Sunday, August 21, 2016

Surprising Size on Saturday in the Park

While most of the bodysurfing community congregates in Oceanside for the annual World Body Surfing Championships, I slipped in a session in the Park Saturday before leaving town for work on Sunday.  

The forecast was for 4 - 5 feet, cooler water, a rising tide, and mild onshore wind.  On my way down to San Clemente, having re-routed to Coast Highway at Dana Point due to construction on the Interstate, I was surprised to glimpse a couple of pretty large - well overhead - sets along Capistrano Beach.  Upon arrival at the Park, I was greeted by more of the same.  


The sand bars were pushing up peaks, with ride-able shoulders for many, while other sets were pretty closed out.  There was an unusual pattern to the sets.  Three or four waves, a bit larger than head-high would roll in, and then, quite often, there would be two substantially larger, waves on the outside, followed by a couple of head-high waves, and then a lull.  The pattern is evident in the next couple of photos.


That wave outside has to be a couple of feet overhead.

 

Of course, it wouldn't be Southern California without a bit of traffic:


It looked like it was working pretty well down at LG1, so Mark & I walked down there to swim out, figuring that the current would bring us back up through the Main Peak.  As it ended up, we spent the session down there, joined by octogenarian Neil Frank and one of the local lifeguards.  Had the stretch south of the lifeguard stand to ourselves for a 90 minute session.

The water was a cool 63 or 64, but comfortable in a rare summer use of a full wetsuit.  To start, as evidenced in the photos, conditions were clean, semi-glassy.  The first half hour was marred by lulls with occasional sets, but then, for about 30 minutes it really picked up and we were getting a lot of rides on head-high and larger waves.  


 Some were pretty fast and walled, but there were some great corners that slowly peeled into the deep inside.


Unfortunately, after that, the tide started swamping out the waves, so they just weren't breaking, moving closer and closer to shore and losing some of that height.  About the same time, the wind started coming up, at first ruffling the surface but pretty quickly creating a bump that further messed up the waves.  

So, it was a session of three parts.  Starting with three or four waves in the first 30 minutes, followed by a 30 minute session that, if extended, would have qualified as solidly "four star," and then a final 30 minutes of increasing slop.

What will linger in memory is the mid-session segment, with a few exhilarating slides on faces that were much larger than we had hoped for and expected.  I hope that's what the competitors are finding down south in Oceanside!

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