday afternoon!” he hollered to me as he went out to the main lineup.
Sure was.
This afternoon I started to crum out, but its probably this upper respiratory deal all the kids are hacking on. I sent one home yesterday and another today. Its definitely not el crudo. I am eating ginseng and drinking Echinacea so I can go out tomorrow after I pick for the farmers market. There is going to be a firm south coming up, and I can kick this shit before it kicks me. The little Ginseng Man is already dancing inside me, warding off the evil intruder.
Reunion at Poche
SURF REPORT
28 September 2009
Three days in San Clemente. A modest south swell was allegedly going to arrive on Saturday and show through Sunday. A long period 6 foot groundswell from the NW was also due to arrive Sunday evening, but it’s a quick hitter and blocked ( originating from 295 degrees) in San Clemente by Santa Catalina Island’s long north-south shadow. That 295 swell is best for Ventura. I nearly traveled without a board, but Olivia and Phaneuf asked if I would take one, and since it is The Primary Rule I slid the Rusty aboard. When heading to the beach, go prepared to surf.
I was in southern Orange County for the 40th reunion of my Webb School class. Webb is an elite school in Claremont that graduated 43 boys in 1969. At least four have died, including two of my best friends from that time. The survivors all look to be near sixty, but beneath the layers of age and experience the shadow of youth persists. Some have become predictably portly, and many act their age. I certainly don’t, and I wonder if I ever will. Many were very happy that I brought some nice buds for them to enjoy. I also brought sweet corn, 20 pounds of kabocha squash and oranges for the official class cocktail: Mount Gay Rum with OJ in a tall glass filled with ice.
Lud Shonnard still has an engaging smile and absurdist sense of humor. Randall Lewis remains mild and selfless despite the fact he and his brothers have built most of the houses in western San Bernardino County. Richard Hastings wanted to be a musician and every day he plays for pay. That may be one of the most significant achievements of any classmate. Greg Stragnell was a gentleman before he moved to Britain, which invented the trait. His kindness is a contrast to how unkind some of us once were. Petty might be a better word, but in any case, now these once rowdy guys are kind and genuine. Mature might be a better word. Even at this late hour, wild man Mike Wray shows glimmers of reflection and introspection. Jordy Ryan was always careful, engaging and mysterious at the same time, which built him well for diplomacy (UNDP). We are at Miles Rosedale’s beach house at the far end of the Capistrano strand, a few yards north of a reefbreak called Poche. I have been down here a number of times and Poche has only been truly rideable once. The reef needs a lot of swell to break. Miles has always been effortlessly generous. He’s decided to have the weekend catered and the food is good. More than anyone, he has tried to find ways to keep us in touch with each other.
Strange nuances surface over the reunion period, and curious coincidences. If we had enjoyed the internet forty years earlier, Bill Kempner and I might have known that one another had lived at the same time on Oahu for four years, Texas ( Houston for Bill, Austin for me) for four years and attended UCSB at the same time as well. In all that time our paths never crossed. I delivered papayas and cucumbers a few blocks from where he lived in Manoa. We obviously paid scant attention to the Alumni Bulletin during those years, which might have reported on our whereabouts. We have both taken up making ceramics again, in preparation against boring retirements no doubt.
John Dey has become a commercial grower of high quality garlic in Klamath Falls. After these many years of preaching to him about organic farming ( his family controls a lot of good ground in the Klamath Basin) he has bought in to organic, but probably not as a result of anything I may have said. There was much more logic to his decision than I would have imparted. Last year John suggested I grow shallots from seed and I brought him a sample of the results. He says the market for them requires a smaller product because people want to buy them in April and May to plant. I think that may be a project for someone else.
Tom Sherrard caught too many little sand rays for my taste. In the summer I am always wary of the bastards. He kept hauling them up on the beach, then we had to release them. I hate them. I have never been wanged by one, but they have sent my friends to the emergency room with their sting.
Richard Hastings and I surfed a little on that south, but it was too punk to break on Poche. The water was warm and a shade of milky turquoise. We ditched our wetsuits and paddled out on Stand Up Paddle boards Richard brought. It was my first time and I fell off frequently. Richard said: “ Keep paddling and don’t look down.” I did as he said, and finally at one point I decided to let my hips do the thinking. This sport, at least at the beginning, depends on balance only obtained from the knees to the midsection. I did not catch any waves, but I think I can get the hang of it. A local guy was out on his SUP too, cruising around on the tentative walls crawling over the Poche Reef and breaking finally on top of the gravelly shore. Late, we all went out to body surf the shorepound-four foot faces now on a rising tide-and caught some good south crashers. I caught some waves and did not make any, so went away with good feelings.
28 September 2009
Three days in San Clemente. A modest south swell was allegedly going to arrive on Saturday and show through Sunday. A long period 6 foot groundswell from the NW was also due to arrive Sunday evening, but it’s a quick hitter and blocked ( originating from 295 degrees) in San Clemente by Santa Catalina Island’s long north-south shadow. That 295 swell is best for Ventura. I nearly traveled without a board, but Olivia and Phaneuf asked if I would take one, and since it is The Primary Rule I slid the Rusty aboard. When heading to the beach, go prepared to surf.
I was in southern Orange County for the 40th reunion of my Webb School class. Webb is an elite school in Claremont that graduated 43 boys in 1969. At least four have died, including two of my best friends from that time. The survivors all look to be near sixty, but beneath the layers of age and experience the shadow of youth persists. Some have become predictably portly, and many act their age. I certainly don’t, and I wonder if I ever will. Many were very happy that I brought some nice buds for them to enjoy. I also brought sweet corn, 20 pounds of kabocha squash and oranges for the official class cocktail: Mount Gay Rum with OJ in a tall glass filled with ice.
Lud Shonnard still has an engaging smile and absurdist sense of humor. Randall Lewis remains mild and selfless despite the fact he and his brothers have built most of the houses in western San Bernardino County. Richard Hastings wanted to be a musician and every day he plays for pay. That may be one of the most significant achievements of any classmate. Greg Stragnell was a gentleman before he moved to Britain, which invented the trait. His kindness is a contrast to how unkind some of us once were. Petty might be a better word, but in any case, now these once rowdy guys are kind and genuine. Mature might be a better word. Even at this late hour, wild man Mike Wray shows glimmers of reflection and introspection. Jordy Ryan was always careful, engaging and mysterious at the same time, which built him well for diplomacy (UNDP). We are at Miles Rosedale’s beach house at the far end of the Capistrano strand, a few yards north of a reefbreak called Poche. I have been down here a number of times and Poche has only been truly rideable once. The reef needs a lot of swell to break. Miles has always been effortlessly generous. He’s decided to have the weekend catered and the food is good. More than anyone, he has tried to find ways to keep us in touch with each other.
Strange nuances surface over the reunion period, and curious coincidences. If we had enjoyed the internet forty years earlier, Bill Kempner and I might have known that one another had lived at the same time on Oahu for four years, Texas ( Houston for Bill, Austin for me) for four years and attended UCSB at the same time as well. In all that time our paths never crossed. I delivered papayas and cucumbers a few blocks from where he lived in Manoa. We obviously paid scant attention to the Alumni Bulletin during those years, which might have reported on our whereabouts. We have both taken up making ceramics again, in preparation against boring retirements no doubt.
John Dey has become a commercial grower of high quality garlic in Klamath Falls. After these many years of preaching to him about organic farming ( his family controls a lot of good ground in the Klamath Basin) he has bought in to organic, but probably not as a result of anything I may have said. There was much more logic to his decision than I would have imparted. Last year John suggested I grow shallots from seed and I brought him a sample of the results. He says the market for them requires a smaller product because people want to buy them in April and May to plant. I think that may be a project for someone else.
Tom Sherrard caught too many little sand rays for my taste. In the summer I am always wary of the bastards. He kept hauling them up on the beach, then we had to release them. I hate them. I have never been wanged by one, but they have sent my friends to the emergency room with their sting.
Richard Hastings and I surfed a little on that south, but it was too punk to break on Poche. The water was warm and a shade of milky turquoise. We ditched our wetsuits and paddled out on Stand Up Paddle boards Richard brought. It was my first time and I fell off frequently. Richard said: “ Keep paddling and don’t look down.” I did as he said, and finally at one point I decided to let my hips do the thinking. This sport, at least at the beginning, depends on balance only obtained from the knees to the midsection. I did not catch any waves, but I think I can get the hang of it. A local guy was out on his SUP too, cruising around on the tentative walls crawling over the Poche Reef and breaking finally on top of the gravelly shore. Late, we all went out to body surf the shorepound-four foot faces now on a rising tide-and caught some good south crashers. I caught some waves and did not make any, so went away with good feelings.
SURF REPORT
24 September 2009
In the former pagan days of surfing during the 1950s and 60s, surfers would get wild during prolonged periods of flatness and burn surfboards as a sacrifice to the surf gods. If we’re blessed, some twisted sense of karma or need has been fulfilled by having all of Francis Oneill’s boards burn in the blaze at Katy’s house in Ojai in the early morning of the 24th.
The good in the disaster is that nearly everything but the boards had been removed because Katy had rented the house and the tenant-who is moving because his last house also burned-had not moved in yet.
The Jack London Desk had been safely moved to my house. The book collection and all the Katy personals had been trucked to storage in Northern California weeks ago. On the morning the house caught fire Katy attended her first classes in graduate school at UC Santa Cruz, wandering around campus entirely distracted by terrible events three hundred miles away, hanging on her cell phone all day, with Francis or her parents or me and Olivia or the insurance people on the other end, calming.
I have wanted to go surfing with Francis and his brother Devin, but the boys are always way too busy and have young children to care for. I would say: “ Hey we’re going to the beach. Let’s hit it!” But they are too responsible. Their work scene requires a lot of inflexibility. Now its not maybe but a must. This business calls for a Pacific Purge. We have to get Francis a new board. Girl gone, board’s burned and the house too. His car mostly melted. Guy has to catch some love with the rising tide.
The Oneills grew up in San Diego County and surfed places like Oceanside and Encinitas when they were young. Their dad is my age and still religiously surfs a board shorter than seven feet. He’s a wiry drywaller down in Escondido. I lived in Escondido forty years ago, and he was there then, when the place was renegades, incipient food freaks and avocado orchards. I hung drywall for a season there with a heroin addict named John. Oneill doesn’t remember him exactly.
One day I went down from Escondido with my guys Ronnie and Fred to surf Oceanside one September day and it was giant. 1972. The sandbars were nothing but turmoil, but a blue-green wall was available outside often enough. Nothing was getting in the way of those big sets though. They came in like a white-out, and there was nothing to do but steam west to get out of the way. I didn’t ride but maybe three or four waves in between and spent the rest of the afternoon trying to survive the thick freight trains closing out at the end of the pier.
Monday, August 23, 2010
Ventukong Island
SURF REPORT
20 September 2009
Surfing is a refreshing reward for six hours of carney-barker retail action on hot asphalt. $740 dollars in ones later at the end of another farmers market, most of the melons and tomatoes are gone. We sold 100 ears of corn. This market will never absorb more than one third of what I could bring to it. Maybe even one tenth if I bothered to saddle up. Olivia and I are happy to do it though and lucky because we know a lot of people do not have even this to fall back on. Phaneuf heads off early to climb in Tuolomne and forgets his last watermelon. Pisser is raring to go douse off in whatever ankleslapper reverie avails. The DIP sort of sucks, being a 1.4 from the 165 at 11, the pulse from Tropical Storm Marty, now spent, lightly twirling 540 miles west of lower Baja California. There is also a 3.8 from the 305 at 14. Some North/Northwest Alaskan action. We blow up the DIP on the iphone. We could see how that 305 is feebly wrapping into Rincon, indicating some energy is in the channel from the west. Rincon has an undersea canyon in front of it that will focus swell that will show on the DIP. The camera on C Street shows a lot of small lines in the cove, mostly from TS Marty, the usual crowd, modest wind, and a lowering tide. We’re going.
After we unload the truck. Pisser is already down at the store gathering kitchen refuse for his chickens. The store is in the middle of the afternoon change. K-Li and Kwinn are prepping for the dinner. I sit in the kitchen and tease them as I eat a leftover sandwich from the day before that is not the best thing to eat but its noble. Kwinn is bright and tan from his farm adventures at Mano. K-Li’s boyfriend went ex on her, but she doesn’t have to care that much. Greg and I escape with a modicum of management intercession in his Golf.
We detour to the Shell Shop on Santa Clara. I didn’t buy enough vacation gifts for my employees. When I came back into the store on Friday, Kenny the Guatemalan cook looked fondly at the shell lei I was wearing-the one I got from the Time Share presentation in Wailua, Kauai. I gave it to her on the spot and claimed to the other girls that I had more necklaces but they were buried in my suitcase. In Ventura, I buy 16 two dollar shell necklaces from the Philippines to engender the Aloha. The ones in Hawaii are all from the Philippines too, so what the hell. What counts is the aloha, not the provenance of the necklace.
Five people are out in the cove, where it’s a lot less windy. The tide is so low we walk way out on the eel grass and sand. There is enough wind for 8 kites to be skimming around on the Point. Stables is foaming along but cut up by the westerly. The crowd grows. It is the common mix of hot kids taking off fin-first, including the next Larry Bertleman, motley geezers, blonde honeys, a tubby guy in dreads, two stocky Asian girls, a Latin teenager, some struggling short boarders and anyone else who can’t care less about the NFL. Sets are waist high. The best waves are from TS Marty, which can get lined up for quite a ways down in front of the stairs at the condos. The 305 is bigger on the takeoff but grinds into mush rather shortly, but it does provide two peaks.
Eventually a mob starts beating on congas in the park near shore, and the drumming carries out onto the water. I am a bit giddy from some rides, so I begin a monologue out in the water about “ the primordial drums of Ventukong Island.” I don’t know where the King Kong reference came from. Maybe it is the blonde wahine with golden legs stylishly walking around on her orange cruiser as the congas pound. Maybe its because I recently saw the canyon where the latest Kong was shot on Kauai-with Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrian Brody and far too many horrible beasts. The many drums are loudly pounded competently ashore. Beat change! The blonde fox is too young to remind one of Naomi Watts, or Jessica Lange, but no matter, “all of us will protect the golden beauty from the vile islanders or the vicious Kong, should he appear,” I say to the bewildered Pisser. But then we are surprised to discover that we are not brave crewman of the Venture, searching for Kong Island but instead stealthy islanders who paddle together way outside to steal by far the wave of the day. A head high rogue! The next Larry Bertleman, maybe fourteen years old, surfing in his trunks, is riding far behind us as the wave folds over, but Greg and I are so far in front he is probably not even aware of us.
20 September 2009
Surfing is a refreshing reward for six hours of carney-barker retail action on hot asphalt. $740 dollars in ones later at the end of another farmers market, most of the melons and tomatoes are gone. We sold 100 ears of corn. This market will never absorb more than one third of what I could bring to it. Maybe even one tenth if I bothered to saddle up. Olivia and I are happy to do it though and lucky because we know a lot of people do not have even this to fall back on. Phaneuf heads off early to climb in Tuolomne and forgets his last watermelon. Pisser is raring to go douse off in whatever ankleslapper reverie avails. The DIP sort of sucks, being a 1.4 from the 165 at 11, the pulse from Tropical Storm Marty, now spent, lightly twirling 540 miles west of lower Baja California. There is also a 3.8 from the 305 at 14. Some North/Northwest Alaskan action. We blow up the DIP on the iphone. We could see how that 305 is feebly wrapping into Rincon, indicating some energy is in the channel from the west. Rincon has an undersea canyon in front of it that will focus swell that will show on the DIP. The camera on C Street shows a lot of small lines in the cove, mostly from TS Marty, the usual crowd, modest wind, and a lowering tide. We’re going.
After we unload the truck. Pisser is already down at the store gathering kitchen refuse for his chickens. The store is in the middle of the afternoon change. K-Li and Kwinn are prepping for the dinner. I sit in the kitchen and tease them as I eat a leftover sandwich from the day before that is not the best thing to eat but its noble. Kwinn is bright and tan from his farm adventures at Mano. K-Li’s boyfriend went ex on her, but she doesn’t have to care that much. Greg and I escape with a modicum of management intercession in his Golf.
We detour to the Shell Shop on Santa Clara. I didn’t buy enough vacation gifts for my employees. When I came back into the store on Friday, Kenny the Guatemalan cook looked fondly at the shell lei I was wearing-the one I got from the Time Share presentation in Wailua, Kauai. I gave it to her on the spot and claimed to the other girls that I had more necklaces but they were buried in my suitcase. In Ventura, I buy 16 two dollar shell necklaces from the Philippines to engender the Aloha. The ones in Hawaii are all from the Philippines too, so what the hell. What counts is the aloha, not the provenance of the necklace.
Five people are out in the cove, where it’s a lot less windy. The tide is so low we walk way out on the eel grass and sand. There is enough wind for 8 kites to be skimming around on the Point. Stables is foaming along but cut up by the westerly. The crowd grows. It is the common mix of hot kids taking off fin-first, including the next Larry Bertleman, motley geezers, blonde honeys, a tubby guy in dreads, two stocky Asian girls, a Latin teenager, some struggling short boarders and anyone else who can’t care less about the NFL. Sets are waist high. The best waves are from TS Marty, which can get lined up for quite a ways down in front of the stairs at the condos. The 305 is bigger on the takeoff but grinds into mush rather shortly, but it does provide two peaks.
Eventually a mob starts beating on congas in the park near shore, and the drumming carries out onto the water. I am a bit giddy from some rides, so I begin a monologue out in the water about “ the primordial drums of Ventukong Island.” I don’t know where the King Kong reference came from. Maybe it is the blonde wahine with golden legs stylishly walking around on her orange cruiser as the congas pound. Maybe its because I recently saw the canyon where the latest Kong was shot on Kauai-with Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrian Brody and far too many horrible beasts. The many drums are loudly pounded competently ashore. Beat change! The blonde fox is too young to remind one of Naomi Watts, or Jessica Lange, but no matter, “all of us will protect the golden beauty from the vile islanders or the vicious Kong, should he appear,” I say to the bewildered Pisser. But then we are surprised to discover that we are not brave crewman of the Venture, searching for Kong Island but instead stealthy islanders who paddle together way outside to steal by far the wave of the day. A head high rogue! The next Larry Bertleman, maybe fourteen years old, surfing in his trunks, is riding far behind us as the wave folds over, but Greg and I are so far in front he is probably not even aware of us.
Aboard the Kahanu
SURF REPORT
15 September 2009
Up at six and down to Port Allen to catch the Kahanu to the Na Pali Coast. The Kahanu is a forty foot power catamaran with twin 250 outboard Yamahas on it. Kahanu is also the name of our captain. If an episode of the Simpsons is ever conceived with such a boat in the script, Captain Kahanu is definitely in it, and maybe even his mate, Kainalu. Both of them have Niihau blood in them, so they are powerdog Hawaiian on their game and for the most part very entertaining but still slight caricatures. Kainalu is a master of exaggeration. I never call him on any of it so he feels free to aggrandize even more. The sixty pound pigs he shot up mauka in the Pali and packed-out over his shoulder have become two-hunrit-poundahs. He says he rides forty foot surf, but even if its twenty that’s praiseworthy enough. In other ways, its obvious modern social sentiments have had no effect on him. Eighteen other tourists are aboard the Kahanu as we plow northwestward toward the steep northern cliffs of Kauai. Niihau and little Lehua are off to our left.
The key feature of my trip is the surf information that Kainalu is willing to divulge. Mile after mile (17 miles) he points out break after break by name and provides folkloricgems including point of entry secrets about some of them. His lack of circumspection is appalling. He obviously doesn’t know I write a famous surf blog.
“ The Robinsons didn’t like everybody going through their cattle pasture to surf Pikalas. They told their cowboys to warn people once, and then if they caught ‘em again to just tie them by the heels and drag them back to the road. Well, after awhile this was not popular with the authorities. So the Robinsons, they stuck some bulls in the pasture. That kept people out for awhile. But then somebody got hurt by a bull so they gave up and now people can go through the pasture. Its not too crowded because its too far out of town.”
“There you got Intersections, First Ditch, Last Ditch. Family Housings.” Nobody is riding any of this and its still shoulder high. On the way out of the harbor, two decent A frames are working in front of the jetty. I ask why they are not ridden (like hidden volcanic outcrop or some other menace).
“ Not beeg enough.”
We snorkel in the murky water on the north shore west of Haena, made cloudy by the now-declining north swell that was hitting for the past four days. The cliffs are steep. The caves are awesome, even if Mary J. Blige borrowed one for an MTV video and 007 flew a chopper through another. Somehow these commercializations diminish their grandeur-all of a sudden I am in Anaheim. Kainalu just got through telling us that only the queen could swim in these caverns and that the kings are buried nearby, but now we got vodka ads shot here.
On the way back, Captain Kahanu takes a long beachward jog inside at Point Mana, and you can see that those southern lefts, which are already makeable at waist high, should be pretty amusing walls with just a bit more size. Its probably a one hundred yard break, more if you can hook up the sections.
For the past three days the tradewinds have ceased to blow. I could have surfed the windward side, especially the far side of Anahola Bay at Unreals. Nobody was out and I didn’t want to to paddle all the way out there by myself. It might be the same at Family Housing. Nobody is out because nobody is out. Its not like I never surfed by myself at some spooky place. I solo’d out at Goat I sland a few times, and Poles plenty. But now its different. I would have gone out at Unreals or Graveyards if I was not by myself. How can you surf graveyards by yourself, after all?
Late this afternoon I paddled out at Hanalei for a farewell. A squadron of SUP masters out squashing the leftovers on the point, and some wahines on the bowl. It was a privilege to ride behind them.
15 September 2009
Up at six and down to Port Allen to catch the Kahanu to the Na Pali Coast. The Kahanu is a forty foot power catamaran with twin 250 outboard Yamahas on it. Kahanu is also the name of our captain. If an episode of the Simpsons is ever conceived with such a boat in the script, Captain Kahanu is definitely in it, and maybe even his mate, Kainalu. Both of them have Niihau blood in them, so they are powerdog Hawaiian on their game and for the most part very entertaining but still slight caricatures. Kainalu is a master of exaggeration. I never call him on any of it so he feels free to aggrandize even more. The sixty pound pigs he shot up mauka in the Pali and packed-out over his shoulder have become two-hunrit-poundahs. He says he rides forty foot surf, but even if its twenty that’s praiseworthy enough. In other ways, its obvious modern social sentiments have had no effect on him. Eighteen other tourists are aboard the Kahanu as we plow northwestward toward the steep northern cliffs of Kauai. Niihau and little Lehua are off to our left.
The key feature of my trip is the surf information that Kainalu is willing to divulge. Mile after mile (17 miles) he points out break after break by name and provides folkloricgems including point of entry secrets about some of them. His lack of circumspection is appalling. He obviously doesn’t know I write a famous surf blog.
“ The Robinsons didn’t like everybody going through their cattle pasture to surf Pikalas. They told their cowboys to warn people once, and then if they caught ‘em again to just tie them by the heels and drag them back to the road. Well, after awhile this was not popular with the authorities. So the Robinsons, they stuck some bulls in the pasture. That kept people out for awhile. But then somebody got hurt by a bull so they gave up and now people can go through the pasture. Its not too crowded because its too far out of town.”
“There you got Intersections, First Ditch, Last Ditch. Family Housings.” Nobody is riding any of this and its still shoulder high. On the way out of the harbor, two decent A frames are working in front of the jetty. I ask why they are not ridden (like hidden volcanic outcrop or some other menace).
“ Not beeg enough.”
We snorkel in the murky water on the north shore west of Haena, made cloudy by the now-declining north swell that was hitting for the past four days. The cliffs are steep. The caves are awesome, even if Mary J. Blige borrowed one for an MTV video and 007 flew a chopper through another. Somehow these commercializations diminish their grandeur-all of a sudden I am in Anaheim. Kainalu just got through telling us that only the queen could swim in these caverns and that the kings are buried nearby, but now we got vodka ads shot here.
On the way back, Captain Kahanu takes a long beachward jog inside at Point Mana, and you can see that those southern lefts, which are already makeable at waist high, should be pretty amusing walls with just a bit more size. Its probably a one hundred yard break, more if you can hook up the sections.
For the past three days the tradewinds have ceased to blow. I could have surfed the windward side, especially the far side of Anahola Bay at Unreals. Nobody was out and I didn’t want to to paddle all the way out there by myself. It might be the same at Family Housing. Nobody is out because nobody is out. Its not like I never surfed by myself at some spooky place. I solo’d out at Goat I sland a few times, and Poles plenty. But now its different. I would have gone out at Unreals or Graveyards if I was not by myself. How can you surf graveyards by yourself, after all?
Late this afternoon I paddled out at Hanalei for a farewell. A squadron of SUP masters out squashing the leftovers on the point, and some wahines on the bowl. It was a privilege to ride behind them.
Poipu
SURF REPORT
14 September 2009
We are going down to Poipu, but its hard to get Hanalei out of my head. But Poipu is on the rise and the north shore is going down. First we needed to attend the time share orientation in Waipouli we agreed upon in order to get a $165.00 reduction on our Na Pali Coast dive tour tomorrow. We checked the tour prices before and after: they did not run it up to set it back down to what people normally pay. Bruce the kiosk salesman said it would take ninety minutes. That was not the only lie we heard, but it was the only one that affected us.
We got a quick qualification run through from our personal salesgirl Kanae, a runner-up to some Miss Hawaii pageant a modest number of years ago, then we were ushered into a conference room for a power point lead by mainland-transplant saleswiz Jerry before a captive crowd of 44. The pitch was so deplorable that it is not required to provide much detail, other than that the script ended with Jerry’s last personal anecdote about his father dying of cancer before he could come to Hawaii. Hanky-time on the Hookilau. Someone should have been ready to shell out $27,000 at that point to honor Jerry’s dad. Maybe it would be one of the shill’s in the audience who already were members of Shell Vacations International. Time is slipping away, slipping away from all of us! ( I am not kidding, they named their shell game Shell!)
Jerry turned us loose and Kanae tried to close. She smiled massively and drew wondrous interlocking circles and made it all blatantly clear that they were giving us money. We tried to explain how we were not a good fit for their program. Wait! They even had rustic options! If they could only see the Lemke’s fish shack at Anahola, then they would see what we mean by rustic. Later we learn that the same time-share program is on the resale market for $9K, a swift reduction of eighteen thousand dollars. Denise, the ultimate blonde closer, knew before hand that she was dealing with a dirtbag. It said so on my questionnaire. Imagine I am sitting in front of the actress Kathleen Turner in her prime.
“ How was the presentation? Not too hard-sell?” (You mean, did we gag on the cancer story?)
“ Not really. I am in retail. I sell vegetables, and they rot a lot faster than condos.”
I thought maybe the thought crossed Denise’s mind to quip something like “ not so sure about that.” But she let the moment pass. There was a definite eyebrow raise and then an umpire’s look-off.
“ Do you grow the vegetables?”
“ Yeah.”
She knew then she was up against a guy who hangs onto his quarters. But she tried the money-back-guarantee gambit anyway. ( Nein, fraulein) Her final glance was sharp, but not spiteful. The down payment on her program was exactly the amount we had saved on our Na Pali tour. Whaddayaknow?
Poipu was calmer than two days earlier. Much less wind, but nothing like the glass on the windward side. We elected to go down there because the snorkeling was superior to Hanalei. Surf was running a little over head and pretty consistent. I paddled out at a boil called Left-Lefts that gave way to a fast wall. Two Hawaiian local girls were sitting on it like a bus stop. Every time the sets came through each one got a thick slab boulder-roil take-off and then one of the four haole onlookers could scramble for the left overs. Three sets of this and I paddled over to Waichai, which was mostly a left but occasionally broke both ways. I’ll call it Retirement Reef. No one out under forty. Such a ghostly gang of geezers you ever did see, all painted up with zinky sunscreen and cruising their logs. The good thing was that of the 11 people out only five were really riding. It was not big but the southern power coming out of deep water was way tumbly if you found yourself captive in the white water, and wondering about that coral inside. My abiding impression over the past few days had been to commit early in my mind to these things, and this tactic no doubt saved me from much grief. To one of the bigger walls I just said; “What the hell.” Did I mention yet how fast these waves are?
“
14 September 2009
We are going down to Poipu, but its hard to get Hanalei out of my head. But Poipu is on the rise and the north shore is going down. First we needed to attend the time share orientation in Waipouli we agreed upon in order to get a $165.00 reduction on our Na Pali Coast dive tour tomorrow. We checked the tour prices before and after: they did not run it up to set it back down to what people normally pay. Bruce the kiosk salesman said it would take ninety minutes. That was not the only lie we heard, but it was the only one that affected us.
We got a quick qualification run through from our personal salesgirl Kanae, a runner-up to some Miss Hawaii pageant a modest number of years ago, then we were ushered into a conference room for a power point lead by mainland-transplant saleswiz Jerry before a captive crowd of 44. The pitch was so deplorable that it is not required to provide much detail, other than that the script ended with Jerry’s last personal anecdote about his father dying of cancer before he could come to Hawaii. Hanky-time on the Hookilau. Someone should have been ready to shell out $27,000 at that point to honor Jerry’s dad. Maybe it would be one of the shill’s in the audience who already were members of Shell Vacations International. Time is slipping away, slipping away from all of us! ( I am not kidding, they named their shell game Shell!)
Jerry turned us loose and Kanae tried to close. She smiled massively and drew wondrous interlocking circles and made it all blatantly clear that they were giving us money. We tried to explain how we were not a good fit for their program. Wait! They even had rustic options! If they could only see the Lemke’s fish shack at Anahola, then they would see what we mean by rustic. Later we learn that the same time-share program is on the resale market for $9K, a swift reduction of eighteen thousand dollars. Denise, the ultimate blonde closer, knew before hand that she was dealing with a dirtbag. It said so on my questionnaire. Imagine I am sitting in front of the actress Kathleen Turner in her prime.
“ How was the presentation? Not too hard-sell?” (You mean, did we gag on the cancer story?)
“ Not really. I am in retail. I sell vegetables, and they rot a lot faster than condos.”
I thought maybe the thought crossed Denise’s mind to quip something like “ not so sure about that.” But she let the moment pass. There was a definite eyebrow raise and then an umpire’s look-off.
“ Do you grow the vegetables?”
“ Yeah.”
She knew then she was up against a guy who hangs onto his quarters. But she tried the money-back-guarantee gambit anyway. ( Nein, fraulein) Her final glance was sharp, but not spiteful. The down payment on her program was exactly the amount we had saved on our Na Pali tour. Whaddayaknow?
Poipu was calmer than two days earlier. Much less wind, but nothing like the glass on the windward side. We elected to go down there because the snorkeling was superior to Hanalei. Surf was running a little over head and pretty consistent. I paddled out at a boil called Left-Lefts that gave way to a fast wall. Two Hawaiian local girls were sitting on it like a bus stop. Every time the sets came through each one got a thick slab boulder-roil take-off and then one of the four haole onlookers could scramble for the left overs. Three sets of this and I paddled over to Waichai, which was mostly a left but occasionally broke both ways. I’ll call it Retirement Reef. No one out under forty. Such a ghostly gang of geezers you ever did see, all painted up with zinky sunscreen and cruising their logs. The good thing was that of the 11 people out only five were really riding. It was not big but the southern power coming out of deep water was way tumbly if you found yourself captive in the white water, and wondering about that coral inside. My abiding impression over the past few days had been to commit early in my mind to these things, and this tactic no doubt saved me from much grief. To one of the bigger walls I just said; “What the hell.” Did I mention yet how fast these waves are?
“
Ten Foot Hanalei
SURF REPORT
13 September 2009
A stay home day. Bea and Manu and Wayne, Manu’s husband, are coming for a barbeque at The Love Shack at Anahola. But I still have a two hour surf window. The wind is nearly dead so I go down toward Kapaa where I saw some people surfing earlier, but they are just hurtling around on the shorebreak. I go back towards Hanalei, stop on the cliffs at Anini, which has a sideshore wind on it. An outer break still has a left on it five hundred yards away that must be 10 to 12 feet, ( HI). I was going to look at Kalihiwai, but decide to skip it.
The bowl at Hanalei has fifteen people on it, few chargers, four women, five groms inside and a motley pack of mostly locals. There is a guy inside on a big paddle board with a sixty pound golden retriever on the nose.
“ From the beach I could not tell if your dog was a suitcase or the world’s biggest water housing.”
He laughs: “ That’s a good one. Never heard that before. I was writing to MacGillivray earlier. I’ll have to tell him that one.”
I guess he figures I am old enough that he can last-name Greg MacGillivray on me and I will know he is talking about one of the original the surf-film makers. This guy might be one too for all I know, but I don’t need his autograph.
There are a lot of waves so I get some. I know now why Rick Vogel loved to surf San Augustine- its just like Hanalei, except on a less grand scale. Ricky had a house here years and years ago. It’s the easiest big wave I have ever been on. If these things were breaking at Pitas there would be a twenty knot current running. It’s a fun 8-10m foot ( HI) wave with an obvious take-off, which swings around into the trade winds blowing offshore. If you are right on it you are going to get it and good. There is no waiting around so anyone can have whatever they paddle for. Plenty of aloha-etiquette.
I last surfed here in 1976 so I have to take some time to figure out what’s happening, who’s the what and where’s the which. Note that in 1976 it was head-high. The biggest set waves are double overhead, but even when you get caught inside its not that big a deal. There’s a modest amount of rolling about, but soon enough I am free and have ample time to get back paddling and clear the next one. Only a few people really want the big bowl, but its not life-threatening. Once you get down them they are the same as the smaller waves, no faster or intimidating. You do want to trim out a little more smartly, is all. In the end its more like an honor to be able to surf a place like that. Eight out of ten waves are perfect and the other two are better than Ventura Point ever gets. Hanalei is probably perfect 100 days a year. Its been firing for four days straight, and now that the swell is going down and the weekend is over I plan on paddling out there a few more times.
South Shore is still head high too.
I
13 September 2009
A stay home day. Bea and Manu and Wayne, Manu’s husband, are coming for a barbeque at The Love Shack at Anahola. But I still have a two hour surf window. The wind is nearly dead so I go down toward Kapaa where I saw some people surfing earlier, but they are just hurtling around on the shorebreak. I go back towards Hanalei, stop on the cliffs at Anini, which has a sideshore wind on it. An outer break still has a left on it five hundred yards away that must be 10 to 12 feet, ( HI). I was going to look at Kalihiwai, but decide to skip it.
The bowl at Hanalei has fifteen people on it, few chargers, four women, five groms inside and a motley pack of mostly locals. There is a guy inside on a big paddle board with a sixty pound golden retriever on the nose.
“ From the beach I could not tell if your dog was a suitcase or the world’s biggest water housing.”
He laughs: “ That’s a good one. Never heard that before. I was writing to MacGillivray earlier. I’ll have to tell him that one.”
I guess he figures I am old enough that he can last-name Greg MacGillivray on me and I will know he is talking about one of the original the surf-film makers. This guy might be one too for all I know, but I don’t need his autograph.
There are a lot of waves so I get some. I know now why Rick Vogel loved to surf San Augustine- its just like Hanalei, except on a less grand scale. Ricky had a house here years and years ago. It’s the easiest big wave I have ever been on. If these things were breaking at Pitas there would be a twenty knot current running. It’s a fun 8-10m foot ( HI) wave with an obvious take-off, which swings around into the trade winds blowing offshore. If you are right on it you are going to get it and good. There is no waiting around so anyone can have whatever they paddle for. Plenty of aloha-etiquette.
I last surfed here in 1976 so I have to take some time to figure out what’s happening, who’s the what and where’s the which. Note that in 1976 it was head-high. The biggest set waves are double overhead, but even when you get caught inside its not that big a deal. There’s a modest amount of rolling about, but soon enough I am free and have ample time to get back paddling and clear the next one. Only a few people really want the big bowl, but its not life-threatening. Once you get down them they are the same as the smaller waves, no faster or intimidating. You do want to trim out a little more smartly, is all. In the end its more like an honor to be able to surf a place like that. Eight out of ten waves are perfect and the other two are better than Ventura Point ever gets. Hanalei is probably perfect 100 days a year. Its been firing for four days straight, and now that the swell is going down and the weekend is over I plan on paddling out there a few more times.
South Shore is still head high too.
I
From Kalalau to Anahola
SURF REPORT
12 September 2009
Swell from the north is peaking. We went to Haena and hiked for a few hours on the Kalalau Trail. After observing dozens of muddy survivors returning from their fun-filled ordeal, florid and staring, some bleeding, Olivia suggested that we turn around. We had observed many fabulous views from the daring switchbacks on the Pali. Waves from the northwest bore down on the cliffs, foamed on hidden rocks below the surface and then rumbled ashore. At one point I had a corrugated moment, observing a sea so filled with large waves that there was no use determining where sets began. Twenty to forty big-uns were marching onto Kauai from the 335 at one time, curving this way and that as they felt the volcanic bottom, pitching suddenly to the east in a big horseshoe, or closing mercilessly on the void. You could hear the rumble when the wind stopped.
Going down the trail is harder than going up of course. At a point of subtle danger I lost my footing and fell headfirst into the lava boulders, ripping a good gash on the heel of my hand, a light contuded scrape on the upper left shin and eventually the most worrisome, a good rising bump on the right knee. This presented itself as a potential bummer later that evening when it swelled nicely and was painful to lie upon. The injury put a bit of doubt on the next day’s potential for surf, which already had been a bit delayed because of the thundering size of the swell. I applied a bit of the Neosporin on the angry open places on my skin and fell into reading more of Paul Theroux’s book about the Mediterranean which inspires more detailed reporting on Hawaii.
We are staying at Bea and Manu’s little place in Anahola. The locale of the cottage is truly fabulous, right on the reef, on the north side of Anahola Bay. Bea and Manu are second cousins by marriage. Their front yard has been erased year by year because a neighbor was allowed to construct a private seawall up the coast, and up current. They have lost a depth of one hundred feet or so, which is also known as over a million dollars worth of real estate. The money is one thing, the nuisance and unnecessary intrusion is another. The wall was permitted, surveyed, EIR’d and approved by those in the know-or the almost know, in 1981. That is a rather late date to be undertaking such foolish activity on the seacoast. Twenty years before the permit was written, the risk of altering the littoral, even modestly, by means of concrete, invites the peculiar action of the sea, when the littoral is modestly altered. The futility of such construction has been commonly acknowledged broadly. People have been complaining of the uselessness, and paradox, of jetties for decades, so what this error proves is a mystery.
12 September 2009
Swell from the north is peaking. We went to Haena and hiked for a few hours on the Kalalau Trail. After observing dozens of muddy survivors returning from their fun-filled ordeal, florid and staring, some bleeding, Olivia suggested that we turn around. We had observed many fabulous views from the daring switchbacks on the Pali. Waves from the northwest bore down on the cliffs, foamed on hidden rocks below the surface and then rumbled ashore. At one point I had a corrugated moment, observing a sea so filled with large waves that there was no use determining where sets began. Twenty to forty big-uns were marching onto Kauai from the 335 at one time, curving this way and that as they felt the volcanic bottom, pitching suddenly to the east in a big horseshoe, or closing mercilessly on the void. You could hear the rumble when the wind stopped.
Going down the trail is harder than going up of course. At a point of subtle danger I lost my footing and fell headfirst into the lava boulders, ripping a good gash on the heel of my hand, a light contuded scrape on the upper left shin and eventually the most worrisome, a good rising bump on the right knee. This presented itself as a potential bummer later that evening when it swelled nicely and was painful to lie upon. The injury put a bit of doubt on the next day’s potential for surf, which already had been a bit delayed because of the thundering size of the swell. I applied a bit of the Neosporin on the angry open places on my skin and fell into reading more of Paul Theroux’s book about the Mediterranean which inspires more detailed reporting on Hawaii.
We are staying at Bea and Manu’s little place in Anahola. The locale of the cottage is truly fabulous, right on the reef, on the north side of Anahola Bay. Bea and Manu are second cousins by marriage. Their front yard has been erased year by year because a neighbor was allowed to construct a private seawall up the coast, and up current. They have lost a depth of one hundred feet or so, which is also known as over a million dollars worth of real estate. The money is one thing, the nuisance and unnecessary intrusion is another. The wall was permitted, surveyed, EIR’d and approved by those in the know-or the almost know, in 1981. That is a rather late date to be undertaking such foolish activity on the seacoast. Twenty years before the permit was written, the risk of altering the littoral, even modestly, by means of concrete, invites the peculiar action of the sea, when the littoral is modestly altered. The futility of such construction has been commonly acknowledged broadly. People have been complaining of the uselessness, and paradox, of jetties for decades, so what this error proves is a mystery.
Friday, August 13, 2010
11 September 2009
SURF REPORT
11 September 2009
The volume on Kauai is way down from the thrum of Honolulu. Even in the country on Oahu, Honolulu is so potential that Kaaawa is not really far enough way. What is missing on Kauai is urgency. The driven sense of commerce, frantic fulfillment, response in haste, is revealed by noise. And even though that is coming, as it does everywhere, commercial captivity is delayed by the water surrounding the island. Now we are in Anahola and have nomadic chickens in the yard, but there were chickens wandering carelessly through the two acre parking lot in Kapaa where we stopped for a burrito at Verde. A chicken flew at our car for a hundred feet up at Haena yesterday, then at the last second the fearless red and black bird veered into the bushes and ran through a small opening that I figured it had targeted when it began its daring flight.
A northwest swell began Thursday, when we arrived in the afternoon. The swell is a little early in the season but not unheard of. It’s the second of the season in fact, underscoring all the El Nino babble. It was forecast to be eight feet from the 335, very north of west. Friday, in no rush, we went north towards Hanalei and observed the ocean. At Anini a long stretch of reefs close to shore held head high surf and a few surfers were on it. We poked into Hanalei town, loaded with vehicles bearing boards, parking near the beach was very hard to accomplish. We observed well overhead sets on the point break at Hanalei, lefts way over at Waikoko’s, rideable surf at Pinetrees and a nervous lifeguard wondering when to call a halt to the surf school scrambling in a suddenly serious shorebreak at Bathrooms. Getting caught inside should be part of the course of instruction, however, drowning is frowned upon.
I began to feel confusion and a multi-faceted reluctance about getting out there. I had no gear, and my last rental experience had been in Waikiki a long time ago, where a merciless kanaka rented me one and then another ( supposed replacement) waterlogged monster. Basically I was unfamiliar with dependence. In time I would overcome this challenge. The nice fellows even gave me free racks with the rental board, an epoxy Yater, and said I could trade up or down as often as I wanted to. They had 50 boards to choose from, and no clunkers.
From what I could see the crowd at Hanalei was more dense than my fickle taste and the surf was already at my limit, being 8 foot on the Hawaii scale, which means twelve foot faces. Besides height, which implies power, speed is an infrequently noted attribute to waves striking the north shores of the Hawaiian Islands. I was going to have to look for a peculiar spot to surf. Olivia and Dylan were interested in going for a dive, so we went up to Tunnels, famous for its reef fish, and a place I vaguely remembered surfing with Larry Craig in 1976.
Kauai County police do a brisk and continual business ticketing illegally parked cars on the narrow road through Haena. Lifeguards already have the BEACH CLOSED signs up at 150-200 foot intervals. Tunnels is ten feet ( double overhead) and an ominous outer break is also going off, but nobody is riding it. We sit on the sand observing the beautiful kapu shorepound. Eight foot faces racing across the rocky outcrop.
We elect to go rent a board in Hanalei then go down to Poipu on the south shore where there will be less surf and better diving. Poipu is nearly as big as Hanalei. Double overhead on the sets, frequent closeouts but when rideable Heroin and Acid Drop look really fun-if you surfed it all the time and you were 22 years old.
Those are not my drugs. We were able to look at many beautiful fish in Keiki Cove, who were having a merry time eating all the debris kicked up by the surf pounding the reef in front of their lagoon. Surf is forecast to be bigger tomorrow so we will go hike.
11 September 2009
The volume on Kauai is way down from the thrum of Honolulu. Even in the country on Oahu, Honolulu is so potential that Kaaawa is not really far enough way. What is missing on Kauai is urgency. The driven sense of commerce, frantic fulfillment, response in haste, is revealed by noise. And even though that is coming, as it does everywhere, commercial captivity is delayed by the water surrounding the island. Now we are in Anahola and have nomadic chickens in the yard, but there were chickens wandering carelessly through the two acre parking lot in Kapaa where we stopped for a burrito at Verde. A chicken flew at our car for a hundred feet up at Haena yesterday, then at the last second the fearless red and black bird veered into the bushes and ran through a small opening that I figured it had targeted when it began its daring flight.
A northwest swell began Thursday, when we arrived in the afternoon. The swell is a little early in the season but not unheard of. It’s the second of the season in fact, underscoring all the El Nino babble. It was forecast to be eight feet from the 335, very north of west. Friday, in no rush, we went north towards Hanalei and observed the ocean. At Anini a long stretch of reefs close to shore held head high surf and a few surfers were on it. We poked into Hanalei town, loaded with vehicles bearing boards, parking near the beach was very hard to accomplish. We observed well overhead sets on the point break at Hanalei, lefts way over at Waikoko’s, rideable surf at Pinetrees and a nervous lifeguard wondering when to call a halt to the surf school scrambling in a suddenly serious shorebreak at Bathrooms. Getting caught inside should be part of the course of instruction, however, drowning is frowned upon.
I began to feel confusion and a multi-faceted reluctance about getting out there. I had no gear, and my last rental experience had been in Waikiki a long time ago, where a merciless kanaka rented me one and then another ( supposed replacement) waterlogged monster. Basically I was unfamiliar with dependence. In time I would overcome this challenge. The nice fellows even gave me free racks with the rental board, an epoxy Yater, and said I could trade up or down as often as I wanted to. They had 50 boards to choose from, and no clunkers.
From what I could see the crowd at Hanalei was more dense than my fickle taste and the surf was already at my limit, being 8 foot on the Hawaii scale, which means twelve foot faces. Besides height, which implies power, speed is an infrequently noted attribute to waves striking the north shores of the Hawaiian Islands. I was going to have to look for a peculiar spot to surf. Olivia and Dylan were interested in going for a dive, so we went up to Tunnels, famous for its reef fish, and a place I vaguely remembered surfing with Larry Craig in 1976.
Kauai County police do a brisk and continual business ticketing illegally parked cars on the narrow road through Haena. Lifeguards already have the BEACH CLOSED signs up at 150-200 foot intervals. Tunnels is ten feet ( double overhead) and an ominous outer break is also going off, but nobody is riding it. We sit on the sand observing the beautiful kapu shorepound. Eight foot faces racing across the rocky outcrop.
We elect to go rent a board in Hanalei then go down to Poipu on the south shore where there will be less surf and better diving. Poipu is nearly as big as Hanalei. Double overhead on the sets, frequent closeouts but when rideable Heroin and Acid Drop look really fun-if you surfed it all the time and you were 22 years old.
Those are not my drugs. We were able to look at many beautiful fish in Keiki Cove, who were having a merry time eating all the debris kicked up by the surf pounding the reef in front of their lagoon. Surf is forecast to be bigger tomorrow so we will go hike.
10 September 2009
SURF REPORT
10 September 2009
There were waves on the reef at Queens, especially when the tide dropped, but my back was still a bit too burned to go out. Anyway, I know those reefs at Waikiki, and they are pure treachery on small days. You can see the staphylococcus clinging to the razor coral as you glide by. Later I went to Go Bananas on Kapahulu and got a 30 SPF longsleever as I had promised myself two weeks before I left but never got around to it. Actually I was a in a mental rut, all because I did not want to give any more money to everyone’s favorite surfstore in Ventura. Years ago they ripped me off rather brazenly on some expensive racks once-wrong model and parts. Insisted I had to return them to the manufacturer in Washington, fuck that. But such efforts at revenge are so twisted.
I have a melon-back guarantee on all my products. I need my customers. I went to another outlet in Ventura, but they are a small store and they did not have my size. Then I thought I would buy the shirt on the internet, and I was so full of certainty at the time that I completely dropped the ball. I actually convinced myself while paddling out that I had obtained enough of a tan in California to go out for an hour or two in cloudy Kaaawa with no problem. If the surf had been irresistible I would not have resisted, but waist high Waikiki folding over Staflokoki Reef, as noted, could be ignored. Bad things happen in small surf. You probably won’t drown, but everything you don’t want to touch when you are moving fast is so much closer to you in shallow water.
Kauilani and Eric got married at the Outrigger on Waikiki on the 9th. I was a last minute draftee to be the Master of Ceremonies for Niece Number Two’s wedding. A hundred and fifty people came. The family minister from Seattle was lost in a maelstrom of untidy, pointless memories and stained the event with a miserable anecdote about him and the groom being bad boys in some speeding dinghies. Such bad boys, bishop. I can see why you have a hard time forgiving yourself. And the bastard made the ultimate unforgivable error, which he had been trained to not do, by mispronouncing the bride’s name.
The pot should not call the kettle black though. As MC I felt required to crash course the protocols. How do we wed the people? The urge to share on the internet is an admirable trait among the humans: I was trained in a nano. Getting people to turn off their cell phones pleasantly was easy enough. I was congratulated on my gravitas and the commanding but not tedious sense of authority I brought to the occasion. But I silently caved when the moment came to allow my nephew, Travis, time for his little roast-toast in honor of the bride, his twin sister. With the late hour suddenly an issue it was mutually decided to stick to a shorter list. And he had even practiced the speech to me previously. As his father said later, “ You know, he is always the boy who never got picked for the little league teams. He’s used to it.”
During the aftermath breakfast surfside at the Outrigger, with many repentant heads not ready for public apologies due to alcohol ( but not mine), I gave Travis his due anyway. I’ll never know if he appreciated the gesture or not. After being left on the sidelines so often, he has probably learned to keep his disappointment to himself. He is an FBI agent now, which we think explains things, but probably not as neatly as we think.
10 September 2009
There were waves on the reef at Queens, especially when the tide dropped, but my back was still a bit too burned to go out. Anyway, I know those reefs at Waikiki, and they are pure treachery on small days. You can see the staphylococcus clinging to the razor coral as you glide by. Later I went to Go Bananas on Kapahulu and got a 30 SPF longsleever as I had promised myself two weeks before I left but never got around to it. Actually I was a in a mental rut, all because I did not want to give any more money to everyone’s favorite surfstore in Ventura. Years ago they ripped me off rather brazenly on some expensive racks once-wrong model and parts. Insisted I had to return them to the manufacturer in Washington, fuck that. But such efforts at revenge are so twisted.
I have a melon-back guarantee on all my products. I need my customers. I went to another outlet in Ventura, but they are a small store and they did not have my size. Then I thought I would buy the shirt on the internet, and I was so full of certainty at the time that I completely dropped the ball. I actually convinced myself while paddling out that I had obtained enough of a tan in California to go out for an hour or two in cloudy Kaaawa with no problem. If the surf had been irresistible I would not have resisted, but waist high Waikiki folding over Staflokoki Reef, as noted, could be ignored. Bad things happen in small surf. You probably won’t drown, but everything you don’t want to touch when you are moving fast is so much closer to you in shallow water.
Kauilani and Eric got married at the Outrigger on Waikiki on the 9th. I was a last minute draftee to be the Master of Ceremonies for Niece Number Two’s wedding. A hundred and fifty people came. The family minister from Seattle was lost in a maelstrom of untidy, pointless memories and stained the event with a miserable anecdote about him and the groom being bad boys in some speeding dinghies. Such bad boys, bishop. I can see why you have a hard time forgiving yourself. And the bastard made the ultimate unforgivable error, which he had been trained to not do, by mispronouncing the bride’s name.
The pot should not call the kettle black though. As MC I felt required to crash course the protocols. How do we wed the people? The urge to share on the internet is an admirable trait among the humans: I was trained in a nano. Getting people to turn off their cell phones pleasantly was easy enough. I was congratulated on my gravitas and the commanding but not tedious sense of authority I brought to the occasion. But I silently caved when the moment came to allow my nephew, Travis, time for his little roast-toast in honor of the bride, his twin sister. With the late hour suddenly an issue it was mutually decided to stick to a shorter list. And he had even practiced the speech to me previously. As his father said later, “ You know, he is always the boy who never got picked for the little league teams. He’s used to it.”
During the aftermath breakfast surfside at the Outrigger, with many repentant heads not ready for public apologies due to alcohol ( but not mine), I gave Travis his due anyway. I’ll never know if he appreciated the gesture or not. After being left on the sidelines so often, he has probably learned to keep his disappointment to himself. He is an FBI agent now, which we think explains things, but probably not as neatly as we think.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Crouching Lion
SURF REPORT
CROUCHING LION
8 September 2009
You can best see the lion when you are four or five hundred yards offshore. Crouching Lion is a rocky hilltop above my sister’s house at Makaua, in Kaaawa, Oahu. If you line yourself dead-on with the lion so her little white house is right below it, you can stay on the best and most consistent peaks when the swell is running out of the northwest. There are five peaks on the lion, though the most northerly, which breaks weakly into Kahana Bay unless there is a big push, is not ridden much. I once paddled out at Crouching Lion with good Konas blowing and a lot of boys out, and ended up seeking the soul rights on Kahana: mo bettah. But a little sharky.
When I arrived in Honolulu my brother in law called from Kaaawa. He told me that Cameron said there was surf and that Cameron had even waxed up The Diff. This is undue deferential treatment, so upon arriving I made to paddle out to the reef even if just to look around for turtles. Cameron is the nephew-in-law. He thinks of me as a semi-icon I suppose, the game geezer. We ate fried spam sushi like holy communion, washed it down with vodka and guava juice on ice and hit the water.
“ I plan on surfing if we go all the way out there,” suggested the young Cameron, husband of Niece Number One.
“ Oh of course we will ride a few.” I didn’t want to kibosh the notion, surf unseen. And so we stroked out on our trek to the reef.
There were trades blowing and the reef was Maytagging around, so from the shore a hundred riders had slipped by on Kamehameha Highway thinking that the lion was not working. But there were no whitecaps on the sea, so the trades were meek. On we stroked, until we were on the reef dodging white water. I remembered that it is wise that whenever you find yourself on one of those tropical reefs with a lowered tide to paddle shallowly, with your little fingers barely wet, because the last thing you want to do is jam the ball of your hand into an urchin on the way out. No matter how good the waves are, your surfing pleasure will be diluted by the throbbing pain the poisonous spines induce.
With the trade windswells and Lord knows whatever else swinging in out of the deep blue, the reef crossing was arduous. Not the worst, but still a continual buffeting. The reef is broad, and no sooner did one wave break there was another behind it. Thus the entry was tiresome and eventually fraught with a few epithets. I thought that Cameron was right behind me, but discovered he had not passed the reef and was drawn down towards Kahana, where I saw him waving after I had ridden. After a few waves I realized he had still not crossed over and I could not see him so I took some whitewater back over to find him. I was drifting around wondering how big the shark was that had torn him in half when I turned to see him now on the far south end of the reef, surfing. He had paddled all the way down to the channel and gone out from the top, which is what I now entertained. I was so glad I did not have to explain to my sister how I had not kept better care of her son-in-law.
Once in the blue and surveying what’s really going down out there, the waves are really pretty good if you are in the right place when the groundswell comes in. The trade swell is playful but dissolves into mush. The groundswell is head high and is breaking on three distinct peaks. You want to get in and get down on those. The current takes us frequently into the netherzone, so we have to remind ourselves to keep moving up. The lefts were the best, or so I thought until I decided to go right and midway down the line observed myself making a long roundhouse cutback to flip back in, just like riding a bicycle.
CROUCHING LION
8 September 2009
You can best see the lion when you are four or five hundred yards offshore. Crouching Lion is a rocky hilltop above my sister’s house at Makaua, in Kaaawa, Oahu. If you line yourself dead-on with the lion so her little white house is right below it, you can stay on the best and most consistent peaks when the swell is running out of the northwest. There are five peaks on the lion, though the most northerly, which breaks weakly into Kahana Bay unless there is a big push, is not ridden much. I once paddled out at Crouching Lion with good Konas blowing and a lot of boys out, and ended up seeking the soul rights on Kahana: mo bettah. But a little sharky.
When I arrived in Honolulu my brother in law called from Kaaawa. He told me that Cameron said there was surf and that Cameron had even waxed up The Diff. This is undue deferential treatment, so upon arriving I made to paddle out to the reef even if just to look around for turtles. Cameron is the nephew-in-law. He thinks of me as a semi-icon I suppose, the game geezer. We ate fried spam sushi like holy communion, washed it down with vodka and guava juice on ice and hit the water.
“ I plan on surfing if we go all the way out there,” suggested the young Cameron, husband of Niece Number One.
“ Oh of course we will ride a few.” I didn’t want to kibosh the notion, surf unseen. And so we stroked out on our trek to the reef.
There were trades blowing and the reef was Maytagging around, so from the shore a hundred riders had slipped by on Kamehameha Highway thinking that the lion was not working. But there were no whitecaps on the sea, so the trades were meek. On we stroked, until we were on the reef dodging white water. I remembered that it is wise that whenever you find yourself on one of those tropical reefs with a lowered tide to paddle shallowly, with your little fingers barely wet, because the last thing you want to do is jam the ball of your hand into an urchin on the way out. No matter how good the waves are, your surfing pleasure will be diluted by the throbbing pain the poisonous spines induce.
With the trade windswells and Lord knows whatever else swinging in out of the deep blue, the reef crossing was arduous. Not the worst, but still a continual buffeting. The reef is broad, and no sooner did one wave break there was another behind it. Thus the entry was tiresome and eventually fraught with a few epithets. I thought that Cameron was right behind me, but discovered he had not passed the reef and was drawn down towards Kahana, where I saw him waving after I had ridden. After a few waves I realized he had still not crossed over and I could not see him so I took some whitewater back over to find him. I was drifting around wondering how big the shark was that had torn him in half when I turned to see him now on the far south end of the reef, surfing. He had paddled all the way down to the channel and gone out from the top, which is what I now entertained. I was so glad I did not have to explain to my sister how I had not kept better care of her son-in-law.
Once in the blue and surveying what’s really going down out there, the waves are really pretty good if you are in the right place when the groundswell comes in. The trade swell is playful but dissolves into mush. The groundswell is head high and is breaking on three distinct peaks. You want to get in and get down on those. The current takes us frequently into the netherzone, so we have to remind ourselves to keep moving up. The lefts were the best, or so I thought until I decided to go right and midway down the line observed myself making a long roundhouse cutback to flip back in, just like riding a bicycle.
SURF REPORT Wipeout
SURF REPORT
7 September 2009
At 34,000 feet in the air the sea is as far away as Maude Smallin’s 6th grade blackboard. The clouds way-way down below are so close to the sea and far from us that they are like butt-smudges on the gray-green slate of the Pacific Ocean. We are going to Hawaii! Hawaii! “I wish you would come along with me.” Because its always nice to share the trip with a fellow traveler. It’s lovely and lonely. I lived here for four years. Long enough to be able to go to Eva Beach during a south swell when all the locals are warning me about the locals, and I say:
“ Nah, I am too old to mess with.”
When I show up there they just wave their shakabra fingers at me and grin from behind their sunglasses, then they just go back to their reveries in the cars they’ve had parked in the sand down there for decades. Maybe folks even inherit those beach heaps. Like nobody is going to show up at Eva unless they belong there, Brah, or they are crazy.
Old surf song lyrics remind me of Maudie’s son, Dale. Dale managed The Surfaris in the 1960’s and its Dale who cackles out that wicked Edgar Alan Poe inspired EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT! …at the beginning of the Surfari’s big hit of the same name off the album of the same name.
Maudie brought Dale to school so he could pull off his wild EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT… in person for us at a school assembly. Can you imagine how cornellacious it would be if we asked him to do it twice today? He did it twice then. Three times would have been too much. Dale looked a little too Pillsbury to have been surfing much back then. But he had that wild howl down and gave us a thrill. He didn’t seem to think it was lame to be doing it like that, a capella in some sterile auditorium. God bless his heart.
Then they cued the record for a little more entertainment, and we all sat there in our khaki uniforms and black ties, thirteen-year-old sergeants and little 4th grade corporals, listening to the Surfaris on some RCA Victor portable record player. The song was a vacant and inappropriate sound when heard out of place, when we were all crammed together in the formal circumstance. But out back of the barracks late in the afternoon that song would come on like an anthem when everybody’d be putting the gloss to the belt buckle with a little Brasso, and shining their clunky black shoes or big bad boots ( I never felt like ponying up for, nor swaggering in such, myself) back when we were somewhat under house arrest.
Then KRLA would play something else cool like Dick Dale’a Misirlu (Ah, ya habibi, Ah, ya leh-leli, ah!) or the great instrumental Apache by Jorgen Ingmann. It’s a shame that people won’t settle for s nice straightforward instrumental anymore these days, especially since the good lyricists can be counted on two hands. Back in 1963 you had to have a good strong instrumental in the repertoire. Words can be a bit overvalued. Even the Rolling Stones covered 2120 South Michigan Avenue. We were 27 miles from Corona Del Mar listening to all this but were feeling the vibe, all the same. Wipe Out was recorded where I grew up, in the lemon groves and grape vineyards of Cucamonga, at a place run by Frank Zappa.
7 September 2009
At 34,000 feet in the air the sea is as far away as Maude Smallin’s 6th grade blackboard. The clouds way-way down below are so close to the sea and far from us that they are like butt-smudges on the gray-green slate of the Pacific Ocean. We are going to Hawaii! Hawaii! “I wish you would come along with me.” Because its always nice to share the trip with a fellow traveler. It’s lovely and lonely. I lived here for four years. Long enough to be able to go to Eva Beach during a south swell when all the locals are warning me about the locals, and I say:
“ Nah, I am too old to mess with.”
When I show up there they just wave their shakabra fingers at me and grin from behind their sunglasses, then they just go back to their reveries in the cars they’ve had parked in the sand down there for decades. Maybe folks even inherit those beach heaps. Like nobody is going to show up at Eva unless they belong there, Brah, or they are crazy.
Old surf song lyrics remind me of Maudie’s son, Dale. Dale managed The Surfaris in the 1960’s and its Dale who cackles out that wicked Edgar Alan Poe inspired EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT! …at the beginning of the Surfari’s big hit of the same name off the album of the same name.
Maudie brought Dale to school so he could pull off his wild EUEUEHWWWIIIIPE-OWT… in person for us at a school assembly. Can you imagine how cornellacious it would be if we asked him to do it twice today? He did it twice then. Three times would have been too much. Dale looked a little too Pillsbury to have been surfing much back then. But he had that wild howl down and gave us a thrill. He didn’t seem to think it was lame to be doing it like that, a capella in some sterile auditorium. God bless his heart.
Then they cued the record for a little more entertainment, and we all sat there in our khaki uniforms and black ties, thirteen-year-old sergeants and little 4th grade corporals, listening to the Surfaris on some RCA Victor portable record player. The song was a vacant and inappropriate sound when heard out of place, when we were all crammed together in the formal circumstance. But out back of the barracks late in the afternoon that song would come on like an anthem when everybody’d be putting the gloss to the belt buckle with a little Brasso, and shining their clunky black shoes or big bad boots ( I never felt like ponying up for, nor swaggering in such, myself) back when we were somewhat under house arrest.
Then KRLA would play something else cool like Dick Dale’a Misirlu (Ah, ya habibi, Ah, ya leh-leli, ah!) or the great instrumental Apache by Jorgen Ingmann. It’s a shame that people won’t settle for s nice straightforward instrumental anymore these days, especially since the good lyricists can be counted on two hands. Back in 1963 you had to have a good strong instrumental in the repertoire. Words can be a bit overvalued. Even the Rolling Stones covered 2120 South Michigan Avenue. We were 27 miles from Corona Del Mar listening to all this but were feeling the vibe, all the same. Wipe Out was recorded where I grew up, in the lemon groves and grape vineyards of Cucamonga, at a place run by Frank Zappa.
SURF REPORT 3107
25 August 2009
South swell moving up all day. Towards four piled into Otter’s van with DocterDave and Pisser. Greg’s pissed-really heartbroken, because yesterday he drove away from C Street without tying down his beloved Robert August soft top and when he pulled onto the 33 he realized that somewhere between the lot and freeway it had sailed off. He never found it.
Rode flat on my back next to the boards watching backwards as the hot Eucalyptus branches waved in the wind with my head next to Dave’s knee while Pisser and Dave made homojokes on my behalf. I was glazed and tired. Phaneuf installed windows somewhere in the harbor all day and would meet us at the point, which held a low tide and head high to overhead sets when we arrived. CDIP was 4.1 at 14 from the 195.
Wolfpacked a peak at Stables. Everyone gave the Silverbacks elbow room with all our bigboard yooha bravado. We were catching all the waves in that zone so the crowd cleared nicely. Consistent surf rolling through. I nearly sent Pisser to the dentist with an errant footslip on a takeoff. He said he had thoughtlessly paused to admire the view when the Rusty suddenly came hurtling beakwards. The lefts were happening. Otter got a lot of long rights. Dave struggled doggedly.
As we made an exit I began to pick my way over the rocks toward shore and noted a woman combing her hair, appraising me as I tiptoed through the sand and boulders. Every time I took my eyes off the rocks she was still looking. I waited for Otter a minute then started back up the slippery stones. She cast further admiring looks while braiding her hair as she sat on the hood of her beefy black SUV and I rock stepped up to the embankment. As I stood up on the shelf I observed that it was the same woman who had snaked me two days previously.
“ What now?” I said to myself. “ She likes me?”
It was impossible to not give her a little wave when she kept beaming at me, though I felt like meat. “ What the hell?”
I caught Pisser by the elbow and told him about the woman. He gives a gander.
“ Hey, she’s cute,” he says.
Yellow police tape was strewn across the frontage road. Pisser said a guy had told him a woman had been struck in the road and killed. Her dog still lay dead on the pavement with the orange evening sun warming its lifeless fur. The woman was one of the homeless folks that wander up from the river bottom and hang around the bathroom. A wind-blown, scraggly couple sat clutching one another on the opposite sidewalk. They seemed too young to be bums, but I know age is no bar to poverty. There must have been nine cops leaning on their doors or milling about, staring at the spot where the dead woman had once lay.
26 August
Picked the CSA load early. Francisco and I had picked beans and squash the previous day, so gathering the vegetables was fairly easy. Had a good crew picking. Picked some nice melons and ate a bunch in the field. Ditched the FORAGER newsletter and rode down with Phaneuf to Knuckles. CDIP is going 3.0 from the 170 at 14 seconds from the south. Knuckies can probably be better but every element coalesced into satisfaction just short of perfection. Windless conditions on a rising tide near high with head high sets. Nailed a legitimate barrel going left- which was generally the only shoulder you could count on making. Phaneuf rode his little yellow flash. Crowd was minimal, with school back in session and summer on the wane.
Surfed again at Mondos in the afternoon on a lowering tide. Grace Buetti had been texting me about Mondos earlier, during the low tide. Said it was BIG! Grace was there with Belle, on Belle’s last day before going back to Colorado. Such earnestly dear young girls they are. Grace said she had misgivings about going out earlier. I said there was no need to prove anything.
Pisser showed up with Emilie. I wanted to run up to John and Mary’s to see if the waves I rode there in 1985 with Lee Gearhart were still breaking. Maybe Gearheart will still be up there on his little white diamond tail, scooting through on those hissing green walls from New Zealand. John and Greg decided to surf the Mondo’s shorebreak. Mondos reef looks like a scene from the Ventura County Fair: everyone’s here but the kids from Santa Paula with their show hogs.
There were waist high walls visible up toward Pitas. It was a long walk-not really that long but the longest walk to get to a surfspot this side of Sands Beach. The trek is so long people don’t want to make it. It takes ten to fifteen minutes. I would walk a lot farther to ride an empty sand-bottom point breaking shoulder high with not another soul within fifty yards of me. I passed two guys on longboards sitting on a clean little peak a hundred yards up from Mondos. They were barebacking it. When I got up to the Tudor House I paddled out. I was by myself . Gearheart had already gone in-twenty four years ago. He says he’s never surfed since he moved to New Mexico. He said the ocean was too crowded, too polluted. He was a good surfer. But there is no one out at John and Mary’s but me and there is ten to fifteen foot visibility in a lively sea with fish jumping and pelicans diving on them. The waves came at me and peaks broke here and then there, and closed out where earlier it had machined down the line. I took off into a weird looping bowl, made the drop, turned into a barrel and got hit in the head by the lip of the wave. As I tumbled backwards I began to remember that mussely rocks punctuate the Pitas bottom. I had seen none of them, so knew where none of them were. Perhaps I just missed getting a big mussel gash through the base of my skull. Rule Number Five: always land flat and protect your head from the rocks you can’t see.
I got five waves that all closed too quickly before me. If it had been beachbreak I would have been stoked to just get buried or make the takeoff, but it was the sand bottom of Pitas that can be on many days be so wonderfully walled and hollow, so the frustration was magnified by possibilities unattained merely because the swell was hitting straight from the south. The sun was going down. Instead of cruising down to Mondos I walked it. Pisser was going on about how he broke his board with his dick. There was no gyst to it until I saw he had delaminated the nose of the board he had borrowed from Otter. Greg had hit the rail with his pelvis just as both made contact with the sand on a Mondos sand whomper. He sat spread-legged in the sand, a pained but game look on his Jack of Spades face.
“ Not a good week for boards, man.”
“ No, but what hurts worse?”
“ Losing the Robert August, probably. Yeah, sure.”
27 August
Surfed. 105 degrees by one PM in the valley. Watered the nursery and motored to the coast, with John and Seed. Mondos was mushed but wet. I went out to the far reef and anchored in the eelgrass. A girl was surfing up there so I gave her all the room and waves she desired. There were few of them anyway. A ruddy guy in a handlebar mustache, maybe my age, which is 59, moves up on a long board and, observing the nose of the Rusty “ The World’s Longest Short Board” at 8’10”, he says: “ You’re not gonna catch anything on that thing.”
“ I guess I’ll do OK.” I reply. Thus challenged, by a man I can call Clancy O’Bannon, I scratch for every feeble comber that crawls my way and catch them all. I move left, go back to the right peak, looking for what’s not there. The best wave is a left. Phaneuf has called it quits early, and I am cooled off and ready to leave, so I ride one inside and then sit on the last bar, waiting. Clancy paddled up with a smug grin:
“ What’s the matter? Ya outta gas?”
In these circumstances I am never prepared to deal as dealt. Fonteyn or Phaneuf can reply so devastatingly to such insults so readily that they seem pre-primed. I suppose I had been forewarned by Clancy’s bucanneerist banter but I was so surprised at ridicule from an anonymous corner I was ill prepared. All I could say was “ Do you surf here all the time?’ Which obliquely might imply that Clancy was a bit of a buoy.
“ Yeah, this is my break. Where do you surf?” A fair question, since I had never seen Clumsy before. It allowed me enough time to discover some wit, even if subtle:
“ I guess I surf anywhere I want.”
28 August
Surfed. Swell surprisingly back up. Ojai was in full broil. Otterbein broke his board at Knuckleheads. Split the glass in the front third really, on one of those late drops. When I looked at it later it seemed like the foam was in tact, but a major deforming surgery would be required in order to re- launch. Otter has never cottoned to the Knuckle. You can tell from his tone of voice when we are making the where decision. I don’t think he even wants to go look at it because it will put Knuckleheads in play, but if the tide is high then its really the only call when the swell is small. And now his reluctance has borne out.
30 August
Did not surf the mysto swell. Picked over 2000 pounds of melons for the market and sundry boxes of beans and cucumbers on Saturday then got the store ready for Phaneuf’s birthday party. Delerium from the heat gave way to method. Watered up my beds of fall vegetables.
I knew the surf had to be something special because a 283 showed up and went 7.5. A northwest swell had been forecast, but not waves going nearly double overhead. Still, my inner Calvinist shouldered the mighty wheel of commerce. I spray the deck down to get rid of the food debris prior to the dinner rush, then head home to wash dust off myself.
Phaneuf shows up with pie plate eyeballs. He went to with nobody out and surfed til he could not paddle any more. There was also a 3.5 out of the south still but that 283 was the headline from Rincon to Oxnard Shores. Da-umn! Olivia made some really good birthday cakes. Francisco came to the party a little ripped. Sus Corez played with her band. Phaneuf diligently kept himself from bawling on about how tremendous the surf had been, but he gave himself away, walking around with a face like a puffer fish, holding something very, very big in check.
1 September 2009
Drove late with Pisser to low tide Knuckles breaking mostly from a west windswell and played tag with a truly Knucked-up crowd, including a huge, fries-eating specimen in a Fu Manchu who was probably an all-league down-lineman for the Nordhoff Rangers Championship team of 2003. He’s cruising around in the impact zone with swimfins and a boogie. I call him Nick Knuckles. He sort of sticks to me like an overly curious seal. Later his brother, Nobby, paddled out, all lobsterized and looking a bit beered up. I begin to slowly churn up the coast, chasing Pisser, who is now riding a nice big Huerta I bought from a neighbor for $250 a few years back, just to have a stash. Now he is enamored of the cruising power of the Huerta and the loss of his Robert August stings not so much.
Phaneuf shows, but he stays on the beach pitching the ball for Seed. He caught the swell earlier down at when things were perfect, so he doesn’t want to tarnish the tidy chunk of stoke he’s scored.
A bodysurfer bobbing near us keeps yelling at his two youngsters to:
WATCH OUT FOR THE SURFERS, BOYS!
But he’s facing us while howling out a warning. The kids are in the white water inside, blissing around. So he is effectively telling US to WATCH OUT FOR THE KIDS INSIDE!
I paddle on towards Trader Joes. I take Pisser’s heap home so he and John may continue dialoguing. I need to fire my sprinklers up. Its been another bake-off in Mira Monte. Hodge says it was 109 at his house.
2 September
Swell mighty diminished but I bring my gear to Oxnard anyway while I am picking up boxes at Calpine. I want to put all my onions and shallots in good storage for the fall. Phaneuf is going to head for a paddle in the harbor, but has nothing else going so we convene at Shores to observe a very nice day to go water skiing in the Santa Barbara Channel.
He is sure that will have waves. We arrive and there are waves. There is one guy out and its good enough for forty. It’s the first time I have ever surfed and it’s a daunting. The breaks at are sort of a steroidal Knuckleheads. The waves come right out of deep water, then leap on a bar and pitch. I whet my buds on a few small crashers, then go for the blue, and get pounded. Memo: need a shorter board for some of this daring-do. Ever the Mayor, Phaneuf chats up more of his many acquaintances. He used to live here, for 11 years, 37 steps to the edge of the water. Phaneuf is very conscious of his food intakes. He cannot qualify as a true food freak, ala ortholexia standards. He merely eats fruits and vegetables. A rather silent semi-vegan. Many of his friends, like Ed, who paddles out for a little late wall chasing, are also becoming more food conscious. John and Ed talk about nuts in smoothies and such, and when John mentions to Ed that I own a health food store, Ed takes notice. If Ed only knew I had wolfed half a Subway Italian special on the way over, and generally have very little control over my own ortho, he may not have had such a genuflective reaction.
3 September 2009
I have four full days left before I go to Hawaii so I gotta make the time count. Every procrastination is an immediacy. The list in my head is longer than any list I can write. We make short work of he CSA boxes, casually grind and then I retreat to do accounting chores at my desk. I have sworn an oath to not let the ocean tempt me. I won’t even look at CDIP, so firm is my resolve.
There’s a text bugle. I don’t know if I want to look at it, but I have to. It’s Phaneuf. “ Take a look at the cam,” he says. I look. C Street is running shoulder high on glass with plenty of waves from the steep south. Looks as delicious as a big slice of cold watermelon. CDIP does not confirm anything but a steep angled swell at nine seconds from the 155. Jimena’s last little gyration just west of Cape Vizcaino has spun a swell at us. It’s out of my hands now. We are going to Pitas. Its 97 degrees again, as for an alibi. John paddled Pitas the day before and ran into waist high sets on the Tudor Bar. Some teenage bikini girls were frolicking in an all time go-out. He even rode it on his paddle racer. My gear is elsewhere. I don’t even know where my wetsuit box is. Olivia walks in coincidentally with an old spring suit she found on a shelf outside. An omen for good. I probably left it there four years ago. Phaneuf swings by my house to pick up the Yater.
Mondos is still, bright and hot. “ One bad thing about your box is that we don’t have any sunblock.”
I know I will toast. “ Maybe one of these kind souls can share some of theirs.”
No one would deny Phaneuf a favor. Its like they know intuitively that The Mayor will repay them, or send a deputy to do so. A nice little surf family has a big bottle of the good stuff, and we get our squeezes. Their little boy says that Seed is a good dog and runs his little hands through his hot fur. He’s right about that. And crazy to fetch.
The tide at Pitas is dropping. We run into Rich McGrath on the beach; he’ll come out later on his ski. He says he’s been watching it all day. Pisser is coming too. He doesn’t need much prodding. Ojai is still on a spit. Little lines are sweeping in from the Tudor bar. It’s not more than waist high, but it’s ineffably satisfying: spud high walls in clear green water over golden sand. Phaneuf gets a 20 second ride and decides we better start recording the fifteen-second or better rides. I get a twelve. He rides far down the beach on a perfect wall until he’s a speck. It’s like a thirty.
Pisser shows up on Phaneuf’s stand up paddler. We share this and that and pull a three way for over fifteen seconds. We don’t mind a little lull. Then with rebel yells and goal line cheerleading the sets show again. McGrath is up at John and Mary’s pulling little spinners when he takes off. Pisser’s says he’s tired, but I won’t complain about nothing.
25 August 2009
South swell moving up all day. Towards four piled into Otter’s van with DocterDave and Pisser. Greg’s pissed-really heartbroken, because yesterday he drove away from C Street without tying down his beloved Robert August soft top and when he pulled onto the 33 he realized that somewhere between the lot and freeway it had sailed off. He never found it.
Rode flat on my back next to the boards watching backwards as the hot Eucalyptus branches waved in the wind with my head next to Dave’s knee while Pisser and Dave made homojokes on my behalf. I was glazed and tired. Phaneuf installed windows somewhere in the harbor all day and would meet us at the point, which held a low tide and head high to overhead sets when we arrived. CDIP was 4.1 at 14 from the 195.
Wolfpacked a peak at Stables. Everyone gave the Silverbacks elbow room with all our bigboard yooha bravado. We were catching all the waves in that zone so the crowd cleared nicely. Consistent surf rolling through. I nearly sent Pisser to the dentist with an errant footslip on a takeoff. He said he had thoughtlessly paused to admire the view when the Rusty suddenly came hurtling beakwards. The lefts were happening. Otter got a lot of long rights. Dave struggled doggedly.
As we made an exit I began to pick my way over the rocks toward shore and noted a woman combing her hair, appraising me as I tiptoed through the sand and boulders. Every time I took my eyes off the rocks she was still looking. I waited for Otter a minute then started back up the slippery stones. She cast further admiring looks while braiding her hair as she sat on the hood of her beefy black SUV and I rock stepped up to the embankment. As I stood up on the shelf I observed that it was the same woman who had snaked me two days previously.
“ What now?” I said to myself. “ She likes me?”
It was impossible to not give her a little wave when she kept beaming at me, though I felt like meat. “ What the hell?”
I caught Pisser by the elbow and told him about the woman. He gives a gander.
“ Hey, she’s cute,” he says.
Yellow police tape was strewn across the frontage road. Pisser said a guy had told him a woman had been struck in the road and killed. Her dog still lay dead on the pavement with the orange evening sun warming its lifeless fur. The woman was one of the homeless folks that wander up from the river bottom and hang around the bathroom. A wind-blown, scraggly couple sat clutching one another on the opposite sidewalk. They seemed too young to be bums, but I know age is no bar to poverty. There must have been nine cops leaning on their doors or milling about, staring at the spot where the dead woman had once lay.
26 August
Picked the CSA load early. Francisco and I had picked beans and squash the previous day, so gathering the vegetables was fairly easy. Had a good crew picking. Picked some nice melons and ate a bunch in the field. Ditched the FORAGER newsletter and rode down with Phaneuf to Knuckles. CDIP is going 3.0 from the 170 at 14 seconds from the south. Knuckies can probably be better but every element coalesced into satisfaction just short of perfection. Windless conditions on a rising tide near high with head high sets. Nailed a legitimate barrel going left- which was generally the only shoulder you could count on making. Phaneuf rode his little yellow flash. Crowd was minimal, with school back in session and summer on the wane.
Surfed again at Mondos in the afternoon on a lowering tide. Grace Buetti had been texting me about Mondos earlier, during the low tide. Said it was BIG! Grace was there with Belle, on Belle’s last day before going back to Colorado. Such earnestly dear young girls they are. Grace said she had misgivings about going out earlier. I said there was no need to prove anything.
Pisser showed up with Emilie. I wanted to run up to John and Mary’s to see if the waves I rode there in 1985 with Lee Gearhart were still breaking. Maybe Gearheart will still be up there on his little white diamond tail, scooting through on those hissing green walls from New Zealand. John and Greg decided to surf the Mondo’s shorebreak. Mondos reef looks like a scene from the Ventura County Fair: everyone’s here but the kids from Santa Paula with their show hogs.
There were waist high walls visible up toward Pitas. It was a long walk-not really that long but the longest walk to get to a surfspot this side of Sands Beach. The trek is so long people don’t want to make it. It takes ten to fifteen minutes. I would walk a lot farther to ride an empty sand-bottom point breaking shoulder high with not another soul within fifty yards of me. I passed two guys on longboards sitting on a clean little peak a hundred yards up from Mondos. They were barebacking it. When I got up to the Tudor House I paddled out. I was by myself . Gearheart had already gone in-twenty four years ago. He says he’s never surfed since he moved to New Mexico. He said the ocean was too crowded, too polluted. He was a good surfer. But there is no one out at John and Mary’s but me and there is ten to fifteen foot visibility in a lively sea with fish jumping and pelicans diving on them. The waves came at me and peaks broke here and then there, and closed out where earlier it had machined down the line. I took off into a weird looping bowl, made the drop, turned into a barrel and got hit in the head by the lip of the wave. As I tumbled backwards I began to remember that mussely rocks punctuate the Pitas bottom. I had seen none of them, so knew where none of them were. Perhaps I just missed getting a big mussel gash through the base of my skull. Rule Number Five: always land flat and protect your head from the rocks you can’t see.
I got five waves that all closed too quickly before me. If it had been beachbreak I would have been stoked to just get buried or make the takeoff, but it was the sand bottom of Pitas that can be on many days be so wonderfully walled and hollow, so the frustration was magnified by possibilities unattained merely because the swell was hitting straight from the south. The sun was going down. Instead of cruising down to Mondos I walked it. Pisser was going on about how he broke his board with his dick. There was no gyst to it until I saw he had delaminated the nose of the board he had borrowed from Otter. Greg had hit the rail with his pelvis just as both made contact with the sand on a Mondos sand whomper. He sat spread-legged in the sand, a pained but game look on his Jack of Spades face.
“ Not a good week for boards, man.”
“ No, but what hurts worse?”
“ Losing the Robert August, probably. Yeah, sure.”
27 August
Surfed. 105 degrees by one PM in the valley. Watered the nursery and motored to the coast, with John and Seed. Mondos was mushed but wet. I went out to the far reef and anchored in the eelgrass. A girl was surfing up there so I gave her all the room and waves she desired. There were few of them anyway. A ruddy guy in a handlebar mustache, maybe my age, which is 59, moves up on a long board and, observing the nose of the Rusty “ The World’s Longest Short Board” at 8’10”, he says: “ You’re not gonna catch anything on that thing.”
“ I guess I’ll do OK.” I reply. Thus challenged, by a man I can call Clancy O’Bannon, I scratch for every feeble comber that crawls my way and catch them all. I move left, go back to the right peak, looking for what’s not there. The best wave is a left. Phaneuf has called it quits early, and I am cooled off and ready to leave, so I ride one inside and then sit on the last bar, waiting. Clancy paddled up with a smug grin:
“ What’s the matter? Ya outta gas?”
In these circumstances I am never prepared to deal as dealt. Fonteyn or Phaneuf can reply so devastatingly to such insults so readily that they seem pre-primed. I suppose I had been forewarned by Clancy’s bucanneerist banter but I was so surprised at ridicule from an anonymous corner I was ill prepared. All I could say was “ Do you surf here all the time?’ Which obliquely might imply that Clancy was a bit of a buoy.
“ Yeah, this is my break. Where do you surf?” A fair question, since I had never seen Clumsy before. It allowed me enough time to discover some wit, even if subtle:
“ I guess I surf anywhere I want.”
28 August
Surfed. Swell surprisingly back up. Ojai was in full broil. Otterbein broke his board at Knuckleheads. Split the glass in the front third really, on one of those late drops. When I looked at it later it seemed like the foam was in tact, but a major deforming surgery would be required in order to re- launch. Otter has never cottoned to the Knuckle. You can tell from his tone of voice when we are making the where decision. I don’t think he even wants to go look at it because it will put Knuckleheads in play, but if the tide is high then its really the only call when the swell is small. And now his reluctance has borne out.
30 August
Did not surf the mysto swell. Picked over 2000 pounds of melons for the market and sundry boxes of beans and cucumbers on Saturday then got the store ready for Phaneuf’s birthday party. Delerium from the heat gave way to method. Watered up my beds of fall vegetables.
I knew the surf had to be something special because a 283 showed up and went 7.5. A northwest swell had been forecast, but not waves going nearly double overhead. Still, my inner Calvinist shouldered the mighty wheel of commerce. I spray the deck down to get rid of the food debris prior to the dinner rush, then head home to wash dust off myself.
Phaneuf shows up with pie plate eyeballs. He went to with nobody out and surfed til he could not paddle any more. There was also a 3.5 out of the south still but that 283 was the headline from Rincon to Oxnard Shores. Da-umn! Olivia made some really good birthday cakes. Francisco came to the party a little ripped. Sus Corez played with her band. Phaneuf diligently kept himself from bawling on about how tremendous the surf had been, but he gave himself away, walking around with a face like a puffer fish, holding something very, very big in check.
1 September 2009
Drove late with Pisser to low tide Knuckles breaking mostly from a west windswell and played tag with a truly Knucked-up crowd, including a huge, fries-eating specimen in a Fu Manchu who was probably an all-league down-lineman for the Nordhoff Rangers Championship team of 2003. He’s cruising around in the impact zone with swimfins and a boogie. I call him Nick Knuckles. He sort of sticks to me like an overly curious seal. Later his brother, Nobby, paddled out, all lobsterized and looking a bit beered up. I begin to slowly churn up the coast, chasing Pisser, who is now riding a nice big Huerta I bought from a neighbor for $250 a few years back, just to have a stash. Now he is enamored of the cruising power of the Huerta and the loss of his Robert August stings not so much.
Phaneuf shows, but he stays on the beach pitching the ball for Seed. He caught the swell earlier down at when things were perfect, so he doesn’t want to tarnish the tidy chunk of stoke he’s scored.
A bodysurfer bobbing near us keeps yelling at his two youngsters to:
WATCH OUT FOR THE SURFERS, BOYS!
But he’s facing us while howling out a warning. The kids are in the white water inside, blissing around. So he is effectively telling US to WATCH OUT FOR THE KIDS INSIDE!
I paddle on towards Trader Joes. I take Pisser’s heap home so he and John may continue dialoguing. I need to fire my sprinklers up. Its been another bake-off in Mira Monte. Hodge says it was 109 at his house.
2 September
Swell mighty diminished but I bring my gear to Oxnard anyway while I am picking up boxes at Calpine. I want to put all my onions and shallots in good storage for the fall. Phaneuf is going to head for a paddle in the harbor, but has nothing else going so we convene at Shores to observe a very nice day to go water skiing in the Santa Barbara Channel.
He is sure that will have waves. We arrive and there are waves. There is one guy out and its good enough for forty. It’s the first time I have ever surfed and it’s a daunting. The breaks at are sort of a steroidal Knuckleheads. The waves come right out of deep water, then leap on a bar and pitch. I whet my buds on a few small crashers, then go for the blue, and get pounded. Memo: need a shorter board for some of this daring-do. Ever the Mayor, Phaneuf chats up more of his many acquaintances. He used to live here, for 11 years, 37 steps to the edge of the water. Phaneuf is very conscious of his food intakes. He cannot qualify as a true food freak, ala ortholexia standards. He merely eats fruits and vegetables. A rather silent semi-vegan. Many of his friends, like Ed, who paddles out for a little late wall chasing, are also becoming more food conscious. John and Ed talk about nuts in smoothies and such, and when John mentions to Ed that I own a health food store, Ed takes notice. If Ed only knew I had wolfed half a Subway Italian special on the way over, and generally have very little control over my own ortho, he may not have had such a genuflective reaction.
3 September 2009
I have four full days left before I go to Hawaii so I gotta make the time count. Every procrastination is an immediacy. The list in my head is longer than any list I can write. We make short work of he CSA boxes, casually grind and then I retreat to do accounting chores at my desk. I have sworn an oath to not let the ocean tempt me. I won’t even look at CDIP, so firm is my resolve.
There’s a text bugle. I don’t know if I want to look at it, but I have to. It’s Phaneuf. “ Take a look at the cam,” he says. I look. C Street is running shoulder high on glass with plenty of waves from the steep south. Looks as delicious as a big slice of cold watermelon. CDIP does not confirm anything but a steep angled swell at nine seconds from the 155. Jimena’s last little gyration just west of Cape Vizcaino has spun a swell at us. It’s out of my hands now. We are going to Pitas. Its 97 degrees again, as for an alibi. John paddled Pitas the day before and ran into waist high sets on the Tudor Bar. Some teenage bikini girls were frolicking in an all time go-out. He even rode it on his paddle racer. My gear is elsewhere. I don’t even know where my wetsuit box is. Olivia walks in coincidentally with an old spring suit she found on a shelf outside. An omen for good. I probably left it there four years ago. Phaneuf swings by my house to pick up the Yater.
Mondos is still, bright and hot. “ One bad thing about your box is that we don’t have any sunblock.”
I know I will toast. “ Maybe one of these kind souls can share some of theirs.”
No one would deny Phaneuf a favor. Its like they know intuitively that The Mayor will repay them, or send a deputy to do so. A nice little surf family has a big bottle of the good stuff, and we get our squeezes. Their little boy says that Seed is a good dog and runs his little hands through his hot fur. He’s right about that. And crazy to fetch.
The tide at Pitas is dropping. We run into Rich McGrath on the beach; he’ll come out later on his ski. He says he’s been watching it all day. Pisser is coming too. He doesn’t need much prodding. Ojai is still on a spit. Little lines are sweeping in from the Tudor bar. It’s not more than waist high, but it’s ineffably satisfying: spud high walls in clear green water over golden sand. Phaneuf gets a 20 second ride and decides we better start recording the fifteen-second or better rides. I get a twelve. He rides far down the beach on a perfect wall until he’s a speck. It’s like a thirty.
Pisser shows up on Phaneuf’s stand up paddler. We share this and that and pull a three way for over fifteen seconds. We don’t mind a little lull. Then with rebel yells and goal line cheerleading the sets show again. McGrath is up at John and Mary’s pulling little spinners when he takes off. Pisser’s says he’s tired, but I won’t complain about nothing.
SURF REPORT The Inner Kook
SURF REPORT
The Inner Kook
21 August 2009
CDIP showed a 2.1 at 20 from the 195 so I chased it with Otter. Looked at unrideable Nucklehead. Chugged down to the cove at California Street, sat on the wall watching three guys not really ride, but if the tide was lower it would have been better. Went home dry.
22 August 2009
Jonesing for the GodAlmighty swell. No surf for a week. Now its arrived. Gotta pick for the farmers market. Up early and run through the common chore tedium. Load the drawers with cash. ThisThatThisThat. Load the truck with boxes. Gotta dump and clean the compost buckets, haul the perishables to the shade. Water the nursery. Pick cucumbers. Prince and Otter already heading down to the point. They plan to get it with the tide low and coming up, i.e., perfectly timed. Eventually I plan to head down with Phaneuf. Now it’s 2.7 feet from 185 degrees south with 17 second intervals.
Phaneuf’s Monika, Katy-O and Olivia have been eating biscotti and drinking espresso, picking basil in full chuckle. They independently decided to wear their colored woolen caps. Calvinism and Hedonism tear my psyche but I go anyway, figuring I can catch up in the early PM once my Jones is doused. Down Santa Ana to the 33, Phaneuf is receiving and relaying reports on his two-way wrist radio. I stare at the DIP like a little digital talisman as if expecting mysteries to be revealed.
The Nuckle is walled. John’s friend Dave is just getting out of the water. Dave eats at the Farmer and the Cook every lunch apparently, but I do not recognize him wet in neoprene without a sandwich in his hand. Dave says it was “pretty good an hour ago.” Drawing scant comfort, we impetuously haul to Ventura Point. Otter and Prince are buttoning up their shirts, and Pisser says it was “ pretty good an hour ago.” The tide is beginning to swamp The Point.
“ Looks like we better get out there if we’re going to before this gets funky.”
I agree, but its already getting funky. On a 5.5 foot tide, small waves that might have been ridden slosh onto the rocks. Larger waves stand and wobble toward shore uncertainly like your drunk grandpa. The larger sets today have three waves per, so forty people chase three waves breaking on two or three peaks, resulting in heightened competitive anxiety. I don’t recognize many people. A young guy is doing well inside on a long board so I figure to get some modest waves under my belt before I paddle out to park with the other buoys. Everybody is sitting. Inside its pretty Maytag, with the churning backwash slopping up the incoming wave. There’s a lot of depressing bouncing around. I snag a couple of sudden chest high lefts that are somewhat rewarding. I should have stayed there.
We wander to (the) Pipe “ The only show in town.” Says Phaneuf. I find myself in miraculous position on a fair comber and as I push off, the board cleaves through some kelp ( its that close to shore) entangling my right hand. The ensuing struggle and ignominious flop alter lineup chemistry perceptibly.
After a few sets, I am back at the gate, paddling for a nice waist high slosher. A woman to my right has been surfing out there for awhile. She begins to paddle as well, in rather close proximity, and as the rapturous moment arrives in which to launch, she turns to me and announces:
“ I’ve got it.”
I had remained so shamed by going full Doofus on my previous attempt that I could say nothing back but: “Go then.”
I had full position and had been paddling earlier, so my case for primacy was fairly air-tight, except for the Doofus Factor. I plainly did not deserve the wave, especially if so few of them were coming our way. Waste not want not, eh, cherie?
So I pulled up, dragging the tail of the board down into the wave in an abject demonstration of undignified defeat. The wave surged around my knees. What should I have done, dropped in on her tail block?
I had been snaked by a lady who had announced the snaking like some mild rattler on the side of the path, as if to say “ Here I am!”
And of course I had let her on. Rattlers own the path. She was a stylish, fit gal, perhaps forty-five years old, who had surfed well with nice equipment, including one of those Patagonia water caps I thought I wanted-until being sullied by a woman wearing one. From afar I later envied the wave she laid on her jazzy arch-stance for.
Stung with condemnation I meandered back into the anonymous lineup, then suddenly brightened with an absurd thought. I should just write about my defeat in order to rescue the entire event from contemptible mediocrity. The opportunity for self-ridicule usually yields a whiff of comedy. Nontheless, I could not erase that large yellow D that had been stenciled on my back. It was as if I could read the thoughts of some in the thinning crowd: Doofus! Kook! Geezer! But no doubt they paid me little mind or merely pitied me.
We retreated to the middle break, fully Maytagging now at peak tide. I prayed for any feeble roller to appear and send me to shore. My last wave made up for nothing, but I rode it without injuring myself or others, nor was further humiliated.
The score, based on a three wave minimum, left me feeling short two. I had ridden six waves in one hour, flopped one, gotten pounded from behind on a late take-off, ridden two zippy lefts and one fair right, and lost innumerable waves on the snaking. It was like hitting into the water hazard on the final hole in golf.
24 August 2009
In the evening of the Great Snaking, the swell registered 3.5 from the 180. Sunday morning, I ferried produce to the farmers market, built the stall with O and Katy and left with John at 10. Phaneuf determined from various detailed reports that Hollywood was out, Hueneme was out, the wind forecast was miraculously not showing up, and that there was a big contest at Shores. So it was to be Nuckles on a burgeoning tide, which was suitable. After my last rising tide go-out at Ventura Point I was not ready to subject myself to another crowded moment in the washtub.
Ojai State Beach was a paradise of glassy surf as we hove to, next to Brian Hugheart, an old friend of John’s. Brian and I are the same age more or less. Brian had given John his first board and dated his sister. Brian has an 8 foot fish that seems like a nice template to try. Wide and dense with foam. The waves are about as good as it gets. We are specifically more towards Trader Joes than Nuckleheads. Its all going off between two and four feet, head high or bigger on the set waves. Phaneuf suggests that riding these semi-closeouts will sharpen our “ chops” when the winter arrives. Lots of people lots of peaks. I get a enough waves to redeem my bent soul from yesterday and then put some in the bank . The lefhanded drops yield excitement.. If the place needs a name later I can always call that medium bar Redemptions. There is a big dip in the asphalt down there I nearly rolled into once.
The Inner Kook
21 August 2009
CDIP showed a 2.1 at 20 from the 195 so I chased it with Otter. Looked at unrideable Nucklehead. Chugged down to the cove at California Street, sat on the wall watching three guys not really ride, but if the tide was lower it would have been better. Went home dry.
22 August 2009
Jonesing for the GodAlmighty swell. No surf for a week. Now its arrived. Gotta pick for the farmers market. Up early and run through the common chore tedium. Load the drawers with cash. ThisThatThisThat. Load the truck with boxes. Gotta dump and clean the compost buckets, haul the perishables to the shade. Water the nursery. Pick cucumbers. Prince and Otter already heading down to the point. They plan to get it with the tide low and coming up, i.e., perfectly timed. Eventually I plan to head down with Phaneuf. Now it’s 2.7 feet from 185 degrees south with 17 second intervals.
Phaneuf’s Monika, Katy-O and Olivia have been eating biscotti and drinking espresso, picking basil in full chuckle. They independently decided to wear their colored woolen caps. Calvinism and Hedonism tear my psyche but I go anyway, figuring I can catch up in the early PM once my Jones is doused. Down Santa Ana to the 33, Phaneuf is receiving and relaying reports on his two-way wrist radio. I stare at the DIP like a little digital talisman as if expecting mysteries to be revealed.
The Nuckle is walled. John’s friend Dave is just getting out of the water. Dave eats at the Farmer and the Cook every lunch apparently, but I do not recognize him wet in neoprene without a sandwich in his hand. Dave says it was “pretty good an hour ago.” Drawing scant comfort, we impetuously haul to Ventura Point. Otter and Prince are buttoning up their shirts, and Pisser says it was “ pretty good an hour ago.” The tide is beginning to swamp The Point.
“ Looks like we better get out there if we’re going to before this gets funky.”
I agree, but its already getting funky. On a 5.5 foot tide, small waves that might have been ridden slosh onto the rocks. Larger waves stand and wobble toward shore uncertainly like your drunk grandpa. The larger sets today have three waves per, so forty people chase three waves breaking on two or three peaks, resulting in heightened competitive anxiety. I don’t recognize many people. A young guy is doing well inside on a long board so I figure to get some modest waves under my belt before I paddle out to park with the other buoys. Everybody is sitting. Inside its pretty Maytag, with the churning backwash slopping up the incoming wave. There’s a lot of depressing bouncing around. I snag a couple of sudden chest high lefts that are somewhat rewarding. I should have stayed there.
We wander to (the) Pipe “ The only show in town.” Says Phaneuf. I find myself in miraculous position on a fair comber and as I push off, the board cleaves through some kelp ( its that close to shore) entangling my right hand. The ensuing struggle and ignominious flop alter lineup chemistry perceptibly.
After a few sets, I am back at the gate, paddling for a nice waist high slosher. A woman to my right has been surfing out there for awhile. She begins to paddle as well, in rather close proximity, and as the rapturous moment arrives in which to launch, she turns to me and announces:
“ I’ve got it.”
I had remained so shamed by going full Doofus on my previous attempt that I could say nothing back but: “Go then.”
I had full position and had been paddling earlier, so my case for primacy was fairly air-tight, except for the Doofus Factor. I plainly did not deserve the wave, especially if so few of them were coming our way. Waste not want not, eh, cherie?
So I pulled up, dragging the tail of the board down into the wave in an abject demonstration of undignified defeat. The wave surged around my knees. What should I have done, dropped in on her tail block?
I had been snaked by a lady who had announced the snaking like some mild rattler on the side of the path, as if to say “ Here I am!”
And of course I had let her on. Rattlers own the path. She was a stylish, fit gal, perhaps forty-five years old, who had surfed well with nice equipment, including one of those Patagonia water caps I thought I wanted-until being sullied by a woman wearing one. From afar I later envied the wave she laid on her jazzy arch-stance for.
Stung with condemnation I meandered back into the anonymous lineup, then suddenly brightened with an absurd thought. I should just write about my defeat in order to rescue the entire event from contemptible mediocrity. The opportunity for self-ridicule usually yields a whiff of comedy. Nontheless, I could not erase that large yellow D that had been stenciled on my back. It was as if I could read the thoughts of some in the thinning crowd: Doofus! Kook! Geezer! But no doubt they paid me little mind or merely pitied me.
We retreated to the middle break, fully Maytagging now at peak tide. I prayed for any feeble roller to appear and send me to shore. My last wave made up for nothing, but I rode it without injuring myself or others, nor was further humiliated.
The score, based on a three wave minimum, left me feeling short two. I had ridden six waves in one hour, flopped one, gotten pounded from behind on a late take-off, ridden two zippy lefts and one fair right, and lost innumerable waves on the snaking. It was like hitting into the water hazard on the final hole in golf.
24 August 2009
In the evening of the Great Snaking, the swell registered 3.5 from the 180. Sunday morning, I ferried produce to the farmers market, built the stall with O and Katy and left with John at 10. Phaneuf determined from various detailed reports that Hollywood was out, Hueneme was out, the wind forecast was miraculously not showing up, and that there was a big contest at Shores. So it was to be Nuckles on a burgeoning tide, which was suitable. After my last rising tide go-out at Ventura Point I was not ready to subject myself to another crowded moment in the washtub.
Ojai State Beach was a paradise of glassy surf as we hove to, next to Brian Hugheart, an old friend of John’s. Brian and I are the same age more or less. Brian had given John his first board and dated his sister. Brian has an 8 foot fish that seems like a nice template to try. Wide and dense with foam. The waves are about as good as it gets. We are specifically more towards Trader Joes than Nuckleheads. Its all going off between two and four feet, head high or bigger on the set waves. Phaneuf suggests that riding these semi-closeouts will sharpen our “ chops” when the winter arrives. Lots of people lots of peaks. I get a enough waves to redeem my bent soul from yesterday and then put some in the bank . The lefhanded drops yield excitement.. If the place needs a name later I can always call that medium bar Redemptions. There is a big dip in the asphalt down there I nearly rolled into once.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Surf Report (Flat)
SURF REPORT
16 August 2009
Sunday: Don’t see how it could be flatter. A 3.3 out of the 315 at nine seconds unimportantly rolls down towards Colnett. And a point nine creeps out of the feeble south. Models promise waves next weekend. Some swell is already in the water, near Johnston Island. But I think the best way to look at it is that its fine to have a forecast and know all you can know, but to not pin your hope to the model.
Was going to go down on Friday with Otter and Prince but even Surfline said it wasn’t rideable, and they’re in the business of making sure people keep surfing so their advertisers can sell leashes and wax and wetsuits, so it had to be miserable. Otter looked at four other sites, like Wetsand, hoping one of the Cassandras will tell him what he wants to read. Saturday was not worth looking at. I picked the hell out of the farm instead. Needed two trucks to transport it all to the farmers market. Watermelon be bulky.
B
Surf’s been miserable for three-four days. The south died off on Tuesday, unridden. Pha-lat. Pancake lumberyard flat. Don’t make much difference how much hoo-haw the prognosticators make about the Mendocino Gradient or some big blow off the Ross Ice Shelf generally, we wait around until its here and then we jump it and then it wanes and we go back to breaking down boxes and watering our abandoned landscaping.
Ordered:
2x banana
Romaine
3x Spring mix
peeled garlic
yam
2x avocado
I wonder if I would go to The Farmer and The Cook regularly if I did not own it. I like the food, but would it be the same without me or my wife? I probably would have gone there all the time until they 86ed me for always trying to pick up on the hot teenagers I hire. I don’t hire them because they are hot. My wife and I share the responsibility, but I do tend to hire hot over plain. Some of my fellow leches give me the thumbs up when we have brought aboard an exceptionally nubile co-ed, and then it gets embarrassing because I have to explain the truth, but it sounds like one of the all-time lamest lies or just crazy.
Something like “ Well, she said she wanted her own business someday.”
Went down on Tuesday in the dusk with Phaneuf and Seed and it was El Punko. John pitched the ball for his dog until Seed would run no more. Piss wind on chilled fog and no swell. Felt like November. Watched from the kelpy sand at Mondos as three guys cruised the ankle-high ripples from some dead storm to the south.
Next day, John worked with Francis O’Neil and I tried to fix the tomato drier. Ran to Ventura Electric and bought the world’s most expensive fuses, then up to Nuckleheads for a check. I figured if I had to whiz soon I may as well avail of the Nuckle Porta-John. It was pure crumb-bumb. I wrote Phaneuf, telling him he “wouldn’t surf it with Rob Lowe’s stick.” Congratulated myself for hours on how clever that was. On my way back from a fruitless search for plexiglass at Huge Hardware, he writes back:
“ Last night just made me need to stay away.”
16 August 2009
Sunday: Don’t see how it could be flatter. A 3.3 out of the 315 at nine seconds unimportantly rolls down towards Colnett. And a point nine creeps out of the feeble south. Models promise waves next weekend. Some swell is already in the water, near Johnston Island. But I think the best way to look at it is that its fine to have a forecast and know all you can know, but to not pin your hope to the model.
Was going to go down on Friday with Otter and Prince but even Surfline said it wasn’t rideable, and they’re in the business of making sure people keep surfing so their advertisers can sell leashes and wax and wetsuits, so it had to be miserable. Otter looked at four other sites, like Wetsand, hoping one of the Cassandras will tell him what he wants to read. Saturday was not worth looking at. I picked the hell out of the farm instead. Needed two trucks to transport it all to the farmers market. Watermelon be bulky.
B
Surf’s been miserable for three-four days. The south died off on Tuesday, unridden. Pha-lat. Pancake lumberyard flat. Don’t make much difference how much hoo-haw the prognosticators make about the Mendocino Gradient or some big blow off the Ross Ice Shelf generally, we wait around until its here and then we jump it and then it wanes and we go back to breaking down boxes and watering our abandoned landscaping.
Ordered:
2x banana
Romaine
3x Spring mix
peeled garlic
yam
2x avocado
I wonder if I would go to The Farmer and The Cook regularly if I did not own it. I like the food, but would it be the same without me or my wife? I probably would have gone there all the time until they 86ed me for always trying to pick up on the hot teenagers I hire. I don’t hire them because they are hot. My wife and I share the responsibility, but I do tend to hire hot over plain. Some of my fellow leches give me the thumbs up when we have brought aboard an exceptionally nubile co-ed, and then it gets embarrassing because I have to explain the truth, but it sounds like one of the all-time lamest lies or just crazy.
Something like “ Well, she said she wanted her own business someday.”
Went down on Tuesday in the dusk with Phaneuf and Seed and it was El Punko. John pitched the ball for his dog until Seed would run no more. Piss wind on chilled fog and no swell. Felt like November. Watched from the kelpy sand at Mondos as three guys cruised the ankle-high ripples from some dead storm to the south.
Next day, John worked with Francis O’Neil and I tried to fix the tomato drier. Ran to Ventura Electric and bought the world’s most expensive fuses, then up to Nuckleheads for a check. I figured if I had to whiz soon I may as well avail of the Nuckle Porta-John. It was pure crumb-bumb. I wrote Phaneuf, telling him he “wouldn’t surf it with Rob Lowe’s stick.” Congratulated myself for hours on how clever that was. On my way back from a fruitless search for plexiglass at Huge Hardware, he writes back:
“ Last night just made me need to stay away.”
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
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