It was a pretty wild Christmas Eve and Christmas day to say the least. From a forgotten board, procrastinative Christmas shopping, and surfing some fun sizeable surf out at Florida Mile, so far, this holiday season has been festive and surprisingly adventurous.
On the Eve of Christmas, Panama Red really wanted to surf Florida Mile. I wanted to surf somewhere on the Eastside of Santa Cruz. But The Panamanian, being a stubborn Panamanian and someone who resides 24/7 in Santa Cruz, watched all that yucky brown stuff flow out of the San Lorenzo River the previous day and cautioned against surfing anything in town. I reluctantly said "cool". I met the Panamanian over at our usual meet up spot, Emily's. From there, we headed out to Florida mile, suited up, and started walking down the trail. But we could hear the beach from the dirt lot, which is always a good sign.
As we came to the beach, we stopped and looked at each other with a smile. It was firing 5 - 6 foot consistent, high tide nuggets with the occasional 7 and 8 footers in the mix. With only a handful of guys out, we were able trade waves for the next three hours. My best wave of the day was a long, fat, power of a wave that drove me all the way to the beach break. I rode my now trusted "Hapa" (named it that because the tail is half round, half squash). I have grown a bit fond of The Hapa and her quirky little habits. What she does well is make really fast, streaking turns and is especially fun on waves where a nice fast cutback is a significant ingredient for pleasurable, sectiony, reformed ride. I'm really starting to love this board a whole lot. I haven't even busted out my M-10 in a while. But the M-10 is my most trusted board, especially when it gets wintery big.
I ended Christmas Eve at G Street. I didn't think G Street would work with all the south in the water, but surprisingly, it did. It was just me and The Hapa this session as the Panamanian had to head out of town for some Christmas family time. And damn, did he miss out. He texted me a few hours after I got out and asked me how were the waves at G Street. I texted back "There were waves but they didn't connect". Later he saw some of the photos that I posted and he wrote "That one looked like it connected!" And with a grin I wrote back "Oh yeah, a few did."
On Christmas day, I surfed with Cynthia (aka Surfergrrrl) for the first time, along with Marcia (also for the first time). Cynthia and I had been wanting to surf for a while, but do to our surf schedules and my lack of punctuality (I usually run on Hawaiian/ Filipino time), we never could meet up. But on Christmas day we did, and we all had a great time. We started off at The Dunes, a place that I had never surfed before. It was a bit punchy on the outside. Not really seeing any of those monsters being ride able, I decided to hang out on the inside. The ladies had fun, I saw both of them catch some nice rides. I gotta give both ladies some props, it was foamy and punchy.
We ended up at The Jetty for a second sesh. The Jetty was a bit mixed up, but I kept patient and caught two fun ones on Marcia's board. Her board is 5'8 x 20 hybird of a short board/ fish. With not much rocker on it, it had speed. And I like speed. I liked her board a lot, and hopefully we'll surf again and I can use it one more time.
According to reports, there is a lot of swell heading towards the California shore in the next weekend and the following week. I'm hoping that the weather will assist us surfers with some suitable, maybe cloudy/ sunny days where we can enjoy the surf without those howling south winds. If the swells work out and the weather cooperates a bit, I'm hoping to take a drive all the way down, just south of Santa Barbara to a little place that roughly translates to "corner" in Spanish. I've been itching to surf that spot since my last encounter with her a year ago. And that encounter turned out to be one of the best waves I have ever surfed in my short time sliding down waves. Crossing my fingers.
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