Re: [Paddlewise] Night Moves with the Luna Tics

Awesome pictures Mark. But be careful, or you guys will be inducted
into the Navy Seals.
-- 
Bradford R. Crain

Quoting Mark Sanders <marksanders_at_sandmarks.net>:

> The howling banshee winds of Sunday's CKF Fest had me wondering  
> about the feasibility of my scheduled night time rock garden party  
> for Monday. The idea of riding waves over rocks in the dark didn't  
> really need any more complications, but I knew I was going to brave  
> what ever came and Jack and Lenora felt the same way too!
>
> The wind was only 10mph when I met Lenora, Jack and Howard at China  
> Cove at 6:30. I had been worried about too much wind, but really all  
> we had too much of was light! This was supposed to be a moon paddle,  
> but we did want to get used to the sea conditions before the sun  
> went down, so I didn't complain. The clouds in the sky made for a  
> beautiful evening.
>
> The Dana Point buoy was reading 3.6 feet, but there wasn't much  
> happening along the Corona del Mar rocky shore. We played with  
> impunity for most of the way, with just a couple bigger waves in  
> sections that tend to funnel them in. When we came up on BAR, it  
> looked like a big, fluffy rock just floating on top of the water!
>
> When we got to Chute Rock, I found one of my worries had come true.  
> We were close to a 6 foot tide and there was too much water for  
> optimal play. Usually, you take a nice sized wave to get you over  
> the lip and ride the chute to the other side, but with the tide so  
> high, the chute backs up with water and you're left inside to deal  
> with the waves coming over the rocks. Still, we were here and it had  
> to be done and the waves breaking over the rocks tended to lose a  
> lot of their ferocity before they hit you! So three of us rode the  
> chute in various levels of water. Howard, in his plastic egg shell  
> boat stayed out, dodging waves as they came by. In the chute, you'd  
> often get taken sideways by the large amounts of water and have to  
> fight to get turned to ride your way out.
>
> The sun had gone down, but the moon was high and bright, so it  
> didn't seem too dark to play. Toward the end, it got a bit harder to  
> determine how big the waves coming in were and as there were an  
> occasional bigger set, that could be a problem. Once, as Lenora and  
> I waited to head over the chute, with Jack on the other side, all of  
> a sudden in the dark, Howard went racing by in front of a wave big  
> enough to send him all the way to the beach! It was quite a  
> spectacle to see through the dim light, but he was able to avoid the  
> rocks and add a bit more excitement to the night.
>
> I was getting a bit more comfortable playing in the churning white  
> water in the chute, but on one ride I was pushed high and sideways  
> up the rock! The next wave pulled me over upside down into the  
> trough. Groveling upside down, I was sure I was in for a full moon  
> swim. Going through the motion to pretend to roll up, I was  
> surprised to find my paddle blade actually skimming through water!  
> It seemed not till I was mostly upright that my blade skittered  
> against the rock and I got ready to exit the chute into the next  
> incoming wave.
>
> We continued to play with the dark night sky peppered with the  
> flashes of our cameras taking blurry, grainy shots to remember the  
> night. Finally we looked at each other and decided to call it a  
> quits! I was in my wetsuit without a jacket and I knew the cold  
> would soon be seeping into my bones. The tide had Chute Rock mostly  
> wash and there didn't seem to be anything left to prove. It had all  
> started with my crazy idea to go have fun at Chute Rock at the next  
> available high enough tide and that just happened to be at night! I  
> gauged success at making even one pass over the chute with the moon  
> full in the sky and exceeded my goals beyond all expectations!
>
> Photos:
> http://www.sandmarks.net/LunaTics/NightMoves1.html
>
> Mark Sanders
> www.sandmarks.net
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