4/8/2013

The waves came up this weekend and weather conditions made for a very good surf session on Saturday morning. So I woke up before the sun was up and rode my bike to the two different spots I had to choose to surf at. First was the Redondo breakwall (On the Hermosa Beach side of the harbor), which has fun left-hand waves when the swell is big enough. It was pretty mushy, though, so I cruised south through the harbor to the Redondo avenues, which can get really good with a mixed combo swell. It was. 

My friend Ryan met up and we decided to drive there. So I quickly went back down to my boat and changed into my wetsuit and grabbed my surf stuff. As I walked up the dock carrying my surfboard, my car keys, my gate key-card, and my surfboard leash, one of them slipped out of my hand - the gate key-card. It went right over the dock, and sunk down on to rocks along the sea-wall. It was peak high-tide, so about 5 feet deep where the key landed. There’s also a moderate surge in the harbor because of the swell, so I could see the key-card was moving around, getting closer to being tucked under some rocks. I had to put on my wetsuit, climb down the wall and go all the way under water to retrieve that card. I will say that driving to go surf while wearing a wet (harbor-water stench) wetsuit is not comfortable.

Making the most out of my Saturday, I decided to rinse down all my surf stuff, have breakfast, and go to the gym for my lower-back exercises, before going on a hike I had planned with my friend, Heather. The hike was up in Rancho Palos Verdes, at the top of the headland. It’s a really mellow fire-trail that people ride mountain bikes and horses on, with great views of Catalina Island on a clear day. This day there were clouds between us and the island but you could still see the mountain peaks out there. After the hike we got some frozen yogurt, had a beer on the boat and she had the brilliant idea of going for a bike ride along the strand during sunset. Perfect. We got on my bikes (my guests always get the 1956 Schwinn, but I had to lower the seat for her) and we cruised along the strand up to Manhattan Beach then stopped at El Gringo in Hermosa Beach for mexican food and to make plans for later on. To get an idea of the kind of person I am, a day filled with casual outdoor activities like this -that take advantage of the area I live- are all I need to be a very happy person.

On Sunday morning I went body surfing at the same spot that I surfed the day before. Then I passed out from exhaustion in the sun for a couple hours, waking up to the sound of chaos. 

Chaos in the form of my neighbor two slips away with an old 25ish foot long Ericson sailboat, with a poorly functioning outboard motor, demonstrating his inability to maneuver the boat forwards out of the slip. Keep in mind, motoring forwards (bow already in the direction you want to go) out of the slip is usually the easiest thing to do, it’s a no-brainer,  unless your outboard motor’s propeller doesn’t sit submerged all the way in the water. The boat was basically stalled, perpendicular to the wind and channel, and the owner was hesitating too much in forward gear, then in reverse gear, and back and forth between the too, revving the motor for short moments before changing his mind again. He was not making progress in either direction. He had a friend standing on the bow trying to keep the boat from damaging other boats, and the wind simply pushed them into the rocks along the sea wall.

About the same time they were yelling and fumbling with the motor while pinned against the rocks, the roller-furled headsail unfurled itself, making matters worse. Now the boat was trying to sail forward into a tied up dinghy and against more rocks. I can say with confidence that neither of these two guys have been in a stressful boating experience before, they were disagreeing about what each other should do, and freaking out. The owner of the boat had opted to fall over into the water and stand between his boat and the rocks, water up to his chest, which didn’t actually prevent the boat from hitting the rocks at all. The buddy pulled the sail back in and I could see he just looped the line around a winch and then a cleat a dozen times rather than tying it off with any sort of knot. Still half asleep I walked to the closest dock space between their stuck sailboat and their slip and told them to throw me a dock line so I could pull the boat off the rocks and essentially drag it back to their slip. I climbed over the cockpit of one boat and tugged on their dock line, while directing them to shove the bow off the rocks and hop back on, and use their hands to keep them away from the boat I just climbed over.  When things calmed down and I had brought the boat back into the slip, they decided, “Lets not think constructively about what went wrong, and just try this again” and put the motor back in gear and made it out of the slip - successfully this time, although they were skirting the sterns of all the boats along the channel. These guys need to invest in a boat pole and a long-shaft outboard. 

After that I was wide awake and did some usual Sunday chores, having felt like I’ve done enough for the weekend.

Last night, the liveaboards on a Downeast 45 at the end-slip on my dock walked by and said “Make sure to tie everything down tonight, 80 mile-an-hour winds out there”. I checked the weather forecast on my phone, sure enough a huge low-pressure system was off the coast and was going to make for 20-30 mph winds locally overnight and into the morning. I’m glad I slept with ear plugs in because when I woke up for work, with the boat rocking back and forth, the sound of marina clanking and ringing and howling was at full volume. People’s furled sails were beating themselves open, bimini’s were flapping, deck-lights under spreaders were dangling by just one wire, the palm trees rustling, etc. 

Here’s a shot of the same beach I surfed at over the weekend, but this morning. It was very rough out there, the harbor patrol had two red flags flying in the wind, and waves were crashing up and over the breakwall into the main channel.