When you have two solid swells coming from different directions and a light offshore grooming their progeny, amazing sessions tend to go down.
On top of this, groms and college students are back in school, so the crowd factor is diminished.
I was thinking about this the other day: How long has it been since we had a Japanese typhoon swell? I don't think it's happened since the inception of this blog. These are great because they arrive almost completely unfettered by the Channel Islands, though you need a massive storm to make up for the swell decay.
According to what I can remember from Mira Costa's Oceanography courses, for every day a swell is in the water, travelling to its final destination, it loses 20% of its energy. This means that if a Japan typhoon swell kicked up ten-foot swells, the swell would be at just over 3' with five days of travelling across the Pacific. If we got really lucky (and the Japanese suffered the opposite luck) and got storms producing 20' swell, we'd have a nice overhead day as a result. Not only that, but with that direct a swell angle (280-ish degrees), we wouldn't suffer from swell refraction at a lot of spots, burning off more swell energy.
One thing that's nice is when the swell is a certain size, the actual wave heights are bigger, as waves jack up when they feel bottom. The surf reports tend to account for this, the buoys do not.
With this in mind, it's easy to see just how fickle a beast good surf can be. Here's a list of things that have to be right for a GREAT session to happen:
- Swell Size: AFTER accounting for swell decay...
- Swell Direction: SSE Baja hurricane swells are exciting to see on swell maps, but they will bypass most of SoCal until the hurricane tracks west.
- Swell Period: If the waves are too close together, you'll be surfing disorganized waves, and likely, not for long.
- Tide
- Wind Direction
- Wind Speed: Offshores are great, but not so much at 15+ knots.
- Bathymetry: Sand bars have to be right; Reef has to be freed of sand.
- Light: It's difficult to have a truly magical sesh if you can't see. How many amazing sessions have been missed due to it being nighttime, when the winds are generally calm?
- Crowd
- Timing: It was SOOOO good for ten minutes, now the wind changed or the tide dropped, and you missed that 90-minute window! Conversely, this works for surf trips (the longer the swell window, the better)
- Spot Choice/ Local Knowledge: You surfed Turtles, which was ok, while Suckouts was going off on the low tide.
Honorable Mentions
- Camaraderie: While not necessary to have an incredible session, it amplifies the stoke levels if you and a surf bro are making memories together (that sounded gayer than I intended, apologies).
- Health: Though I've done it quite a few times, suffering through an injury or illness will reduce your stoke level and your longevity in the water.
- Level of Critters: Sea lice is BRUTAL! Sharks are fine so long as no one gets snapped.
- Scenery: Check out the 7.2.12 entry to get a glimpse
- Pollution: Oh, did it rain in the last 48-72 hours? You better hope the new sandbars and diminished crowd are worth the threat of an ear infection or worse...!
- Board Chemistry: Your board broke and you're forced to borrow your buddy's 6'5" six-channel pintail. This will give you blue balls immediately if the waves are pumping.
This day was slightly better than the last afternoon session I had as the tide was a bit lower. I had a pretty sick floater from which I jumped off the lip and landed at the tail end of the sloping section of the wave. I felt my nose go under quite a bit, but I managed to pull it out in time before I was sent seaward.
I had a solid hit on another left, and it turned into one of those I-didn't-plan-on-cutting-back-but-I-have-all-this-wave-behind-me-so-here-I-go moments. I'm sure it wasn't a seamless roundhouse, but I'll take it!
I was in danger of getting surfed out, so I decided to go in in the off chance tomorrow would have better waves.
No comments:
Post a Comment