E's Surf Report

fading swell today.. waist to chest high glassy peelers.. the red tide is thick and pungent.. the water appears oily and bears and auburn color. check out this site for details..

the waves this weekend, however, were fabulous.. hopefully everyone reading this enjoyed some "tasty waves".. Both Saturday and Sunday saw solid, thick, ledgy waves, breaking hard and peeling. Just a worthy wind-swell producing the action, with maybe a sniff of S. groundswell thrown in too. These waves were very rippable. predominantly peaky A-frames with enjoyable lefts and rights. the walls were glassy and begging for bashings, slankings, two-steps, or any other improvised footwork a surfer might want to perform. My new board has changed my surfing drastically. An obvious improvement in maneuverability and responsiveness.. With my SF "big-guys shortboard" i often felt bogged down and sluggish.. my board felt like molasses while bottom turning.. then i'd have to work to try to get it toward vertical on my way back up the face.. This new board is all snappy and explosive.. i'll swoop down to the bottom on my frontside and dig-in to turn up the face and my new board will just push toward verticality with little effort.. Then, due to its lightness, it snaps/rebounds off the top with relative ease.. All of a sudden I'm thinking in more advanced directions than i previously had been.. Each time i take off i'm really focussing on getting vertical (vertical=bottom-turning and then achieving a vertical path on your way to the top of the wave) and then performing some maneuver on the lip.. Right now i'm mostly trying to snap and pop off the top, trying to get the nose of my board up above the lip of the wave before i pivot and re-enter the face. On my backside, though, i'm also entering into the world of consciously sliding my tail and getting my fins out of the water. I start feeling good about my "game".. and then i see someone really shredding.. like today i skated down ortega a few hours ago and watched some dudes surfing the peak there.. this one guy was generating so much speed on these little gutless waves.. and then popping fast/horizontal airs... He wasn't flying high into the air, but was soaring horizontally just above the lip, then landing and immediately laying down impressive carves.. man.. that's the shit i want to do.. fast, committed carving 360s, phat/effective airs that act to project you over close-out sections back to the peeling face of the wave, monster barrels that thunder around you and then accelerate you outward as they close.. yadda yadda, etc.. actually.. right now i'd just be satisfied to "bash the lip good!".. soo.. one step at a time i guess..

peace

e