New Year's Day

Great start to the New Year, I wish the best to everyone and hope good things will come this year.

Avoiding the spill

A couple of my cousins from Texas were in town and called me to take them surfing. It was their first time and they did great.

Sorry about the poor shooting quality and length of the videos. I guess that is what you get with amateurs (me, not them). Make sure you check it out in HD.

My camera got water in it somehow during this session so I'll be sending it back to Kodak for a new one






They were comfortable in the water and on their boards, and had nothing but smiles when they would eat it.







Great day in Newport as usual, and thank you Poseidon for your grace.

Thursday - Fun and kinda windy

We went out on Thursday, just after noon, about four of us to the Newport Jetties, and although conditions weren't spectacular, the swell in the water was just right for the tide and allowed for a few nice two to three footers (maybe a four ft every now and then) to swirl in through the jetties. A building NW swell was mixing with a smaller Southern Hemi swell creating lefts and rights on the outside of the rocks. The wind was moderate, crumbling up the line a bit, but thanks to the midday non-crowd, all you had to do was wait for the right one. Decent sized masses of water would begin to fill on the horizon; as they began to play on the sandbars and swirl off the jetties, semi-walled peaks would form. Positioning yourself on a shoulder became child's play as the set waves would line up nicely and continue traveling to the shallows , allowing for a steep take off and a jet-ride down the line where the wave height would disappear and you could easily paddle the mini-channel back to the outside. As the water filled in a bit the lefts became predominate. On a few waves i would paddle in for the drop to find myself on a sort of pre-lip, popping up and driving the nose down the face of the wave would put me at the precipice of the true lip, creating a sort of late-takeoff scenario. Whenever the wave would act in such a way I felt i would be hurled over the falls, but due to board choice or possibly another facet of wave formation i do not fully understand, I would make the drop with ease, a little cover and again a nice left line gradually sloping towards the dwindling wave. I am no expert of bathymetry, or the way any given swell can play off those jetties, but it seems as if one of the swells would show initially and as it merged with the second swell you would see that true form of the wave as it broke. A fun day regardless.

Testing a buddies board proved to be an awakening of sorts, picking up the surf from a poor to fair range and making it a "did you see that last ride" wave. He let me use his "Rockin Fig"- a little under seven feet with the wide point high up in the nose, an overly cut swallow tail, and two enormous outer skags, this board catered to all my strengths and weaknesses as a surfer.
Today was a bit blustery in the AM. That plus work at noon means no surfing today. Saturday a new SW swell fills in and the return of offshores and warm weather is anticipated on Sunday, meaning a day lost will be made up by two more even better days this weekend.