Ocean Surf 35

IT'S ALL IN THE NUMBERS


Up at 5:15 and it’s 1.6 miles to the beach. Parking lot opens at 0600. You do this 100’s of days every year. Feels like I’ve done it 1-million times. Rain, shine, fog, wind, there’s really only 2 seasons; suit, no suit. 1-foot slop, clean 5-foot shoulders, mean 10-foot grinders and 15-foot monster faces, it’s all numbers.

Today, wind slightly onshore at about 3 knots. Mid-tide and dropping to a 1.0 low still 3 hours away, water, 54° . There are already 3 guys out, 8 more suiting-up. A 1013-millibar eddy is circulating 300 nautical miles SW generating the buoy stats… a 6-foot NW swell with a period of 11 seconds. Malibu, Huntington?, do the math. When it crawls into El Porto, it’s a 3-foot wave, 3 wave sets, sets 11 minutes apart… the numbers.

Surfing is all about the numbers. If you put in the time, the days, the miles, the dollars, the hours, it adds up… you get waves. We’re 4 weeks into spring doldrum slop as the winter north’s peter out and the south’s start to build. Surfing is a lot of homework in less than optimal conditions, waiting for the moment when the equation tips things your way. The time when traffic in the line-up drops to zero, tide synchs with swell, the math adds up positive and the stats say you’re due.

I dropped in on a folding little face that surprised me by turning into a nice speedy cover up. Very unexpected, fully snaked a bro doin’ it. Yea, well, negative numbers!

Paddled out, got snake-ragged, grabbed another. No cover, but a left that rolled out a lot longer than I thought it would. I kicked off, standing waist deep on the inside, a hoot makes me look up. The guy I snaked, is already tucked low and tight, in what is very close to being a 3 foot wave… and he’s completely covered up. You can't say barreled, ‘barreled’ means size, speed and power. This wave was just a clean, pushing, crouch low and keep your trim, cover up. Hard to believe because it really wasn't the day or the swell for it. But there he was, trimmed out low on a 9-foot board tucked inside this 3-foot cylinder... covered up tight, no floor, no wall, no ceiling space to spare.

By the numbers, the space available is p x the board width2 x board length and he was using it all. From where I stand I have the behind-home-plate view, looking right down the pipe so it was up to me to keep the scorecard. 1-thousand-1, no mistaking the cover up or the count, I was doing the math out loud… 1-thousand-2… 1-thousand-3. He was locked in, a down-the-line stare, calculating the trim, acing the math. Each pitch of the lip adding up… 1-thousand-4… still inside and… 1-thousand-5! He pulls out, unkinks and there’s enough wave left to pump on the shoulder once, twice, kick out and acknowledge complements from others in the line up. Positive numbers.

A witness can be a good thing. Sometimes the unexpected is hard to reconstruct afterwards and harder to convince others that it really happened. This could be a lie, considering I'd snaked this guy a few waves before and I need to payback so he doesn’t drop in on me for the next 3 years. Or, just face it… the day you were chasing a south swell at Malibu or Huntington, a few locals did the math, got some nice micro-lefts, a little cylinder time and got to see a great ride from a guy who added a 9-foot board to a 3-foot wave and got 5+dry one … verified. It’s all in the numbers.