surf.check

It’s generally a sin to give away surf spot locations. But none of these are secrets. So here are some Maps for ya.

7 April 2008 – The Lane – chest high with occasional slightly overhead corkers

Impending move seeming more real all the time. I was out at sunset, wondering how many more to wait for before heading back for an all-nighter on a freelance project. After a pleasant but gutless ride back in to the cliffs I realized: summer is nearly here, and I’m moving east. These waves, right now, could be some of the best waves left this year. (Quickly banishing he horrible possibility that they could be the best waves left, ever.) I paddled back out and stayed through the dusk.

And then the wind switched around to a moderate offshore. A swell from over near Japan was filling in and the offshores groomed the lines into Steamer Lane perfection. Guys at the point were ducking into three, four second barrels. Duck dive through a green arching wave and the wind blew a curtain of white drops down on you, a thrilling reminder of just where you are and what you are doing.

I moseyed up to Middle Peak as the crowd thinned, and waited through the lulls. It was me and a guy on a blue and white longboard as an A-frame built out of the gray. I yelled “I’ll go left” so the longboarder was free to take the right, then scratched down the face. A solid, beautiful, barely overhead left opened up under me. All I was good for was a bottom turn and a sluggish top turn as the lip hooked over, but in the breeze the wave was smooth and etched with powdered glass. I drifted off the shoulder as the wave closed out into the Slot.

And there was more after that. Spokes swinging wide and lighting up Indicators even on the rising tide. The set waves, five thousand miles old, pushed against the reef and built rapidly at the peak. Lying forward on the butterknife, I coasted in easily and stood up, breeze rushing up the face. Trimmed into the wave and took it as far as it would go. In the darkness after the last wave, I heard the church bells tolling up on the cliff.

5 April 2008 – Pleasure Point – knee to waist high

Less windy and more fun, surfing in a crowd with Seth and Brian, getting little stuff. For a while I was picking short lefts just to avoid competition, popping up into a crouch on the back of the board and carving a mini-bottom turn.  Skinny Brian was getting into everything on his 8′6″, taking it nicely in trim down the line. Seth on a 9′6″ was perfecting his run-backwards-down-the-board wipeout on the larger waves.

I stayed out for one more after B&S went in, and finally it came. A giant, belly-high set wave rifling over from first point. A woman in a soft-top was inside of me but facing the wrong way and accomodatingly didn’t make a go for it. I paddled into the firm face and popped up with speed.

Outside, a half-dozen whale spouts shot above the whitecap spray, and the Chardonnay ran downwind for a closer look.

4 April 2008 – Pleasure Point – knee to waist high

Summerlike waves are here, which means go to Pleasure Point. Usually flat and sheltered, it gets only the strongest windswell warbles and whatever south swell is in the water. The result is small but clean and pretty, and the place is always mobbed with barefooted longboarders with great style. Sometimes it’s almost enough just to watch them.

Sea otters were rolling around with their pups. Outside, the bay was a mess of whitecaps. Walking back in over the football-field-sized reef, I saw 35 sanderlings wing over in unison. Through some collective decision they turned before they reached me, stalling in the breeze for a second, then peeling away, light as a cloud of autumn leaves.

14 March 2008 – Pleasure Point – waist to head high

Big, lumpy, gray windswell, with fresh spring winds howling around the point, blowing everyone off the peak toward 38th Ave. I was back on the butterknife and unused to its size, surfing like a retard. The next morning, Mea fell.

10 March 2008 – The Lane – shoulderish high

The mellowest Middle Peak crowd ever. A longboarder just back in town from Oahu saw me scratching for a set wave and said “It’s yours dude,” even though he was technically in position. Somehow, on this marginal day, sitting up at the top peak, wave after wave came to me and the 8-ball dropped into them all, getting in during the moderate offshores, through the sunset glass-off and straight through the weird onshore switch that came at dusk. I got an uncountable number of waves. Like, twelve or so.

The sunset appeared suddenly, dropping into the clear from a low overcast. Gulls roaming 300 feet above me suddenly turned bright rosy pink against the gray clouds. I got one last shoulder, hit the lip, and drove the nose around hard, like setting a clock back an hour. No idea where that came from.

9 March 2008 – The Lane – head high on the sets

Threemile is pretty and solitary, but let’s not get carried away. I went back out to the Lane and snuck into one memorable wave, wherein I took off behind the peak just after a longboarder took off on the right. But no, I didn’t go left, I leaned into the drop, gathered speed, and sank the rail in the flats to carve around the falling lip. This usually never works for me. But this time I came around the section at warp speed, blasting up on the longboarder like a highway trooper. He obligingly carved off the shoulder and I took a long cutback with the rest of my speed. I don’t remember anything else.

8 March 2008 – Threemile – blown out and chest high

Noting that I’d been complaining about crowds more and more regularly, I made the unpopular decision to surf 3-mile in 15 knot onshore/sideshore winds. It was as bad as threemile ever gets – fickle, soft-shouldered, lumpy, mushy, punctuated by waves that break where they have no business breaking. The wind had the water sloshing around in all directions and I couldn’t get up any headway whatsoever on the 8-ball. Still, it was beautiful, with the sun going down beyond the big pillar that comes up off the reef 60 feet into the air. Ugly chunks of the broken reef poking up out of the 0.1′ low tide, a hundred yards off the beach. Gulls winging by. Smell of fertilizer wafting off the brussels sprouts fields. The walk back takes 10 minutes and gives you time to reflect. On how insanely great this place is even on a bad day. In the fencerows were three-foot mustard plants being devoured from the top down by clusters of brown snails.

7 March 2008- The Lane – occasionally a little overhead

It had gotten dark and I was still looking for a good wave to go in on. I kept being second in the lineup on approaching set waves. The sets were staircasing, each one bigger than the one that came before. I’d back off to let a guy go, then have to duck dive the rest of the set. One time it was a guy just paddling back to the lineup. He found himself just inside of me and in position, though I was already paddling into it. But they’re ruthless out here. He wheeled around and hooted me off .

Now it was dark. The butterknife got me in early but slowly on a smooth hump, still gathering itself for the fall onto the reef. I stepped forward, leaning into it, kneeling, and wedged the rail into the forming wall. It steepened and the board, angling down, snuck into the peak through the backdoor. For many magic seconds I was crouched in the pocket. On my front foot, chin right over my knee, back leg trailing, left hand still trimming the board. In the dusk the gray-blue lip curled up and around my vision, vanishing as it went over and behind my head. I was locked in, steering with a left hand at the rail, marveling at how the wave strung out down the line and then rushed at me, spinning.

It was one of those lined-up Indicator waves that only slackens for a moment before throwing up more wall. I held the line for a long, long time. The whole color of the evening and the dusky stretch across the bay, the blurry points of light from town, all funneled into the sharp detail of water bending around me. I kept waiting for it to end, and when it finally did I casually stood up out of it and had the presence of mind to lay down a fully committed frontside cutback as a sort of underline. Of course, I was on the butterknife and too far forward, used to the responsiveness of the 8-ball. The board banked over and began its cutback, but I was leaned out way too far and ate water before the turn was halfway through.

It was a great, frozen five or seven seconds, painted a strange gunmetal blue in the twilight. I had finally found myself in position, and had the presence of mind not to screw with the line. Then it was over, and I was back to being a struggling surfer, disconnected from the wave. I climbed the slick rocks back to the street, hopped the guardrail, and went home.

6 March 2008 – The Lane – around head high

Gloomy, overcast, but the air was warm. The smallish waves were matched by a smallish crowd – still outnumbering the waves, though, with surly shortboarders scratching all over the place for peaks and then getting upset when they found themselves on top of each other and in the way. Ruthless longboarders continued to take the majority. I got a couple short waves on the 8-ball, the highlight probably a late drop eked out in a race against someone to my right. Got to my feet just as the bottom dropped out, but instead of flailing I took the free-fall centered over the board, landed in the pocket and headed out onto the shoulder. The sun went down behind the clouds, but the sky stayed a solemn gray, with one unaccountable spray of pink high above the horizon.

2 March 2008 – Indicators – head high to a little overhead

Big Middle Peak sets marched into a stiff offshore breeze. Paddling around, the water was sloppy and bumps bulled their way up the wave faces. Waves stood open forever and then zippered shut all at once.

It’s spring here. The hard northwest winds whip white streaks across the bay, and the Brandt’s cormorants have their silvery white cat’s whiskers on. One was fishing around the takeoff spot at Indicators, holding its place and diving over and over. I started using it as a buoy to recognize where I was in the lineup.

Took the flying 8-ball out today on the theory it meant less board area to smack me in the head.

1 March 2008 – The Lane – chest high to a little overhead

Let’s see: Warm + offshore + middle-sized + low tide + sunny + Saturday afternoon? Equals bring your largest weapon. So I loaded up the 8-0 butterknife for the first time in like a year and headed out with the pack. I started just off the statue looking for waist-high-ers and below, intending just to focus on the basics. But it was just as crowded down there as anyone else.

I jockeyed for position as longboarders paddled innocently in front of me, around me, and then into the set waves as if I was just out there birdwatching. As a solid west set approached I eyed the same guy lining up who had snaked me last time around, and decided there was nothing else to do but burn him. The wave was rifling in and steepened up perfectly for both of us, but I went for it anyway, forcing him into a straighter bottom turn that stranded him in the whitewater. Me? I was crouched on the highline as the very corner of the lip came curling over my head. Then out onto the flats and back up on the wall.

Later, I got sucked up the point just trying to find a break in the crowd. Pretty soon I was at Middle Peak and some bombs were approaching, teetering in against the offshore winds, their faces all silvery-blue and spray ripping off the lip like pages coming out of a spiral-bound notebook. It was a mess of people up there, but no more of a mess than anywhere else. After a minimal amount of dodging people and set waves, my wave lined up. It kept getting steeper and I stood up early, one hand on the outside rail, wedging the inside rail into the wave. Before me a sea of surfers, maybe 40, straggled out among thick clumps of kelp. I took the straight line and ran over the kelp instead of the people. The wave fumed and spun at my back.

My next wave, an insider, was a later and more desperate takeoff. Tumbling through the whitewater there came a solid conk and I surfaced with blood running down my face. A neat, half-inch slice from my board or someone else’s. Enough blood to get people’s attention in the lineup, but it had nearly stopped by the time I reached the steps.

29 February 2008 – Indicators – waist high (a little overhead up the point)

Don’t ever go surfing at the Lane on a midsize, sunny Friday lunchtime. If you do, bring your biggest board, which is what everyone but me did. Hordes of longboarders just huffing into waves with no regard for other people in the water.

The most impressive part of the day was seeing the effects of the giant storm swell of last weekend. Walking my board out at low tide under the lighthouse, the bottom was entirely smooth sand with just a few strands of kelp streaming out of it. It was almost like I was at a beachbreak. Relentless storm surf had trucked tons and tons of sand down the coast and then dropped it here as the currents eddied out behind the lighthouse. Where you normally would stumble across boulders and into crevices, feeling squishy anemones underfoot and stumbling through wads of feather boa kelp, it was flat as a sandbox and seemingly a foot higher than it had been. Over the spring and summer, the gentler waves will wash it all back out again. But I do wonder how the anemones and their neighbors survive this seasonal burial.

22 February 2008 – The Lane – 9 foot groundswell with big messy windswell

More of the same but this time I was on the 7′2″ flying 8-ball. The rain let up and the onshores switched around, so the waves cleaned up nicely and I was treated to some more aimless paddling and constantly being in the wrong place. But when your expectations have been so throughly deflated you wind up happy for what you have. I patiently waited for some gray 7′ slab to come reeling through for me, and when it never did I accepted a couple waist high castoffs and squelched back toward Cowells on them.

Drifting around in the eddy/current off the parking pullout there’s eventually nothing to do but paddle deep and hope for a middling wave to line up for you. Instead, you always get cleaned up by the real sets which break way up at the Peak, 100 yards or more away, and are still walled up and occupied by the time they crack on your head. The whitewash sweeps you inside and down toward the statue, even further out of position. Eventually you go for one of the wobblers just to end the cycle.

I dropped in to a small section and looked ahead to see the Cowells section shaping up early and about to tumble. I couldn’t make it across. Instead, I pulled as much speed as I could out of a little bottom turn and launched toward the peak. It was only chest high, but I smashed the flat part of the board against the white lip anyway, just as it tumbled, then carved away frontside, back left, the 8-ball’s sharp left rail dug in and carving under all my weight, back to the curl, up onto the whitewater, and stood up out of it. It was something – something small – materializing out of nothing. And over before I thought about it. Enough.

Be in the right place at the right time; do the right thing. It’s the simplicity that gets you.

Back at the rocks, seven surfbirds tiptoed around the fringe of blue mussels. Surf spray flew up all around them. They looked at it, eyes wide and delicate, and waited for it to fall again.

20 February 2008 – The Lane – large and ill-intentioned

Big and chugging through Indicators, but you had to be up at the Peak to get in. If you just want to line up at Indicators and get something medium-sized without jockeying with two dozen assorted rippers, longboarders, and occasional clueless folks in over their head, you’re out of luck. Waves that squeaked through to Indicators had very little intention of breaking at all.

So despite the Trombone’s general paddling ability I found myself, as always it seems, out of position and constantly fighting the current, sliding off the backs of waves. A couple early waves nevertheless found me and I surfed them with little inspiration. The hard part about fiercely concentrating on surfing basic lines (in an attempt to learn something) is you have to do it without actually thinking.

Walking back to the top stairs I ran across the infamous Ribsy, best surfer I know, a local’s local, born and raised on Swift Street. Just back from his annual post-Christmas Baja trip. I’ve never seen him out of position on a wave.

Passed the car and decided to jump in for one more, knowing I shouldn’t, but envisioning a wave immediately lining up on me once I got out. That endless futile optimism. This time it didn’t even get that far.

It’s amazing how much horror and awe and shock can be packed into a half-second. That’s how long it took – midway down the mossy riprap – for the trombone to slip out from under my arm and pick up speed toward the sand 15 feet below. Unfortunately there were several jagged rocks in between. Somehow, as I stared in fascination at this board that could not possibly be about to shatter onto the rocks, I grabbed the leash and yanked it back up.

Crunch. Splinter. Boinggg – as the leash stretched and the board yo-yoed. Splinter. Crunch. Splinter. I hauled the board back up to find four major gashes – three on the bottom, one on the rail. (Sorry Giles. I’ll get it fixed.) Stood there, dumbfounded. What just happened? How does someone drop their board? Right at this exact spot? Then (I’m ashamed to add): Do I have to go back home now? Can I get one more ride out of it? How much water would soak in?

As I stood there, a rail-thin, shaggy blond surfer nipped up the rocks in bare feet and tried to cheer me up. “Aw, no broken fins! Bummer it’s on the bottom, but fix those up and you’ll be cherry.” There are no insurmountable problems after a day of good surf.

17 February 2008 – Indicators – waist to shoulder high

A lot bigger up by Middle Peak, but there were enough people up there that I was stoked to find a section shaping up just opposite the parking pullout. Little peaks would frame up and hang in the rosy sunset and then I would be in. When things went right, I’d make a quick pop up, setting the rail with a quick tug and a lean forward and down the line. The pintail would squirt around and push the board up into the breaking section as the lip feathered up, over, and back behind me. Slotted and holding on.

16 February 2008 – The Lane – macking

Something like 10 feet at 17 seconds, but a weird swell angle that shot most of the energy in toward the slot, right under the lighthouse. I was on the 7′2″ 8-ball out of general principles, and found myself with just enough arms to make slow headway into the current. But not enough to get into the waves I really wanted. Instead I jumped into the thrashing white corners of peeling waves and hoped for the best. Everyone does it on days like this, but it reeks of bad style.

15 February 2008 – The Lane – chest high to much larger

Circling at the top of Indicators, either caught inside on the reelers coming down the point or haplessly chasing the diminishing shoulders from Middle Peak waves that don’t have quite enough oomph. I never have the knack of being in the right place on days like this. The waves I got had mushy shoulders and I surfed them with indecision, thinking too much about what I should be doing.

I had jumped in on a rising tide. Bellying the last wave to the steps I passed a triangular rock sticking up off the reef, crown of blue mussels low on its brow, water slapping up its green sides. On top, a western gull was all snowy white and gray, pink rubber boots shining and wet.

14 February 2008 – The Lane – special Valentine’s Day report

I arrived at the Lane with every intention of surfing, but today we had too much of a good thing: head-high-plus swell met with howling offshore winds. The whole bay was a glittering sheen of wind-whipped blue, as whitecaps turned their backs and raced out to sea. Middle Peak set waves reared their heads and the wind tore away plumes of white spray. Curtains of droplets shot up double, triple the height of the wave and fell back into the sea some 30 yards behind. It looked like Yellowstone.

Later, I was parking on the Westside to go up on campus. A black Toyota screeched to a halt and a young Mexican kid jumped out, maybe 19, grinning wildly. He took off running down the street. A mylar balloon with red hearts on it had blown out of his car window and was making a break for it. The wind pushed it out of his reach once and eddied it behind a parked SUV. He ran around. It hit an updraft and angled toward the rooftops. He craned his neck back, anticipating that bittersweet moment of balloon-losing, when you realize the best you can do now is enjoy the way it looks as it shrinks into the sky. But here came one last dip toward Earth. With one desperate leap, baggy jeans and all, the kid snagged it, legs split like a hurdler’s in the light coming down the street. Another Valentine’s day rescued.

11 February 2008 – Indicators – slightly overhead on the sets

Chilly morning turned warm and breathless and under the February sun. I was too hot in my wetsuit. I splashed water over my head and dropped in on lumbering lumps that chugged down the cliffs with short shoulders. Walked up the steps at the statue and back to the top steps, the water pooling gradually deeper around the riprap. I misjudged the current on one paddle out and had to make a desperate sprint away from the cliff, ducking the trombone under a line of whitewater just as it dashed against the barnacles.

9 February 2008 – Indicators – chest high, a lot bigger toward the point

A Saturday, sunny, really warm. About 300 people in the water if you count Cowells. Expecting this, I brought the trombone and promised not to paddle up past the statue. I lined up inside of the longboarders and had a succession of totally fun chest-high waves swing in toward me. Trying to concentrate on getting the right line through all the sections. There was a thin layer of fog just three feet above the water at sunset, and above that the coastline was clear all the way around to Monterey.

Eventually I got greedy and paddled up to the top of the cliffs for one last wave, one of those nice overhead peelers everyone was getting. As dusk set in I kept being second in line or sliding off the backs. Eventually it was surfing by Braille, difficult on a smooth glassy evening. I got into a beautiful big one, not a ripple on its face, just one corner breaking pearly under the new moon and the rest a great slaty slab, but I couldn’t see and slid off the back before I was really in it. Nothing else came my way after that, which is what I deserved.

8 February 2008 – The Lane – about shoulder high

Got in after the sun had already dropped below the point. Clean and glassy, with brown tangles of kelp breaking the pink water and a thick crowd. Somehow I managed to pick off three great waves before it got totally dark. They were crisp and fast and lined up all the way through Indicators, my favorite kind with long steep walls and no sections. The trombone sucked speed from the wave 50 yards at a time, fluttering and driving through the top third like a long wailing note. As soon as the wave jumped up from the pink surface it went a glossy, varnished blue-green spattered with little explosions of kelp. Cutbacks returned me to the pocket, high on the wave and crouching, one foot forward, back hunched, with the whitewater at my hip. The wave pushed, and it was back out onto the wall. I could almost feel the fin flexing as the board sprang back onto the face.

5 February 2008 – The Lane – occasionally overhead outside, but less consistent

Too many people. Everybody in town, apparently, figured they would jump in for a quick one right as the sun set. In any crowd my half-English breeding causes me to pull back on waves I ought to at least have a go on – especially when the same longboarder keeps clogging up set waves, jumping up early into an awkward teetering crouch. It’s refreshing to hear someone hoot in excitement after a wave, but they really ought to get their bottom turns figured out first. By rights, they shouldn’t still be within earshot by the time they come off the wave.

So it was another day of, basically, nothing. Except an incredible sunset. One may tire of reading about sunsets – and certainly of trying to write about them – but you don’t really tire of looking at them. This one had another splay of cloud strudels stretching out of the horizon. It all started in a moderately spectacular orange but then kept going, like that one firework you light on the Fourth that outlasts all the others, as if prepared in a separate shop probably somewhere high in the Himalayas, by people, Kung Fu masters no doubt, with long gunpowder-measuring fingernails, according to a recipe passed down through the millennia since the Golden Age of Fireworks. It keeps producing more and stranger colors long after it should have run out – burning through tangerine and rose and a kind of murky scarlet, straight into purple and all its synonyms: lilac, mauve, magenta, etc., spreading into a deep bruise with the lighthouse silhouetted in front (and some 18-year-old ripping the last visible peeling wave). And then it really is out, the colors vanished, the sky back to bottomless blue with those same strips of cloud now sitting overhead in trails of ash.

I bellied one in, went to the nearest polling place, and voted for whichever candidate was promising better waves. Then I went to the liquor store and purchased some Devout Stout with which I hoped to propitiate the 8-ball gods, just in case politics isn’t up to the task. The lady in the car next to me was eating Dill Pickle flavored sunflower seeds. Seemed like maybe she should’ve just bought some dill pickles.

4 February 2008 – The Lane – overhead down to waist high, depending

Some days you get out in the water and realize you’re repaying the ocean for all the great rides you had last week. You haven’t reached a new level of grace and style in your surfing after all; you’re the same old crappy surfer you’ve always been, thrashing through the water, falling off the back of waves you should catch, lurching around on your board, looking old, out of shape, and probably goofy in your tight rubber Batman suit.

I stayed out for an hour after official sunset waiting for a wave I could get it right on. They kept passing just inside of me, or breaking way outside with someone making a sweet late drop, or just crumbling and piling up foam on the surface like shaving cream and knocking me down the beach another 20 yards.

One problem with staying out late on the West Coast is that you’re looking toward the sunset. It’s beautiful, with the sky going all the colors of citrus from grapefruit down to tangerine and the dimpled sea kind of an electric silvery blue. But it’s a lot brighter in that direction. Wheel around in time for a promising wall and suddenly you realize it really is nighttime. The wave is pretty much invisible until it breaks, and then it’s too late. I got to my feet just before the head-high wall turned white and tumbled, first headlong and then ass-first and finally shaken straight again, back to headlong but several feet underwater by now, flicked by the wave like you read about cowboys killing rattlesnakes, stuffed down by the whitewater, mercilessly as that last bag of trash in the trash can on trash day, kelp fronds wrapping around my legs, board whipping around at the end of my leash and then finally let go as the wave passes, and kicking back up toward the surface, wondering that it can be so deep here. Then climbing the wet stairs, water running out of my ears, and just the tip of a shiny brown rat’s tail disappearing under the rip-rap and ice plant.

1 February 2008 – The Lane – head high and larger

The bigger the Lane gets, the harder the current runs down the cliffs. It doesn’t matter which way the tide’s going, the current sweeps you down toward Cowell’s and away from the breaking corners. At higher tides, the bounce off the cliffs adds a push out to sea on top of it all. Board choice becomes a dilemma: you need something short to get under the giant piles of crumbling whitewater that sooner or later catch you inside. But you need length in order to make any headway against the current. Some days, you can miss just one wave and never make it back to the lineup.

So it was today. But I chose the 8-ball anyway, since it had been so good to me. I took a skeet-shooting approach to wave selection. I was the clay pigeon. I launched from the top set of stairs and dug for the outside. As I lost ground against the current I hoped a breaking corner would home in on me while it was still catchable. Ride it in to the stairs by the statue and walk up to the top again, almost like a river run. This worked nicely for six or seven undistinguished but totally fun waves.

Choosiness became costly. My last time out I turned my nose up at a head high shoulder, hoping for one of the comfortably overhead faces I kept seeing from the cliff. Soon I found myself out of position, and spent the next 25 minutes feebly paddling back toward the point. At the end of it all I had lost 300 yards and was paddling in waist deep water over kelp and anemones. I picked up my board and walked back to the car.

31 January 2008 – The Lane – chest to a little overhead

At first, the sky was gray and the falling rain was invisible. Little drops of water leapt up off the surface and that was all you could see. The wind had fallen and the grey-green water, dimpled and creased with the ripples, looked like the hide of a great dinosaur flexing its muscles. Twenty minutes later the sun broke out of the clouds and the smooth water turned silver. Approaching sets were like tubes of aluminum foil unrolling. This was the best period of a very good day, with Middle Peak waves reforming and offering up short shoulders all the way in through Indicators. I was on the 8-ball and normally would have looked for a wall to run out before trying a long cutback. These wedgy shoulders gave up less real estate, and my bottom turns had to dig in hard enough to take me high on the lip and back down. Felt great.

After a few hours the dark clouds that had been hanging over Natural Bridges moved over the lighthouse on a steady southwest wind. Three pelicans hung in the sky, kiting 100 feet over Seal Rock, slowly pivoting into and out of formation, getting a good look around but not going anywhere. It was like they were the only creatures that didn’t realize it was windy out. A gull wheeled around them but couldn’t hang.

29 January 2008 – The Lane – chest high and raining

South wind is about the worst thing that can hit Santa Cruz – it’s onshore everywhere and the town’s magic trick of turning California northwesterlies offshore finally fails. Today we had moderate south winds, gray skies, and high tide. I went in anyway. There was a frothing crowd at the Slot and the Point, but at times I had Middle Peak to myself. Inconsistent, but with no competition I could afford to wait. The wind dropped, the waves cleaned up, and the rain started, first a mist you could barely see spattering the surface, then real drops. Occasional lines warped and lumbered in, and after working out a few kinks, the trombone came to life, springing out of the bottom turns and sinking its sharp pintail into the cutbacks. A kid in bare feet, sporting a proud half-inch of scraggle on his face, made idiotic conversation and couldn’t get into anything on his shortboard. He gave off the most intense smell of fabric softener. Every time I got a wave in and paddled back to the lineup, it looked flat and moody out to sea, like that was all there was going to be. But there was always more.

28 January 2008 – The Lane – chest to a little overhead

One of the most amazing surfing days ever. Mixed up windswell from four days of rainstorms out of the south, and a high tide to keep things bouncy. But more waves than riders, and I jumped in on Giles’s 7′10″ trombone. Overhead, to my surprise, were a half-dozen white-throated swifts cruising the cliffs on scimitar wings.

The crowd thinned and the offshores lessened, and those of us left in the water were swept into the sunset. Kids at the Point dropped in to waves on sharpened ellipses, and behind them sea lions, raising their heads and barking on Seal Rock, made the opposite shape. I had missed the Southern Lights in Antarctica, but here were the Western Lights, great hazy dreadlocks of fire swept across the sky, miles up. Over Capitola the rain hadn’t quite let up its hold on town, and dove-gray cumulus crept over the hills like beats from a kettle drum.

The tide dropped, the water calmed into stillness, and every so often great Middle Peak humps started to feel the reef. The trombone absolutely bombed into them with all the stubby power of an MG at LeMans. Once in, the single deep scimitar fin locked us in to endless figure-8 carves back in toward the cliffs. The board’s chubby frame held onto all the momentum from the drop and somehow I had the presence of mind to size up my line, crouch, and backdoor the Indicator section. Back at the cliffs, the swifts swept by, wings chattering “Faster, faster.”

In between waves I watched the sun envelop the lighthouse and vanish behind it, leaving sharp silhouettes: watchers at the rail, bikers pausing, the last two shortboarders jumping off the point. Groundswell lines began to rear up, replacing the windswell and connecting inside. One of these took me in to the cliffs and reformed, and I rode it out from the nose, 10 yards off the rock face and out into the open water again. I sprawled in the water for a minute, then climbed the slippery rocks back to the road.

Offshore, sea otters muffled themselves in rolls of kelp, and the gulls cried about the end of another day: ca-ca-ca-ca-ca. Back at the car, in the dusk, the swifts were too small to be seen. Another sound, ki-ki-ki-ki-ki, came from inshore, and a moment later a big peregrine flapped purposefully overhead, not out of second gear yet.

17 January 2008 – The Lane – waist to about head high

Looking back, it might have been a mistake to go surfing on a crystal 60-degree day, clean head-high bump in the water, just prior to going job hunting in the inland East Coast.

Small enough not to be crowded, about half longboards with a smattering of hopeful newbies. Fortified by last night’s bottle of nutritious 8-Ball Stout, I grabbed the flying 8-ball and went out to meet the bottoming tide. Oblong peaks lumped up at Middle Peak and broke both ways. I got a rare Middle Peak left, which on big days is the banzai choice back toward the cliffs and the pointy-toothed crowd at the Slot. Today not so much. A green hook of lip hung over my head at the bottom turn, and I did my best to hit it.

The wave of the day came 20 minutes later, sneaking past three shortboarders who were a little too optimistic about their line-up. The long peak slipped up under me like a loop flipped along a rope. Eyelids-high and so smooth it was out of focus. It kept throwing up section after section of green water I swear I could see the wharf through. The eager 8-ball was on rail and lapping up speed, fluttering and driving through all that blurred color. Nothing made any sound. I put the foot down and headed out on the shoulder.

15 January 2008 – The Lane – chest high to a little overhead

Arms feeling much better today. Fun, pretty waves were all over, but the most notable was an ugly half-wave halfway through. It peaked up in one long wall with a shortboarder way deep but going for it anyway. I popped up into the steep section, left hand on the outside rail, levering the board into the wave. (Behind me, he was fighting his own losing battle.) The lip came over, and for a few moments I was slotted in that ugly tripod stance known as pigdogging. Everything went a murky green as the space ahead of me pinched shut and the roof collapsed. I came out through the back, board still in hand. The shortboarder was behind me, sputtering in the foam.

14 January 2008 – The Lane – a little overhead

Sore. I went out for an hour just to try to loosen up. Remnants of Saturday’s swell were still showing up at Middle Peak. I got one and only one wave: an 8 foot wall that had the whole lineup duckdiving. I watched the last foot kick under the face as I turned, just at the curving shoulder. Up on the green-blue wave, the butterknife felt chunky and fast. My leash was tangled around my front foot, making me feel even more awkward, but this was a classic Indicator wave, long and walling and churning and gentle, and I concentrated on not screwing it up. Back to the wave, I leaned out into the blank air of the trough and brought the board around in a full 180 degree swoop back to the breaking section. Whitewater piled high. Back to the steep high line. Over and over again, each time the wave a little smaller. When it was over, I just laid in the water, like a starfish that has come loose from the rock. Everything was fizzing.

12 January 2008 – The Lane – double overhead plus

The burnt-rubber smell of QANTAS flight 25 touching down in California had barely dissipated when I found myself looking at a 10 foot 16 second swell marching in on the Lane. Fifty miles to the north, pros hucked themselves over 30-foot lips at Mavericks while I paddled the butterknife out to Indicators. I took a few lines of whitewater in the teeth before making it to the fat shoulders on the outside.

My penance had begun. Two months out of the water and I could barely make the butterknife move. I drooped off the back of swell after swell as guys 100 yards up the line dropped into bombs and came ripping past. Mea’s next door neighbor got one so good he was still talking about it the next day. One guy in the lineup to another: “Dude, it’s the kind of day where, I can’t exactly remember the details of any of my rides. But that wave was sick.”

I got into one late, set my rail into the sheer wall and carved straight back off the wave. Not enough commitment to head down. The current was relentless – I paddled patiently into it and slowly lost ground. Up ahead, it was sunset. Fog out by Natural Bridges turned the light soft and golden, silhouetting cypress trees and kids jumping the fence at the lighthouse, surfboard in hand. A kingfisher took off across the waves for Moss Landing. At the cliffs above Cowells, horned grebes and goldeneyes.

24 December 2007 – Cape Crozier, Antarctica – shin high and offshore

Steely blue waves lapped onto the smooth sea ice out of deep water, not really breaking. Water temp was around 28 degrees and floes the size of basketball courts jostled against the fast ice. Also, there were leopard seals in it.

Across the ice, a crowd of young emperor penguins slouched in down jackets, malcontents waiting for swell, drinking 40s in the parking lot, CROZIER tattooed across their backs in gothic letters.

Snow petrels were freesurfing the cornices 100 feet overhead. I didn’t get in.

18 November 2007 – Pleasure Point – chest to head with larger sets outside

My last surf before Antarctica. Fog close to shore made it hard to see the crowd, as the waves were breaking about 200 yards offshore. Once I got out there it was still, the water grayer and smoother than the fog. People were everywhere and it just got more crowded as the morning stretched on. But this was Pleasure Point and most people were on longboards. I was on the Flying 8-ball and that allowed me to sit on the inside where I could duck dive. Wave after wave found me, with that beautiful Pleasure Point shape where they get steep enough to take off on well before they actually break. In early, and working down smooth, steepening face after face. What a way to say goodbye to Santa Cruz.

But just like that friendly smack on the back before parting, I paddled in just too a little too late on a head high wave and got tumbled into the foam and held down. It was one of those ragdoll moments where you figure you’re just being pushed out in front of the pile. Then you feel the bottom and you realized the water is still coming down on top of you. I came up a few seconds later, spluttering. A pelagic cormorant swam close and looked at me, face bright red and a new, sharp hook to its beak, gleaming with seawater.

17 November 2007 – Indicators – up to about ceiling high

Big, chunky, and blown out from a weird south wind that came up out of a clear blue sky. The high tide had water bouncing off the cliffs and sloshing back southward, where it collided with the thick wind chop. Approaching walls were big, thick, and corrugated like tree bark. I caught a couple but they meant business, churning and bouncing and not offering much of a wave face to head for. I stayed on my belly and took them all the way down to the stairs at the statue.

13 November 2007 – Indicators – chest to head plus and still brown

A bit bigger swell today plus a lot bigger crowd equals almost no waves caught. Twenty-five minutes after sunset and it was still too crowded to sneak into a wave.

At last, in nearly full darkness I dropped into something smooth and slightly overhead. I found the steep point and carved down the line, fully on rail, with just specks of moonlight scattered over the wave to guide me. It was like running through the night with a sparkler in my hand.

12 November 2007 – Indicators – chest to head high and BROWN

There’s a brown tide going on right now, billions of dinoflagellates in a reproductive frenzy turning the water the color of cheap diner coffee. But the Lane was working on a moderate northwest swell, the tide was dropping, and the sun was going all tangerine and blood orange.

Glassy as you like it, and not enough of a crowd out to stop the Flying 8-ball. Pulled into a few smooth walls and shot out onto the shoulder. Kelp fronds yanked at my fins.

Surfers out on the point about to jump in, the lighthouse silhouetted under a thumbnail moon, and gold streaks spreading out toward Japan. It was dark when I came in, walking around cuts in the reef I knew by heart.

8 November 2007 – Waddell Beach – shoulder high

A slight downturn in the south swell and suddenly Waddell was working. I had come prepared with the Flying 8-ball and less than five minutes after paddling out was hurtling down a glassy gray left (and into a closeout section almost immediately).

Five other surfers strung up and down the beach, pretty much all of them more on it than me, as usual. But my wave came and I scraped into it. The 8-ball’s sharp blue rails bit down, and swooshed into the hollow between wave and flat sea. I reached for the curling wall, and we held on.

Ravens congregated in a stubbly field above the cliffs and ate broken pumpkins.

7 November 2007 – The Lane – head-and-a-half or waist high, depending on where you were

An absolutely pumping south swell is in full effect. Some unheard-of size like 5 feet at 16 seconds, with absolutely no wind, low skies, and all the kelp draped across the water and stretching round the point. The water had a dull gleam pierced occasionally by little eared grebes. Pelagic cormorants flew close by, like they were disoriented in the stillness.

I’ve been surfing poorly lately. No rhythm, bad decisions that build on themselves, because poor performance makes you tentative. Sitting on the shoulder, or the next peak over, off balance.

Today I popped up in position on a long, smooth gray roller. It peaked over a bump in the reef, ahead of me. I nudged up into the lip and then slotted into the high line, halfway up the board, and held it. It wasn’t any kind of move to remember, but it was just the right thing to have done. I lanced a 30 yard section under the peak and emerged onto a clean slate shoulder for the cutback. For just those seconds, it was no longer me trying to get my surfing right.

6 November 2007 – Waddell Beach – about 8 feet on the sets

Not that I seriously went for any of the set waves. Stiff lines were rolling in from New Zealand and hitting North America like a cue ball coming across a pool table. The spray at County Line reef, a quarter-mile down, was shooting 100 feet into the air. Hard onshores were meeting them from the north, corrugating the faces, and I was sitting on a trombone with rails like someone’s rib cage.

I took it easy – telling myself it wouldn’t do any good to get my teeth bashed out or my back bent 2 weeks before going to Antarctica. A Pacific loon zipped downwind, way offshore, head lowered. Surf scoters were having a ball. Pelicans banked into swell lines 200 yards long, and their stretched wings fit well below the wave’s lip. One cormorant was with them, envious, still flapping. Even the workmen surfers who had parked above the riprap got into the waves gingerly, but at least they dropped over the ledge. I went for a few smaller ones and came in, feeling cowardly and satisfied.

3 November 2007 – Waddell Beach – knee to waist high

And totally inconsistent. Elsewhere, a meaty north swell was pitching surfers down the line, but Waddell sits just in the shadow of Point Ano Nuevo and on high-angle swells it’s pretty sheltered. Too sheltered, in this case, and so I bobbed around for an hour and a half, becalmed and thinking about Antarctica.

1 November 2007 – County Line – chest to head high

A lot of windswell with occasional solid northwest sets marching up to the reef at County Line, then tumbling flat, like someone had stretched a wire across the street and tripped a marching band.

The sun dropped behind thick fog, leaving a dusky blue sky dropping into a crumpled sea the same color. A hundred young, chocolatey Heermann’s gulls chattered and dropped into the ocean behind me, accompanied by a half-dozen pelicans, their freshly molted white necks shining and crisp. I was paddling back outside when they all rose at once and headed offshore. They skittered low over the plumb-colored water, past me and into the smudged horizon, their wings shooting off at all angles into the evening sky.

I ducked a set wave and so did a western grebe. We came up together, and a fish drooped out of its beak.

26 October 2007 – Threemile – knee to chest and fickle

Oily pink water and a loon in the sunset. No waves to speak of, and the few humped peaks lurched steadily away from me.

After the sun went down, a low line came on like the fold in a paper airplane. The tide was low. I pulled into a section that’s as concave as Threemile gets. The bottom was a boil; it gurgled and I felt the corrugations as I shot over. Against the slick green rocks inside, yellow starfish held their ground.

20 October 2007 – Indicators – chest to head high; going off at Middle Peak

It was the first large northwest swell of the winter and for a while it was fine just to sit and watch all the fantastic Santa Cruz surfers, the stylish old guys swooping on longboards and the ripper shortboard kids.

The arms race was in full effect and I had dusted off the 10′0″ lollipop to try and get even with the crowd. That was foolish. There were some 300 people out between the Slot and Cowells, and no one was making room for anyone else. To get waves on a day like that you just have to barge your way in, and I wasn’t feeling up to it. So I ate leftovers.

19 October 2007 – Pleasure Point – waist high

and c-r-o-w-d-e-d. Everyone out on longboards and me on the trombone, trying to be polite, and not getting anything. One skinny guy on a big red noserider kept unselfconsciously paddling up to the front and grabbing set waves. Like the rest of us weren’t really there to surf. I growled. At least when I’m on my noserider I try to make sure I let a few sets go for those less fortunate.

13 October 2007 – Moss Landing – chest high

Miraculously, the wind held off even though I slept in. At the gas station north of Moss Landing the flags all pointed offshore, and I could look across Elkhorn Slough and already see that peaks were everywhere. There were maybe 10 surfers and as many surf kayakers out, but still plenty of places to be alone.

A Bonaparte’s gull stood on pink legs at the high water mark. The black smudge behind his ear said “Welcome to fall.”

11 October 2007 – Threemile – chest high

Gray clouds scudded across the sky and over the brussels sprouts fields. The wind that brought them came all the way down to water level, and we bounced in the chop on the unforgiving soft shoulders just outside the lineup. The takeoff zones were clogged with young rippers newly back at the university. I got one on the trombone; it dutifully trundled most of the way inside, and that was about it. Of course I went back out, though, and sat in the dark through the lull that seems to always set in at sunset, no matter the conditions. As it got darker, three remaining kids passed the time by making unsavory comparisons about girls they knew.

6 October 2007 – County Line – waist high

Weak and inconsistent. About the best thing to be said is that the sunset was pretty.

My wetsuit is, unaccountably, too big for me. Fifty-five degree water has little trouble sloshing in through the neck while I paddle out. When I sit up I get the exhilarating, peppermint-patty-like sensation of that coldwater sweeping down my torso and pooling around my navel. Not really one of the major selling points you look for in a wetsuit. It’s unaccountable because this suit is the same size and model as my first one and as far as I can tell I’ve only gotten bigger since then.

5 October 2007 – County Line – chest to shoulder

On the way up Highway 1 the sun was bursting downward through an opulent pile of golden clouds, like some Renaissance painting. People were stopped in every pullout, cameras raised, gawking.

I got to county line and the onshores were still going strong, but the cliff comes right down to the beach here. The wind bounces off the cliff and funnels along the curving coastline to a less-damaging sideshore angle. It was cold.

The waves were inconsistent and chopped up, but I stayed out until long after the sun had dropped under the horizon. The problem with looking out to sea, westward, is that the horizon is a lot brighter than the view to the east. When you whip around for a wave, you suddenly realize you can’t see a thing. I paddled for my last wave on faith, stood up over a smooth inky carpet, and was surprised to find myself suddenly taking the drop. Behind me, the wave broke and turned white.

3 October 2007 – County Line – chest to shoulder

Set my clock for the dawn patrol and was surprised to find it still pitch-dark at 6:20 a.m. The waning half-moon was still high in the sky and the streets were as still as the inside of a book. I was halfway down the street when I realized my alarm clock was still on East Coast time.

Three hours later I hit replay. This time the dawn was already well along. There was a pearly fogbank offshore rubbed with rose and lavender at the top edge before the sky went white again.

The waves at county line stirred the bull kelp, tugging the little shrunken-heads toward shore. They’re on short leashes and they go under as a swell passes. A few seconds later they pop to the surface unnannouced, with what I could swear is a fiendish grin.

The shoulders were mushy and the sets, when they came, were mostly breaking outside me. My arms reminded me I haven’t been surfing enough.

1 October 2007 – County Line – chest high

The light was dying but so were the 20-mph winds that had the kite surfers out in force just 45 minutes earlier. I jumped in the water just as the bottom edge of the sun touched the horizon. For the next 15 minutes I watched it set and rise over and over as waves passed underneath me.

After a month out of the water, anything would have been great. The water was cold and salty and the wind made my ears ache. The Flying 8-ball went cleanly into each duck dive and pulled me out through back of the wave each time, the green water sheeting over my head.

Pretty soon a long, 11-second-period wall rose before me. I paddled into position and shot out to the right, linking up a few peeling sections before it mushed. I reached for my board amid a hundred bobbing kelp heads. Just outside was a young western grebe, its head and neck all grimy from the molt. It was like he’d been on the road a long time, and was just getting back in to wash off.

2 September 2007 – Waddell Beach – very inconsistent south and really nothing else

Just way too many guys out for the 2-wave sets spread 25 minutes apart. But what do you expect? It’s Labor Day weekend. I paddled around for a while with salt water in my mouth. I may have caught a wave or two, if I remember correctly. Then I went to watch the Brutesquad play frisbee.

1 September 2007 – Pleasure Point – waist high, inconsistent

Except for up at First Point and Sewers where the really talented kids hang out, where it was head high on the sets. And I do mean kids – your average 14 year old on the East Side fully rips.

A young Hawaiian guy with stringy long hair paddled out in trunks on an 8-foot soft top. The soft top is the mark of the beginner – so much so that it’s occasionally ridden as a show of style by excellent surfers. Same with wearing trunks in NorCal – even at Pleasure Point in summer. This guy was hiding a shorty wetsuit under his trunks, but he was still clearly in the second category.

I saw him weave through the crowd for a wave, looking back over his shoulder to line up. He was paddling away from the peak – usually a poor move left to uncertain surfers (such as myself) who prefer to hop shoulders. An especially bad idea in a crowd, where position under the curl is key.

So what was this guy up to? Just as the wave broke I remembered the shape of the reef underneath – a flat wall with a notch cutting shoreward just … about … there. Three guys stood up into a closeout. And Stringy stood up right where the wave started to peel.

Later I saw him leaving. He caught a three-inch wave to the beach and rode it onto the sand, both feet forward like he was standing at parade rest. Once aground he stood there a bit longer, feeling it rock.

28 August 2007 – Waddell Beach – waist to neck, glassy

Not quite enough push on most of the waves. But pretty: slick water sat under the fog like rained-on streets. A tiny hint of an offshore breeze blew on my neck as I suited up.

Another day surfing small waves in shallow water and just trying not to draw too much water on the wipeouts. One left opened up into a trundling shoulder and I went with it.

Pacific loons in place of murres today. I was in the water until 8, at my desk by 8:50. Where I heard the news of a shark dragging a surfer under at Marina. My sympathies to the injured (looks like he will recover).

26 August 2007 – Marina – waist to chest, mushy, windblown

High tide on a sloping beach. The water ran up the beach and sloshed back out to sea. The wind lulled on the paddle-out and little wavelets came from all directions. Under broken gray skies the water reflected white, rain-gray, and blue. It was like paddling around in the bulb of a thermometer.

Most waves peaked up outside, toppled, and then backed off again to reform with a smack on the sand. You catch one, try to milk it to the inside, and then be careful what you wished for.

Coming back in I picked up my board in shin-deep water but couldn’t make it up the beach against the draining wave. The next shorebreak wave saw to that: head over heels, then flat on my back, board in hand, skidding up the beach.

Three dolphins next to me in the lineup. Time for a new descriptive term: pretty crappy. As in crappy, but also pretty.

25 August 2007 – Moss Landing (the side where they don’t slash your tires) – waist high at best

Light winds, an aluminum blue sea surface, and the sun setting into a far-off fogbank. It was my first evening glass-off of the season. Short rides on small waves with the trombonezer, riding almost up onto the beach before stepping off into calf-deep water. Coarse sand wedged itself into the gap between my wetsuit and my booties.

Three seals and a sea lion pup kept looking at me curiously. When I looked back at them, they usually flinched and dove. But they never left, and the sea lion was still looking at me as I walked back down the beach to the car.

To the east, seven-eighths of a moon shone low over the yellow dunes. It could still see the sun, when none of the rest of us could.

23 August 2007 – Waddell Beach – waist to very occasional head high, choppy, peaky, crossed-up, high-tide, mushy, gray-sky, early morning, frigid windswell

But like the guy next to me said, “These are the biggest waves I’ve seen in two months!” He was a shortish, burly guy with a head full of frizzy hair. He was a good surfer and slipped easily into waves, early, to head down the line and make precise snaps at the lip, which I glimpsed from the back side in between struggling to get my own.

One opened a nice backside wall for me. It was on one of the rare sets and some boisterous guys from Oregon yawped appreciation from 50 yards away. Two seconds later it was over.

A light, mostly onshore breeze occasionally eddied around to offshore, etching pretty scallops on the wave faces. The rest of the time it was gray and lumpy, but no one complained. There were six guys in the water before 7 a.m.

In amongst us, a couple of molting common murres twittered their wings and dove.

28 July 2007 – Waddell Beach – knee to chest high windswell

The sky and the water were the same color and texture. Fog smudged out the horizon and slow lumps of windswell warbled in to shore. A single file of 40 pelicans came drifting southward against the tan cliffs and dark reef rock of County Line. It was 8:30 and already 10 surfers were out in the cold water, waiting for a few promised south sets that never arrived.

After an hour a wisp of breeze began to ruffle the water. It built, slowly, until it was a moderate onshore that disguised all but the most significant windswell lines. Just outside of the breakers was a nonbreeding plumage marbled murrelet. It bobbed in the water like a dutch clog.

A debate rages in certain forested western states about whether they’re really endangered (for the record, they are on the list) – there are more than a million in Canada and Alaska. But in the Santa Cruz mountains there’s no question. The numbers are around 500 at best, and no one gives them much longer than 40 more years. This one was unconcerned. Pointed its stubby beak at the sky, spread its skinny wings, and dove.

15 July 2007 – Indicators – completely flat

This was a fitness paddle on the 10′0″ lollipop – from Indicators over to the harbormouth and back. It started out nicely but soon wound up taking what little windchop there was abeam, which makes you waddle like a tortoise in a sandpit.

On the way back across I paddled under the wharf, way out near the end, which is where the sea lions hang out. It was reasonably low tide and there was a sea lion on a crossbar about 8 feet above my head. I startled it and it dropped into the water right in front of me. The splash woke up the sea lion on the next crossbar. He started barking and for a moment I thought I was about to be attacked by sleepy, grumpy sea lions.

Out the other side of the wharf without incident. A tourist yelled down from above, “Hey are you going surfing out there?” Much cackling. “Seen any sharks yet?”

4 July 2007 – 38th Ave. – neck high, clean south

I locked eyes with a gray-bearded surfer on a shortboard, just as I went backwards over the falls. On our race to the shoulder he pivoted and scraped for the wave. He would have had it, but I was in his way. Unforgivable.

The lip pushed me delicately into midair and gravity did the rest. The guy scowled. The trombone came down on top of me, followed by a smallish chunk of the Pacific.

Thirty minutes later I wound up next to the guy again. I apologized. “Don’t worry about it.” He even smiled. “Anyway, you took a beating for it.”

A set reeled in. He was too deep, and he waved me into it.

I love the way this board surfs, but I had spent the last couple of days trying to get its style – flat rocker, five funny fins, business pintail – to rub off on me. On this wave we gelled, slotted into the high line, fluttered through the sections.

Fireworks were everywhere. Locals were emptying their bottle rocket caches from the clifftops. Yachts were lighting up the bay with contraband rockets. Down 36th Ave., twelve-year-olds were lighting roman candles and jumping through the fountain.

Way above, the blue sky was cavernous, and the sparks had stuck there.

3 July 2007 – 38th Ave. – chest high, clean south

It was ridiculous even while it was happening, but I stayed in the water until 10 p.m. The swell was still strong, though dying on the high tide. The crowd was skewering my chances at waves, so I just stuck it out. At 9:00 or 9:15 there were still a good 50 people sitting in the gloom.

But it was really glassy. The trombone would notch into a wave and then shoot around and down the line and it was like going over a hill on a country road: gliding, floating, no sensation of going over a surface at all. So I stayed out.

As the darkness gathered, the tide rose and the swell floated up off the reef, flattening out. Pretty soon, it was hard to tell how big or even how close a wave was. The dark band of kelp offshore was the only thing that separated horizon from water, and it constantly looked like a big wave coming. The real waves were closer, and invisible. It was hard to time duck dives, with the foamball moving a lot faster than it seemed.

Fireworks were going off to the east and to the west – not the occasional bottle rocket but streams of red, green, and silver dandelions coming one after the other. A sea otter was eating crab three feet away. From out over the kelp came strange, skittering seabird calls.
2 July 2007 – 38th Ave. – chest high, clean south swell

But man was it crowded. Everybody knew this swell was coming and so I paddled the trombone on out through longboarders and shortboarders and softtoppers and hybrid-riders sticking up out of the water like untrimmed weeds.

A young western gull was standing on a dead seal trapped in the kelp about 200 meters outside of the break. There wasn’t much else happening, so I paddled over and had a look. It was – who knows? – maybe a week dead, its body bloated until the pressure had squeezed out the last of its intestinal contents.

His head was intact. A bit worse for wear, but teeth still firmly clenched. So probably not killed by a shark – but certainly investigated afterwards. A wide oval of teeth marks dug through the blubber on one flank, about the size of a football in outline. Actually, it was hard to imagine a shark being dainty enough to make such a light impression. There was no gouge, no missing bite. The shark had just swum up, sunk its teeth in until, presumably, the mouthful started to taste dead, and then let go.

The poor seal was going nowhere, firmly entrenched in a band of kelp 50 meters thick. His hide was covered with seabird poop of at least two different varieties. The western gull hung around until I was within two paddle strokes. It was taking him all day to get a meal out of the carcass. Even a western gull’s massive beak doesn’t seem enough to get through sealskin, and he was having to pick at the meat through individual holes the shark teeth had made.

I paddled back as the sunset was turning the water pink. Not long after, a tummy high set wave wrapped in at me and caught everyone inside.

23 June 2007 – Pomponio – chest high and all over the place

Trying to make the most of some marginal windswell brought me, Seth, Brian, and Jacob up to Pomponio, past the 25 knot winds at Waddell, round the beautiful offshores at rocky Pigeon Point, and into the (semi-) glassy bubble of Pescadero-Pomponio. The surf was doing the triple-level thing with two sandbars crunching close in to shore and some large mushy sliders far outside.

The longshore current was absolutely ripping south. After two waves I became involved in a 30-minute battle to not get swept down to Davenport. The trombonezer had eased nicely into the sloping waves but now refused to dive under the whitewater. A couple of inconvenient outside waves bashed me back into the heart of the current. Knowing I was beat, I caught a dribbler and bellied on in. Above, the 100-foot cliffs were a mustardy mudstone, still gleaming from the high-tide spray.

18 June 2007 – 38th Ave – waist high and inconsistent

A classically fickle summer swell at Pleasure Point. But the sky was gray and the water glassy and relatively warm. I got a nice one on the trombonezer early on – another one of those zen approaches where something tells you to paddle … just … over here. And almost immediately something peaks up out of the kelp and heads right for you. Took that one all the way into the beach, each section shaping up out of the shoulder just in time. The plank-like board bites into the wave, solid like a longboard, but the pintail lets you sweep around. It carries speed smoothly through the turns and at speed the five fins hum like the rudders on a catamaran.

Late in the day I was in a pack at Second Point. A longboarder who scored a nice wave 10 minutes before saw the next one coming at us, and let it go, bless him. I was right on the peak and looking at the face start to ripple down the line as it steepened. Spray blew off the lip as the board sank into a bottom turn, swooped up to the lip and back to the water in one curve, fins barking.

11 June 2007 – Middle Peak – chin to lower nose high, sunny, hot

A rare northwest bump was pushing small, mushy, but serviceable A-frames at the peak. It was midafternoon and I took the trombonezer out amid a dozen or so longboarders. The trombonezer is the interim name for Giles’s 7′8″ bonzer, so named because bonzers have no business being that long, so this is kind of a mutant bonzer that’s been suddenly stretched a foot or two, and the remaining foam that might have gone into a longboard has been compressed into a thick, straight, flat, hell-paddler of a surfboard.

A tanned local with a tufted soul patch paddled up on a longboard – clearly a shortboard ripper in winter and a little sheepish to be longboarding it at the Lane – commented on the lucky swell. Pointed at the Slot with his chin, where the south swells break in summer, said this was nice for a change.

I bobbed in the water next to my board to cool off. Acres of kelp were at the surface, and the brown emphasized the texture in the water, the long, wobbly swells shifting through. On a hunch, I paddled outside of the pack. A lone wave, not even a set, marched over and peaked up right behind me. The trombonezer hit warp speed and I was popped up, hooting at another longboarder inside me who was planning his drop-in. He pulled off, and I cut around at the shoulder, those five bonzer fins going woof-woof-woof as they snipped through the kelp.

9 June 2007 – Davenport Landing – shin high with 35 knot onshores

The header kind of speaks for itself. Out with Mea, Margaret and Linda, just getting back in the water after a month off. I always love how the saltwater tastes after a long time away. What swell there was was wrapping around the cluttered rocks to the north. The howling sideshores up there were ripping fringes of water off the peaks and into the slanting evening sun. I paddled over to the reef at the south. A couple of pro French windsurfers were launching off the peaks. I scurried into one on the trombonezer and scooted along in front of it, kind of like sliding over the kitchen in your socks. Picking up and heading back for the parking lot, the wind almost ripped the board out of my hands.

6 May 2007 – Threemile – waist to chest high and wobbly

Catching the end of a morning minus tide. The reef here is chunky and full of holes. Outside, strange boils surface as sets push deep water through the spaces. At the point, I catch something with no shoulder but find it catching up to a reform wave coming in from the right. I scoot across the flat, push down and into the reform, and I’m on another wave. Weird.

Everywhere else, it’s spring. The pigeon guillemots are back from the open sea, twittering at each other and shaking their beaks. They circle the cliffs looking for crevices they can crawl into and raise chicks. You can see their red legs a hundred feet away, like wellies.

5 May 2007 – 38th Avenue – almost flat except for every 40 minutes or so

Happens every south swell: a nice-sized set comes through as you’re walking down the stairs, so you paddle out and sit optimistically far from shore. After 15 minutes of tweeners creeping through to break far inshore, you creep back with them. Maybe you catch a shin-slapper or two. Or maybe you just slide off the back of some insignificant pulse you should feel ashamed of even paddling for. Then it happens.

The set of the day rolls in. Chest to shoulder, way outside. You and all your groveling compatriots spin around but you’re helplessly inside.

The set is long, and each wave breaks larger and farther out. Only one guy is spared. He looks around, finds himself miraculously outside, and eases into a long wall that obscures the horizon. It’s fringing in the offshores, razor sharp, spray blowing up and backwards in the wind and the evening sun.

He eases to his feet, stands gingerly, then relaxes. Accelerates. I missed the rest, because I was duck diving.

28 April 2007 – Slot/Middle Peak – waist to head high

Another hot afternoon grabbing leftovers. A crow in a Monterey cypress took flight with an entire bagel in its beak. I could see the sky through the hole in it.

Later, on my way back out of the water, the last waves of the set shoved my leash loop through a crack between two pieces of rip-rap. I climbed back down among the mussels and the barnacles to yank it loose. The arrow-headed barnacles are made of overlapping, bone-gray plates. They look like fossilized artichokes or an undiscovered kind of armor.

Another wave broke and from each apex, each barnacle darted out a fringed net, full and brown as eyelashes.

27 April 2007 – Slot/Middle Peak – waist to shoulder high

The waves were small and swarming with people who had quit work early. The sun was baking, and the water was cold, and green, and salty. Kelp fronds trailed through the water like pennants.

26 April 2007 – Indicators – head high

Standing on the cliff edge, it was evident I had come in one set early. Wave after wave peeled down line, walling up into the curl and churning. Ten waves, 15 waves, each with a surfer slotted, whacking at the lip or just finding the trim line. I got back in.

This never happens, but less than 15 minutes later another one of those waves homed in on my position. A shortboarder was inside of me and I let him go. What’s this behind it? An even bigger wall, miraculously sectioning, wiping out two scrabbling longboarders like an elbow coming down on a dinnertable.

Three minutes later I was on the stairs again. Chuckling this time.

25 April 2007 – Indicators – head high to 2 feet overhead

Graced by a solid late-season swell, the town hit the low tide in force, midweek midafternoon be damned. I was inside, on the flying 8-ball, trying to stay on the reform peak as big Middle Peak waves crumpled outside.

Inevitably, someone in the Middle Peak pack would scrape into the foamball and come flying out on their belly, struggling to their feet to milk the wave until it reformed – right where I was trying to catch it. Priority is what it is, and so they got to ride. That’s the annoying thing about traffic control at the Lane. Shaky guys on big longboards push their way to the top and clog up the waves, over and over again. I know, because I’ve been one of them.

After hours fighting a longshore current that reduced my arms to hypothetical mental constructs, I coasted into something small and mushy that nonetheless lined up all the way around the corner and into Cowells. The 8-ball made the most of any steepness it was offered.

Despite the rising tide, Cowells was still lined up all the way across to the pier. From the cliff I saw an old guy, white hair shining, slotted in the curl of a belly-high green wave. Screaming.

22 April 2007 – Scott Creek reef – 4-6 feet

Wave count zero at the reef. I paddled over to the beachbreak, caught three dribblers and called it a day. It was like the waves were moving underwater. The ocean surface sat there, motionless, as each wave bulged up over the reef and then folded onto it. At the shoulder, the water was essentially not moving.

The worst part was the certain knowledge that if anyone else had been out there, they would have shown me how it was done. Happens every time. The number of kickass surfers in Santa Cruz is bewildering.

20 April 2007 – Scott Creek beachbreak – 4-5 feet, glassy but uncooperative

Rain moved in from the south last night, momentarily flummoxing the spring winds. The ocean was lightly ruffled north of town, and went completely glassy around noon. Inconsistent sets heaved out of the dimpled water while mystery currents pushed me in strange and unproductive directions.

From behind one of these sets, in the quiet, came a sound like a pressure washer at a car wash. Twenty yards away a slick patch of water twirled, and then a gray whale surfaced, back arching, knobbly head sliding under, white spout spouting. I paddled closer, and it trundled on.

An outside set cleaned me up, three big waves on the head. The sun came out, and I pulled myself back together and started back outside. The water was mood-ring green. Bubbles the size of softballs churned in the creases of the turbulence as it sorted itself out. Elsewhere, they tailed off down to soda-pop fizz. In the quiet after a clean-up set, ears still ringing, that sound of bubbles comes from everywhere all at once.

The first of the by-the-wind sailors are here. Little blue jellies the size of credit cards, rectangular, like little scrubby brushes with one stiff ridge to catch the wind. Every spring, the constant winds push them ashore in hordes, where they litter the high tide line, sometimes ankle deep.

18 April 2007 – Indicators – shoulder high and clean

Magical evening offshores at the Lane sculpted thick lines at least halfway through Indicators. The 8′0″ butterknife accelerated smoothly at the peaks and then fluttered down the long walls. The sky was a cloudless, distant, steely blue with orange glowing up through the cliff and lighthouse, where the sun was setting.

A flurry of white skipped across the water way out toward the pier, like panicked baitfish. It was a flock of sanderlings skimming low. They banked one way, brown backs against blue water, and vanished. Then they corrected, white bellies caught the light, and were there again.

16 April 2007 – Middle Peak – waist to shoulder high

Waist-high at Middle Peak is kind of a logical impossibility. Let’s just say it was too small to be breaking at Indicators.

A string of seventeen cormorants came past, wings swishing. Two seconds go by. Then here comes number eighteen.

High above everybody else, the first merganser in a while. Flapping like hell.

15 April 2007 – Indicators – chest high where I was sitting

Sets to about 9 feet outside, where a contest was going on all day. Surfer commentary over the P.A. (”nice little cutty slash there”), with occasional strains of Tom Petty, Bob Marley, or unidentified Chicago blues drifting out over the water. I guess it makes the spectating more fun, but it’s just not right in the water. Still, a cloudless day, bright blue water, otters with the uncanny knack of lying serenely on their backs at the exact spot where the shoulder stops breaking.

A hundred Bonaparte’s gulls came gamboling past, light on their wings, black hoods marking them as not your everyday gull. They’re the smallest gulls around, and they fluttered into the wind almost like terns, looking down, white wing-triangles flashing. They pushed around the point in a long string and disappeared, but I think they made a loop, because I saw them in the same spot, headed the same way, a half-hour later.

14 April 2007 – Indicators – chest to head high through the inside

Putting sunscreen on in the last of the rain. Stacked gray clouds bundled over town, but a fierce northwest wind shoved some blue sky underneath them. Boats in the bay turned downwind and set their spinnakers.

One wave lined up in the breeze and sped me over the sand-filled reef. I could have gone in then, but I didn’t, and nothing that good came my way again. Eventually a couple of confident girls in shorty wetsuits on pink longboards paddled out and started taking everything in sight.

The clouds turned white and bent forward on their way inland. Suddenly, I was in a crowd of cormorants, maybe 300 of them, with western gulls snapping above their heads and calling out jealously. The water was wriggling with oily green necks, brown kelp ropes, and the wingslaps of cormorants taking off and gulls hovering. I never did see what they were eating.

13 April 2007 – Indicators – chest to head high, mostly mushy

A big south swell was lighting up the point, but southern angles don’t do much for Indicators. I was on the flying 8-ball, a 7′2″ swallowtail that simply refuses to answer to any other name. I set up inside a flock of longboarders and every 30 minutes or so a nice peak wobbled over in my direction and firmed up right over my head.

A longboarder was breaking virtually every rule in the book. The most dangerous of these was “Don’t try to teach your girlfriend how to surf.” If you break that one, you should at least try to stick to “Only give one tip per day.” His was a running commentary: “paddle-paddle-paddle, aw you shoulda gone for that one, watch out don’t turn your back you could get wiped out, hold your rail to steady yourself, start going for some of these, practice some standups while you’re waiting.”

He was tanned and barrel chested, mid-30s, short haired, bull nosed, your classic career surfer/carpenter, apparently. But the way he shouted across the still water seemed out of character. He quickly goofed a couple of waves, cursing before he hit the water. I was inside of him on one and saw him scramble to his feet, way ahead of his balance. (Remember Mallory Knox: “Next time don’t be so f#@&ng eager!”)

The bad advice continued: “If a big wave is breaking in front of you, just dive off your board and get away from it.” “If you see a wave you want, just start paddling for it.” I filed this one away as a warning, and sure enough as the next peak approached I saw him lining up, head down, huffing to the shoulder. I happened to be right under the peak and the good ol’ flying 8 coasted in, instantly on rail and arcing. Mr. Advice was oblivious, still going straight. Bonk! went his giant eggo waffle of a board against mine.

I tried to yank him off his board as I went down, but unfortunately that seemed to be just what he needed to regain his balance. It was his wave of the day, and I didn’t see him again for 20 minutes, sneaking back up the lineup and hoping not to be noticed. Then there he was, dropping in on one knee, front leg extended like a runner doing stretches, veering…directly…for me.

In between kelp patches, a sea lion surfaced. She was small, sleek, silvery brown. I could barely hear her exhale.

10 April 2007 – Indicators – head high, much larger up at Middle Peak

On my way through the tidepools, I rested my hand on some wet sand that had collected in the nook of a boulder, only to feel it recoil, shiver and spray me with tiny jets of seawater. It was a forest of tiny anemones – probably all clones – each one holding aloft a grain of sand or a shell chip, hiding out from the dry air.

Outside, Steamer Lane was living up to its reputation as one of the classic California point breaks, and the midday, midweek crowd was thin enough for me to scrape into a few long, chugging, lined-up waves. Between sets, offshore breezes spread seafoam across the whole lineup till it was one big capuccino with otters in it.

I found a spot just off the statue and three or four waves in a row homed in on me. Waves at the Lane are like those impossible scenes from Big Wednesday or Point Break – big, sloping faces that steepen and relax on cue, just begging you to go top to bottom, or slot into the highline and put the accelerator down. Everybody needs a day like that every now and then. On the cliff above, a white utility truck slowed down. Somebody yelled out the window “Hey! I just wanted to let you know I’m not coming back in to work today.”

8 April 2007 – 38th Ave.- waist-chest high wind/south swell mix

With spring winds blenderizing the waves along most of the coast, the south-facing Santa Cruz shoreline was working its magic. All the breaks in town were calm, the kelp forests dampening most of the windchop and leaving long, clean lumbering faces rolling in free over the mudstone.

The crowd was manageable and mostly good-natured. I was on the 8′0″ butterknife, which put me at a distinct paddling disadvantage but allowed me to adopt an ever so slightly smug sense of superiority over the longboard-toting majority. (This quickly evaporated when I strayed over to the shortboarder peak and watched guys coast effortlessly into waves on boards a full two feet shorter than mine. So much for smugness.)

It’s mushy at 38th, but I got a few with enough shoulder to work in a sweet sweeping cutback or two. Paddling back out, rendered senselessly happy by the sunlight and the idyllic marine fauna, I had to admit it’s not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon. A sea otter ripped the legs off a crab and sank his teeth through its shell – make that partially idyllic. Another set walled up outside and the longboarders wheeled around into position, like little compass needles.

3 April 2007 – Waddell Beach – south swell still dragging in like a fourth grader without his homework

Three days ago it was western grebes; yesterday red-breasted mergansers and an oily-green Brandt’s cormorant with long white whiskery plumes coming off its cheeks. Today it was surf scoters, two dozen of them, the orange-beaked males flying in, white nape patches gleaming like the bald strip on a clown’s wig.

On the side of the road, a raven stood on a sofa cushion, stabbing with its beak and pulling out fluff. Perhaps it was going after a cozy nest lining, but I know it was secretly hoping for french fries.

1 April 2007 – Waddell Beach – 2′ with very lazy 4′ south swell dragging in

Waves really not worth mentioning, especially once the northwest winds picked up. But with me in the mess, dodging whitecaps, were about a dozen western grebes poking their crisp black-and-white necks around the peaks. About eighty whimbrels flew up the coast, about 100 yards offshore, in big untidy S-bends as if they couldn’t decide between the beach and the open sea. Cinnamon patches in their primaries caught the morning light. Eight miles south, a bobcat prowled the edge of a strawberry farm.

25 March 2007 – Pomponio – three feet and mixed upDriving up on a Sunday to do some work in the megalopolis, I drove straight past Waddell beach (above) where the wind was howling out of the northwest and the kiteboarders were everywhere. As happens from time to time, the wind magically died north of Pigeon Point lighthouse. At Pomponio beach the picnickers were throwing sandwich ends and leftover tortilla chips into the trash cans, and the ravens were pulling them right back out again.

The wind was onshore but light enough that it didn’t matter. Waves were small, mixed up – wind chop coming from several directions at once. On the outer sandbars the bigger swells rolled but didn’t really break until they reformed on the inner bar. There it was all waist-high lips crashing down at once, finishing in a sandy green turmoil without ever developing much of a face.

I paddled around for ages, perpetually out of reach of the outer waves. A hidden current was slipping sideways off the shoal, so whenever I stopped paddling (a month in Germany, c’mon) I found myself courteously escorted alongshore, the wrong way, halfway back to the shorebreak.

After 40 minutes of alternately enjoying the sunset and losing my temper, I caught sight of two pitiful peaks simultaneously wobbling toward me. By the time they reached me they had merged into an actual A-frame and I was somehow in exactly the right spot. What followed was roughly seven seconds of retribution: the trusty Flying 8-Ball knew just what to do, dipping under the peak, cutting back to zip along the small face back to shore. That was it, but then it doesn’t take much. I walked back to the parking lot feeling just like one of the ravens.