The Air Show

Tuesday, February 17, 1998

I don’t know about the rest of the Northern California crew but I have found it nearly impossible to score any good surf for the past month. The old beach crews are frothing at the mouth jonesing for some decent conditions. Santa Cruz has been so big, stormy and dirty that it has made finding surf extremely difficult. We are all reduced to watching for brief lulls in the weather and scrambling for scraps.

The pros left town weeks ago. Tuesday at lunchtime it was a medium high tide but the swell had picked up again so I decided to cruise down to the Westside to see if it had cleaned up enough to allow for a quick session. Nothing doing. The Lane was really weird, with the swell so north that third reef was breaking east toward Monterey. Inside, conditions weren’t too bad and Cowells was breaking about head high but the foam trail and lack of crowd definitely suggested that the lateral current was too strong to enjoy it. There was one yakker out and he was having a great time but surfing was out of the question. Even the beachbreak on the north side of the municipal pier was empty as the powerful current was pulling south through the pier and most sets were closing out.

I was about to bail back to work when I noticed a small black figure with a surfboard climb down the docking stairs on the municipal pier across from the lifeguard office. Pulling out the binoculars I could just make out a few other surfers in the water south of the pier. I decided to check it out. I was not prepared for what I found.

The beach south of the pier and in front of the boardwalk is one of the most unlikely surf spots in the county, but because we have had so many storms this year, the beach has been reshaped to form some significant sandbars. Most of the year this beach is dominated by tourists and beach volleyball players who hang at the many volleyball areas setup there. The sand was completely covered with logs from the street to the waterline, and there were several mountain men cutting and hauling firewood up to their pickups.

I parked my car in one of the metered spaces that line the street in front of the beach and was surprised to see so many surfers in the water. They were catching the rip at the base of the pier and riding it out into the lineup, which seemed to be spread over a large area. Once in position they pointed north and paced their paddling to hover in zones where the better waves seemed to be peaking. Most of the surfers were about 50 yards south of the pier and anywhere from 50 feet from the beach to 100 yards outside. The overhead waves were very clean and formed peaks as they passed through the pier.

Another bar with a double overhead wave breaking right and left was going off another 100 yards farther south and much farther out. Only a half dozen surfers were hanging out at the outer break, and everyone in the water were shortboarders.

About the time I began to ask myself why so many people were out by the pier I got my answer. Waves a couple of feet overhead pushed under the pier and began to peak along the row of surfers hovering in the takeoff zones. They looked like close-outs as I watched these waves wall up. At the last second a kid on a yellow board takes off left at an angle. He’s gonna get pounded I thought, and prepared to enjoy the show when the wave pitched top to bottom and reeled toward the pier. To my surprise and delight, for the next 50 feet the tip of the yellow board climbing and dropping in the barrel, was all I could see on the wave until the rider emerged from this liquid pipe and launched himself 10 feet into the air just before the door shut. I looked up and two more pipes with equally proficient riders were doing the same thing at different distances from shore. What the hell? This can’t be the boardwalk.

I shoved a couple of quarters into the parking meter and moved around toward the restaurant patio which provided a perfect view into these mutant barrels. Some of the waves were too fast for anyone to make, but the surfers would take off and ride as long as they could until they got swallowed up. Others almost stood still as the wave peeled left matching the speed of the rip running down the beach. Surfers were all over these waves just ripping the hell out of them. These waves provided the perfect speed and shape to mimic a skateboard half pipe, and the hours of skating hadn’t been lost of these riders. They were throwing airs, endos, 360’s.

I was mesmerized. Who were these guys? Touring pros? In addition to the crew in the water there was a steady parade of surfers walking north along the beach after getting washed south by the current. Some caught the train by the pier back into the lineup, others hung it up. The surfer on the yellow board came in. Couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He unlocked his bike and peddled off down the street. Then it struck me. These were local kids. These were the grommets that I have watched develop over the past couple of years. But they weren’t grommets anymore. These surfers were charging, they were ripping. If nothing else this winter seems to have produced a new confident, and very talented crop who are ready to bust out. I never went out.

These weren’t longboard waves and I didn’t want to clutter the lineup while I struggled with the current. The sun was still shining as a heavy downpour of rain began to pelt me. I grabbed my umbrella from the wavemobile and watched a screwfoot rider who was consistently logging deep barrel time take off, stall and disappear..disappear...disappear...reappearing 75 feet down the line in time to launch himself and his board five feet above this six foot pipe, grab a rail, rotate 180 degrees, stick the tail landing on the back of the wave floater style, and reenter down through eight feet of whitewater. He casually kicked his board toward shore, dove under the whitewater, popped up a few feet from shore, grabbed his board and stroked back out. Hoots from surfers watching from the pier and the patio bounced around the pilings. But then we were hooting almost every wave.

Kudos to the young crew at the pier Tuesday. Thanks for the clinic, and I look forward to more great shows this spring.