Current (Bolinas)

I want to like Bolinas. It offers a left, goofy-foot nirvana in the NorCal land of rights. And the scenery is pretty, I'm sure beautiful if the clouds would lift.

Bolinas Lagoon

But I can't. As far as satisfying surf session go, Bolinas is 0-3 for me. It must be good sometimes, but I've never caught it on one of those days. And if I'm going to spend 3+ hours roundtrip driving to a spot that I'll share with shark food (there were two seals in the lineup this morning), it has to be worth it.

Current rushing seaward

Although Emily's a regular foot, she's from the East Coast and used to surfing backside, and Bolinas is one of her favorite spots. She enticed me north with the promise of long lefts and we met up at Coast Cafe before parking at the end of the road, noting that the current was rushing fast out of Bolinas Lagoon. We paddled out at the groin, and kept paddling. All. The. Time. After the current reached the ocean it turned sideshore, pushing away from the peak. If we stopped paddling, we quickly drifted too far onto the shoulder to have a prayer of catching anything, although Emily stood a better chance on her longboard. So we had to keep paddling. And I don't mean sit on the board and hand-paddle, I mean prone paddling at a slow and steady pace so as not to lose ground. If I wanted to get anywhere, say to the peak where I needed to be to catch the mushy waist- to chest-high waves, I had to paddle faster.

Finally I made it close enough to an inside peak to get a nice ride, pumping it through a flat section, after some roll-and-tumble while I was figuring out the wave. As Emily commented post-session and I'd already worked out through error and observation, it was necessary to take off pretty straight instead of angled, and then turn. The wave bent back on itself as it broke, kind of like a small and mushy Rachel's Point (which J-Bird said was awesome yesterday).

When Emily went in with noodle-arms, I was getting tired and frustrated, looking for my last wave. I made one last push toward the main peak and drew on reserves I didn't know I had to catch another decent left in. It sectioned and dumped me near shore yet not shallow enough to fight the current, which immediately started to push me out and down the beach, but I managed to jump onto whitewater from the next wave for an assist father in.

Colorful seawall graffiti

Clearly I need to work more on my conditioning and stamina, although I have asked a lot of myself this weekend. After yesterday's surf, Scott and I went on a long bike ride, and I'm not used to surfing two days in a row. At least I have over 4 months to get ready for Holly Beck's Suave Dulce surf retreat in Nicaragua. (Who knew just a week after writing this that Scott and I would have booked a week in January? So stoked!)

Surfline: A holding/slowly easing SSW groundswell continued to provide nice size southern hemi sets in the chest high to slightly overhead range at top south facing breaks on Sunday. Some small NW swell mix was in the background with 2-3'+ waves at exposures. Buoy 46012: (Wave) SWELL: 5.2 ft at 16.0 s SSW 71 / WIND WAVE: 0.7 ft at 4.0 s WNW / WVHT: 5.2 ft / APD: 9.3 s / MWD: 208° (Met) WSPD: 4 kts / GST: 6 kts / WVHT: 5.2 ft / DPD: 16.0 s / WDIR: 190° / ATMP: 55.6° F / WTMP: 56.8° F. Tide: 2.5' falling to 2' (not the right tide, obviously).

View from the Coast trail: Accessing this surf spot north of Bolinas requires a steep descent down a high cliff

Tri-County Surf Weekend (Bolinas)

Angie

Beth

If the original surf posse had held, I was going to title this post "Five Surfer Girls...and Luke." But Tracey brought her buddy Andrew, and Beth, Angie, Emily and I were also joined by Deepak and his friend Evan, so Luke wasn't the only guy. Then I thought I might go with "Bloody in Bolinas" after I bashed my lip on my board. A woman surfing right on the shoulder inexplicably turned into the whitewater I was trying to catch left, and I had to pull my board back hard to avoid being run over, with sadly predictable results. Although I was then bleeding slightly while surfing in notoriously sharky* waters, that title seemed overly dramatic for such a tiny lip wound. So I chose the one above, since I've surfed three counties in three days: Santa Cruz, San Mateo and now Marin.

Tracey

Luke on his new board

It's been a couple of years since I surfed Bolinas, which isn't that much farther than Santa Cruz in miles but takes much longer to get to. First there's the slow slog in surface street traffic through San Francisco, which has declined to let a freeway run through it like any normal city. And then there's the narrow and curvy but beautifully scenic trek down Highway 1, traversing the coast near the top of a ridge with the expanse of the Pacific Coast laid out a long way below. Our four-car caravan linked up in Mill Valley at the start of the winding highway, but alas, the magnificent view was mostly obscured by misting clouds and fog.

The light drizzle and overcast continued when we reached Bolinas but allowed us to park near the beach. Unfortunately, the waves were meh, not really worth the drive. The tide was high and I had trouble getting into the mushy waves; I needed to wait for the bigger ones, and then be right where they were breaking. I got a smattering of decent rides and a couple of good waves, one near the Groin with a nice fast drop, and another long one I worked through reforms into the beach on the east side of the lagoon channel. The current was rushing fast into the Bolinas Lagoon, and I very nearly got sucked in with it. In waist-deep water, it was hard to even walk perpendicular to get out of the strong pull. That inrushing current had me paddling extra strokes even far from the lagoon mouth until I figured it out. After 3 straight days of surfing, my paddling muscles are sore!

Deepak and Evan

It was fun surfing with friends even in so-so conditions, and the unscary mushy waves were good for the newbies in the group. Half of us decamped post-surf to the Coast Cafe, which actually has vegan soup, but I was way more than soup-hungry so went for another ALT sandwich. I was hoping for sunshine and a clear view of the coast on the drive back, but high fog shrouded Marin and obscured the top of the Golden Gate Bridge, not lifting to sunshine until I was nearly home, tired and happy.

*There was a shark sighting here the day before, I learned later, and my buddy Mike reported one a few months ago. Thankfully, Luke didn't mention that he'd been bumped by something in the water until we were out of it.

Surfline: 4-6 ft [not!], light and variable southwest winds with smooth seas. Small long period swell from the southwest. Buoy 46012: NW 6.2 ft @ 7.7 sec. 2 Mile Surf Shop: Coastal cloudiness and overcast conditions start the morning again, broken record, right? Temps are mild but the wind is lightly onshore causing some ocean texture. There is a still a bit of south swell pulse in the water sometimes mixing with the NW windswell. Sets at The Patch were knee high currently. The Channel still has the most surfers out and has waves in the 1-2'+ range and a little bigger.