Hurricane Bill surf report. Surf on Tybee Island, GA USA this weekend was the biggest I have ever seen on the island. Late Friday night at peak high tide the breaking waves were hitting the bottom of the fishing pier. The swells were coming in faster than I could run down the pier. http:// www.brewerwedding.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/pier.jpg Tybee is known for mushy small surf due to endless sandbars that extend out extremely far off shore so this was surprising. The riptide along the pier was easily visible in the dark. I went short boat surfing off the front side of the island Sat afternoon and had a blast. I paddled out through the lineup and positioned myself amongst the standup paddlers short boat kayakers. The waves were just flawless and plentiful. It was all you can eat and smiles were found on all who took part. I had a few screaming rail runs into the beach and heard the board surfers cheering me on as I blazed on by. Luckily we have a good local surf culture with the young boardies being friendly and using the near shore while the usually older kayak surf crowd stay out to sea and giving way if the boardies want a wave. It seems to work well. Six board surfers were swept out to sea while I was on the water. The lifeguards retrieved them one at a time with a jetski. They were so far out I couldnt see the surfers, only the jetski. It really happened fast. I chatted with a victim and he said the rip was so strong that hand paddling parallel to the beach was useless. Sunday we went out in long boats. Everything was much bigger and more violent. We launched from the back side and paddled into a flood tide out front. Between the flood and the waves it was a burning workout just getting out. There was enough clapitise right at the mouth that I went over twice and a friend went over once. After breaking out we decided it was too much and landed on the front side. We used our painters to line back around to the river and went home. It was both exciting and disappointing. Clearly a learning day. http://i28.tinypic.com/bflx1t.jpg Me shouting at friends over the noise of the waves. Jim et al *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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