Lots Of Sandbars in Play

The recent days of waves, storms and rains have moved an astonishing tonnage of sand along the shore. Seawalls that were showing six feet of open face wall are in some places, packed with sand to their top. Concrete and steel stairways are buried at their beachside terminus in three or four feet of sand, with the handrails no longer even showing. Conversely, erosion at one walled community has revealed 15 feet of rip-rap that has been entombed in sand for at least three years. But the payoff for we surfers is a myriad of new sand bars peppering the beach for miles down the coast, starting at the end of the bight. Eureka...we have found it!

Pick your bar, any bar. I surfed an area that has literally been fallow for three years. Only the desperate were riders there in the past, with endless closeouts and lack of shape that would make a muu-muu look like high fashion. Word is getting out. It started Sunday with only a handful of surfers on it. Today the chosen peaks were littered with surfboards, eight, nine, ten guys surfing this peak or that.

I bypassed the crowd in favor of a smaller, orphaned peak (which I nicknamed the California Bar) that nobody wanted. My nearly two hour surf yielded as many rides as the somewhat inconsistent surf would allow. Sea surface conditions weren't the best, because when you get open stretches of beach with open ocean exposure, you can get rougher sea surfaces. Especially since with new sand bars you get channels. My spot was no exception with a channel and rip in attendance the whole time.



But the best waves were putting up myriad little bowl sections with a big cutback and foam ride into the reform and speedy hollow beach break that put up some long, long rides. I was on my 5-11 mini-Simmons which was the perfect board to ride today. This board is meant for waves like this that vacillate from steep and fast to sluggish and boggy. But the board accelerates through the fast sections and floats through the boggy foamy lines, no problem. In short....I had a blast.

Some pics from yesterday and some from today.

January 28, 2010

In: 1045
Out: 1230
AT= 54-56F
WT= 55.8F
Wx: Mostly sunny with some high thin hazy clouds
Tide: 4.27' Falling to 1.29'
Wind: Variable and light
Sea Surface: Some surface chop and adverse rip currents

5-11 Freeline Mini-Simmons
Bathymetry: Sand bars
Deep Water Swell CDIP Archive
Wave Hts. (Faces): 2-3 ft. with some 4 ft. set waves