RE: [Paddlewise] Subject: Recent Pacific Storms

I was at Pacific Beach, WA yesterday doing a little kayak-surfing with
friends George G. and Murray H.  The waves start breaking so far out there,
you can pretty much pick your comfort spot as they reform and break again.
The outside break was so far offshore as to be out of sight.  Where I was,
they were breaking about waist to shoulder with the occasional head high or
better wave.  The waves were about 6 seconds apart and had no discernable
sets.  During the middle of the day (high tide) it was blowing almost
straight offshore at about 20kn+ (?).  In the soup zone, not only the spray
was being blown back off the tops of waves,  big globs of froth and foam
flying though the air.  It looked pretty cool.  I took a couple quick photos
with a disposable but it was probably too dark.  I would have liked to take
more but the wave interval was so short, I didn't have time to futz around
with the camera. I'll post if they come out.

Surprisingly, the strong offshores evened out the storm-blown slop upon
occasion and everyone got a couple really good rides.  Often you'd start out
on an ugly foam pile and be able to surf over to a clean shoulder when it
reformed and end up riding 20 or 30 seconds.  However, we were all in
multi-finned surfkayaks.  A seakayak would have been in trouble due to the
lack of spacing between individual waves, probably lots of bongo slides and
not much else.  All in all, it wasn't the clean break that I've gotten used
to lately but 3' - 6' waves coming from various directions in a tippy, hard
railed surfboat made for geat rough water practice.  I probably did 20 rolls
of various types, including a couple classic 'unintendos'.

Digging Razor Clams in rain and gale force winds in the dark was much more
difficult...


Best,

Thomas

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-paddlewise_at_paddlewise.net
[mailto:owner-paddlewise_at_paddlewise.net]On Behalf Of Doug Lloyd
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2001 1:35 AM
To: PaddleWise_at_paddlewise.net
Subject: Re: [Paddlewise] Subject: Recent Pacific Storms


I said:

Here is a good site to bookmark. It loads reasonably fast. It has a few
of the better Oregon surf cams on the menu:

<http://www.kgw.com/livecams/kgwskycams_hood_river.html>

There was some good shots from Brandon today at 65 knots.
<snip>

-------------
I think that's Bandon, not Brandon. Sorry.

Was a real fierce one when the low finally hit here today. The ferry
from Vancouver Island to the Mainland took 8 hrs instead of 1.5, while
the ferry tried to negotiate the wind and waves. The captain finally had
to ballast all the heavier trucks to one side of the Super-ferry, in
order to crawl into Horsehoe Bay. What a day. My buddies were out
surfing. One of them got smacked bad by driftwood. I had to work, though
the Isobar gradient sent most of the sustained stuff to the east side of
Georgia Strait. Anyone from Seattle make it out paddling in the wind, or
ya' all out on the rivers being more normal like Kevin?

Doug Lloyd

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