Honey on the Water (Linda Mar)

After another hot streak, this morning dawned gray and dreary, along with my mood. But with a small windswell in the water, there was bound to be surf somewhere, and every surfer knows that surfing makes you feel good.

I checked the beach breaks in Half Moon Bay first, but the breeze was onshore and that's where the waves were breaking too. The Jetty was nearly a lake, but as always, there were some kooks out there trying to make a go of it. Montara was also onshore and choppy, with a dozen surfers looking a shoulder in the sectiony waves. I wasn't inspired to slog through the short-period shorepound for that, so I kept driving north. At Devil's Slide, the clouds were being sucked up the mountain and crossing the road at a forty-five degree angle to continue their ascent; I should have stopped to take a video.

Linda Mar was cleaner than the other spots, with the breeze side-shore, but already there was a mass of surfers in the water, including a glob of red-shirted surf schoolers. Boat Docks was mercifully empty, and surprisingly so; at most I shared it with four others. I took out 8'3" Magic instead of 5'8" Rocky because the waves were soft and I needed some good rides.

At first the others in the lineup were surfers, but then a couple of janitors joined us, and one of them was sweeping in from far outside, taking wave after wave. He reminded me in some way of an unshaven Robert Downey Jr, but I resented his priority on so many waves, and was thinking evil thoughts about SUPs. My mother used to quote me the adage, "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Leaving aside why you would want to catch flies, there is some truth to the idiom. After I tried to paddle out of "Robert's" path by heading for the breaking part of the wave he'd just caught, he inexplicably turned in the same direction, and when he returned to the lineup, I apologized for "getting in his way," citing my confusion on his course change. A few minutes later, I backed off another wave he'd taken, and then he told me to feel free to drop in on any of his waves, and he'd just go the other way. Hmm, honey does work, although I didn't have the chance to take him up on it. After about two hours in the water, I'd eaten my fill of cold longboard waves and soon exited on icy feet, in a much better mood than when I'd started.

Surfline: Soft, sectiony lines getting up to about chest high on the better sets. Weak surf on tap this morning as a mix of NW windswell and fading Southern Hemi swell provides knee-chest high waves. Most areas see semi-bumpy surface conditions thanks to light onshore wind. Buoy 46012: (Wave) SWELL: 4.6 ft at 8.3 s NW / WIND WAVE: 3.6 ft at 6.2 s NW / WVHT: 5.9 ft / APD: 6.0 s / MWD: 309°; (Met) WSPD: 14 kts / GST: 16 kts / WDIR: 310.0° / ATMP: 54.0° F / WTMP: 57.2° F.