E's Surf Report: wind is up now.. but.. i squeaked in a sesh

grey and rainy as i pulled up to VFers at 6:30... same deal as yesterday.. dirty/dumpy/wild/foamy and unappetizing.. cruise the beach.. same shit.. pull up to second lot sloat.. hmm.. definitely cleaner.. a huge stretch... from the northern end of ft funston to the bathrooms at sloat showing smooth sea-surface and fun-looking peeling, glassy waves and peaks scattered amidst closeouts and random fumblings. huh.. rain spitting and pelting my window.. get out of the car and feel the beginning trickles of a NW onshore.. but.. not too bad yet.. nobody out but i decide to paddle out anyway.. looks not too huge or menacing.. but.. 20 minutes and 30 duckdives later.. i'm still paddling out.. not believing how difficult and treacherous the paddle-out is after it looked so peaceful and inviting from up atop the cliff.. anyway.. FINALLY make it out.. after sever ice-cream headache and one long rest of just laying on my board in the impact zone, letting whatever happened happen.. anyhoo.. out in the lineup.. solo.. sea-surface super clean.. nice, BIG waves breaking all over.. probably close to 8ft faces on some of them.. chunkified too!! crazy! anyway.. i took off on a few rights that sectioned quickly.. but i made it over the back.. then a ledging, precipitous left that left me smiling.. another left where i was able to thwack the lip pretty good.. then sitting.. just thinking.. alot of those diminutive jellyfish with sails all around.. then i see a guy with a red longboard about to paddle out.. cool.. some company!... 15 minutes later i see him walking back to his car.. guess he got denied.. caught a really fun, big-wavy right.. where i had to paddle down the face a bit to get into the beast.. but then i funnelled down the drop.. bottom turned.. raced along for a bit.. then the wave started to bowl severely and offered up this curved wall that i instinctively banked a high-speed top-turn off of and sent out a fan of spray!! fuck yeah!! felt good. wasn't really that difficult either.. i just happened to be at the right place and just turned.. the bowling effect of the wave did all the work for me and made it look like a power snap.. sometimes surfing just makes sense like that.. Next i caught this well-overhead left and bounced and bumbled down the face.. laughing and teary-eyed from the mach-speed and power.. so psyched.. in my groove now.. catching big wild OB outside mackers, having a blast.. taking waves on the head.. fuddling with my ear-plugs that pop out after every serious thrashing. then, all of a sudden, i notice about 4 or 5 people paddling RIGHT toward me! i had been solo the whole seshy, the whole beach was empty.. seriously.. and these guys are paddling RIGHT at me.. huh.. weird.. but.. no worries.. i decide to take one more wave in and call it a sesh. NW wind was definitely stonger as i de-suited.. but.. i'm psyched on a classic OB experience.. especially in mid-april.. I mean.. shit was big and thick out there. and the paddle out had my shoulders burning and my paltry human pride wounded and humbled in the face of the mighty pacific..

check out this story told by former world champ Shaun Thompson - he's talking about J-Bay:
"As I got older I moved up the point. For me it was an important place because as I got better I moved up to more and more challenging sections of the wave.
Then came a big day - six to eight feet - very few guys in the water. Even through the 80s I used to surf there with few guys in the water - the surfing population (hadn't exploded) - during school holidays you get out there with just a few guys in the water. I took off on this wave way out the back at this place called Boneyards - and as I took off, about a hundred dolphins took off on the same wave with me.
So I was flying through this eight foot wave on a great surfboard with dolphins all around me. As I turned, they turned. I had this whole school of dolphins with me! It was amazing to sort of feel a bond with the dolphins. As I rode through the inside section down towards Supertubes - all the dolphins disappeared and I was riding the wave by myself, or so I thought. But two dolphins must have been riding the wave with me, because as I pulled up into this really, really deep tube section - I was way back in the tube, 10 or 20 feet back inside - the two dolphins jumped out of the wave, right out of the water directly in front of me. They went through the tube, and I went right through the spray they left behind."

Slates at Bells..
slates