P.R. November 2005

Page 3 - Second Day of Waves

Day two dawns sunny and mild, and the wind has backed down and gone more easterly. A look down the hill to the north reveals whitewaters visible down from Parking Lot’s, so there’s at least as much swell as there was yesterday.

Way cool.

Lisa’s ready to go and we drive down and give it a check.

Dome’s is still wonky, but Maria’s is cleaner and more liner than the previous day. The hard north angle to the swell is once again causing the middle peak to be very well defined, with the size petering out pretty quickly as you move down point toward Dogmans.

Another tasty setup for the two of us.

Back to Rob’s, grab the boards, and away we go.

This time, for whatever reason, Lisa is WAY off of her game and is having serious problems with lining things up in this strange place, and a general feeling of being overwhelmed by the size and power of the waves, coupled with not knowing where the next one’s coming from or what it’s going to do to her when it arrives.

I stay right with her.

Ever have one of those days where no matter what you do, nothing would click and it all felt horribly wrong? Lisa is in the throes of such a day and it’s aggravating her mightily. She’s getting madder and madder at herself for not being able to set things up and then just go surfing.

The angrier she gets, the more it throws off her ability to center, focus, and get into the waves properly, which then frustrates her even more and feedbacks into another spiral of anger and confusion.

Bless her heart, I know she’s frustrated and angry, and I’m not sure if I’m doing her much good or not as I attempt to help her, but she seems to prefer it when I stay nearby and continue to attempt to settle her down into some kind of working groove.

It takes a full hour, but finally she nabs a good one, and then another, and then she’s settling in and finding her way around with success.

The time it takes me to settle Lisa down turns out to be time well spent, because as I now look over to the middle peak, I see that everybody has paddled in or gone away somewhere or other, and there’s now only about six or eight people over there, and the waves are a bit larger, and much more lined up than they were yesterday.

My friend on the yellow boogie board, and the blonde lady who was charging yesterday are among the handful of folks desultorily picking off waves.

I paddle over after a final ok from Lisa, and pick right up where I left off yesterday, hardly believing my good luck.

A magic couple of hours ensues with me variously chatting with my new buddies, watching people grabbing big blue peaks, and me picking them up way outside of everybody. I became just completely comfortable with the size and begin taking crazy late drops, knowing full well that I’ll never be able to come around the corner at the bottom, and either get hammered in the attempt or have to hop off the board and take a rinse cycle and then paddle back out. It’s more than plenty just to be taking these drops with nobody anywhere near me. When I’m not going for silly waves that nobody could make, I’m grabbing these thick sweet deep blue peaks, flying down to the bottom at warp speed, and then laying the board over on its rail and squirting down the line like a wet bar of soap, there to work the ensuing wall any old way I like. This is surfing the way surfing was meant to feel, and I drink deeply of it.

Lisa, meanwhile, has found her calm center and is now nabbing waves over towards Dogman’s, all alone with nobody around to interfere with her.

We surf ourselves stupid and then finally fatigue sets in for real and prudence dictates that we exit the water before we manage to hurt ourselves.

Another several hours on the beach, just sitting and staring. Around one pm, the wind picks up and becomes more sideshore, and the waves seem to lose their earlier definition and sweetness. We nailed the thing dead center, fair and square. Almost the exact same thing happened yesterday, too.

We gratefully return to our digs, secure in the knowledge that we’re having a very nice surf trip indeed.