Aguadilla, Spanish for Waterdilla

The second part of my winter-Caribbean vacation was in Northwest Puerto Rico. We flew into San Juan and drove the 2 hours to get to the surfy town of Aguadilla. The drive along the north coast of Puerto Rico was just as adrenaline filled as driving on Tortola. Traffic laws aren't taken too seriously in our Spanish speaking territory.

Again, this trip was going to hopefully be a chance to surf more while it was still winter and the wind was light, but it blew 20-25 almost the whole time we were there. Unfortunately there is no place to rent windsurfing gear in all of Puerto Rico. Even if I was forward thinking enough to get some gear in San Juan, the shop that rents gear there says on their web page that they "no longer offer advanced rentals". I'd be lying if I said it wasn't excruciating at times, sitting at Shacks beach watching the wind whip across waist to head high waves.

Shacks beach itself seemed like an outstanding spot for windsurfing. The guy in the picture below has a house there, but is originally from Long Island. He said it's a tricky place due to shallow reefs, but in general it works pretty well. It reminded me an awful lot of Uppers at Kanaha, except the waves were breaking 30 yards not 300 yards from shore. Note to self, pack gear next time you go to PR. I may have been there during a particularly windy few days, but I sure wouldn't mind spending a few months there to see.

He did get some good down the line rides, but by the time I got the camera out, he was going backside. Probably underpowered and trying to get upwind to an apparently small gap in the reef to launch and land.

Even though it was windy, the surf was pretty fun. It seems like the forecasting is pretty inaccurate. My last day was forecast at 1-2 feet and had waves that were 3 feet overhead. (Of course some Hawaiian dude would tell you those were 6 inch waves, but we'll get into machismo and wave height description for a whole different conversation). In any case many of the locals were surprised by how big the waves were.

Another awesome place to visit in NW Puerto Rico is the Camuy Caverns, which is one of the largest known cave systems in the world. The tour group was massive, but it is definitely a pretty amazing place.



The main spot I surfed is called Wilderness. It was freaking awesome, waist to overhead peelers the whole time I was there. There was some wind so you had to paddle a lot to stay on the peak, but that kept the crowd from sticking around for hours. Above is one of the many very good local surfers hitting the lip on a small inside wave.


And now, another laugh track moment:

Two nights on Tortola

This February I was lucky enough to escape the chilly SF winter to check out Tortola and Puerto Rico. My intentions around this trip were mainly relax and practice surfing. I haven't been posting about it much, but I've been trying to surf as much as possible this winter. My original hope was for surfing to help me with my wavesailing, but as it turns out I've been catching the surfing bug in a bigger way than I imagined (primarily because the first year you surf, it's a full-on exercise in futility [unless you have, ya know, talent or athleticism {which I wouldn't know anything about}]).

These last couple months have involved a lot of cold water and cold humble pie, which is a dish actually best served warm. Enter, trip to the warm Caribbean.

Traveling to a minor island like Tortola from the west coast is one heck of a journey. One whole day of traveling, an overnight layover in San Juan, then a puddle jumping prop plane to hilly BVI's. The trip was originally set for Puerto Rico only, but I figured I may as well check out another island while we're making the trip. My research indicated that Tortola was a good choice for a two night trip to score some beach time and potentially a little bit of surfing time.

As it turned out the surfing was only marginally good, mainly because there was too much wind!

My next obvious course of action was to scour the island for windsurfing gear. I went to a tourist info center (which had previously rented me a surfboard with a huge crack in the nose) to try to figure out the windsurfing situation. They were somewhat puzzled by the idea windsurfing on the island which was a bad omen. There were some outdated looking brochures sitting around hinting that there were some places that offered windsurfing on the windward side of the island and one spot on the south side which apparently would only rent gear by the week.

We made the journey back toward the Northeast part of the island, first to a town called East End. I say "journey" because even though the island is only 15 miles long, getting up and down huge, steep switchbacks on sketchy roads surrounded by anarchy style driving etiquette on the left dadgummed side of the road... well let's just say the adrenaline was flowing.

We found no sign of windsurfing in East End, so we ventured on to the final hope -- Beef Island -- where one finds the Tortola Airport. Passing by the airport into what seemed like no-man's land we discovered a parking area and a couple of shops visible from the road. One was clearly marked "HIHO", which is the name of the inter-island race held in the Virgin Islands, so I immediately knew I was in the right place.

What I discovered was a spot called "Trellis Bay" which has a large protected mooring area and some very friendly beaches with a nice outdoor seating area for eating and having a drink. Some cool little artsy stores where local artists are working on their craft right in front of you sit next to a full service internet Cafe. The Cafe's specialties include the "Awesomest Fish Sandwich" and a wide selection of cold beverages. It's the perfect kind of spot where a guy-water-enthusiest and a girl-who-wants-to-hang-out-on-the-beach combo can go to each be fully satisfied.

The host of this joint is a guy by the name of Jeremy. Turns out that Jeremy runs a blog about the goings-on of his joint and Trellis bay. Full moon parties, live music, he's got a good gig going. Jeremy also has tons of great stories if you get him away from work for a moment: sailing from SF to Indonesia, teaching Finian Maynard how to windsurf, getting on a windsurfer himself and just going places. He's one of those guys you meet who seems so inspired that you doubt he ages a day.

I windsurfed two days at Trellis Bay. The first day I rode an 8.5 and a 120L board. I admittedly was pretty nervous to use this kind of gear. I haven't sailed anything bigger than a 6.0 in literally years. I wasn't sure if I could even do it. The 120 felt absolutely ginormous. I can't remember the feeling of carving through a jibe on a board that large. Come to think of it, I don't think I had really started making a lot of jibes until I moved to the bay area a few years ago. The sailing was fun but exhausting. It's almost like you're using a whole different set of muscles with that kind of rig. I could ride it, but every transition felt really draining. It was incredibly fun cruising over the bright blue water but it's definitely something to which I'm not acclimated.

The second day was 5.4, same board, smaller fin. I was enjoying some speedy short reaches inside the jetty, blazing through jibes. It was super fun. If I had my freestyle board, it would have been perfect conditions to work on all those little spinny things the rust has been building upon.

I could definitely see the draw of the HIHO that everyone has been raving about for years. I don't think I'm ready to go for it because honestly I'm just not a long-distance (or racing) guy. For me, I'd like to hop around the islands with big wave or freestyle gear, exploring rarely-sailed reefs and protected freestyle lagoons.

Someday.

I have forgotten the art of turning a board this wide.

Nature Boy's Wilderness Bar

The ever-famous Bomba Shack with photos of actual topless women.

Carib is a very nice beer.

Clean, steady 8.5 wind in the channel.

Trellis Bay is a funky and fun place to hang out.

Local Artists built all kinds of cool sculptures. They light these things on fire for the full moons.

Cane Garden Bay hides a very well known point break. We stayed down there too... a very nice family beach.

(insert laugh track)

Another sunset session surfing alone.

Best Post-Cold Session Food

Tuesday was 4.2/75L at Half Moon Bay. Crankin', fun, and lots of rust getting kicked off.

Post-session food is a matter of taste. Lots of folks seem to love to go for that red meat protein injection with juicy hamburger. I have another friend who likes a milkshake after a day in the water, to satisfy his sweet tooth. When I was living in DC there was an IHOP we used to visit to gorge ourselves on breakfast-for-dinner.

But here in SF after getting out of the cold water, the best thing I've found is Vietnamese Chicken Soup (pho ga). Your runny nose releases all it's fluids, you reverse the bone chill from the inside out, you get rehydrated on the savory broth. A little sriracha sauce gives you a kick of spice to accelerate this process.

It's a little bit of heaven.

What's your favorite post spock snack?

When You Mess with the Bull

... you get the horns. I broke my first mast the other day on my first ocean sailing session of the year. The wipe out wasn't particularly spectacular, the wave not particularly big, the swim not particularly harrowing. She was a good mast, lasted me two seasons. Her life probably could have been much longer had I just used her on flat water. But can you really call that living?

In any case, it was a pretty expensive day. I had a few memorable down-the-line wave rides that *almost* made it worth it. The thing that is creeping around the back of my mind is if I continue visiting the coast, how many masts could I break this season? At $500 a pop, these things are a pretty expensive speeding ticket. At what point do you take away your license?

Anyhow, here's a quick video from that day. Jacob getting worked, a couple local heroes doing their thing, and a huge dead elephant seal.

ps. yes, I know this video doesn't fit here, but I don't have the time or patience to fix that right now, so just click through to the youtube link and save your concerned email for a late rebate payment or something not punctuated properly in Windsurfing Magazine.

The California Coast Welcomes You

The nice thing about Northern California is that when windsurfing season ends, surfing season starts. Those regular prevailing westerly winds that blow 8 months of the year that we wind-folks love draw the ire of the local surfing community. But during the winter, we get into weather patterns that give a week or so without wind, then storms that bring wind, rain and snow to the Sierra Mountain range. These periods without wind are what surfers thrive on, since it takes only a little bit of wind to make waves less fun and more difficult to surf.

But there is a catch to surfing many of the spots in NorCal. It can be really, really difficult. The picture at the top of this post is a snapshot of someone getting ready to go out on a typical Double-to-Triple-Overhead-Plus (10-15 ft + waves) day at Ocean Beach, which is a few miles long, down the west side of San Francisco. The current moves extremely fast and the head high walls of whitewater batter surfers back toward the beach as they try to paddle out. No easy channels present themselves to get to the waves breaking a quarter-of-a-mile or more offshore. Often when you visit Ocean Beach on a big day, you can't even see the surfers out at the break. They are just specks on the horizon through a thick fog generated by sea foam. It's amazing that anyone even surfs these kinds of conditions.

The type of person who surfs Ocean Beach on a big day needs to be fit to get out to the breaking waves. Typically it is said that it takes 45 minutes or more of paddling and duck-diving to get out to where you can catch these giant waves. After that, it may take just as long to get back in, so you have to be ready to paddle for about an hour and a half. Just paddling, not catching waves. So in addition to being in great paddling shape, you have to be extremely confident in your ability to survive. If you get half way out and lose confidence, you're going to be in a pretty bad situation. The third attribute I would give an OB-big-wave surfer is to have a screw loose. You might catch one huge wave, get creamed by it and held down underwater for a minute before you start your paddle home. The reward was that 2-4 second drop. Two hours of paddling, one big adrenaline filled drop, then paddle back with a big smile.

These guys are crazy, and there's seemingly hundreds or thousands of them.

The good news? It's not crowded.

Best Year so Far

I moved to California a couple years ago with this idea that I would be able to windsurf a little more than the dozen or two sessions that I was getting while living on the east coast. I wasn't geographically or employmently set up to windsurf on the weekdays, and only occasionally on the weekends. The Northern Virginia area where I was living was an hour away from good potential wind and water locales (on a rare no-traffic day). I had the opportunity to move to a windy place and I pounced on it. My working hours stayed the same (Eastern Standard, that is) so I was also amazingly afforded long afternoons every day I could pull my carcass out of bed before sunrise.

After a year of settling in and tuning up, I was really ready for a season with a lot of time on the water. I learned how to make the right decisions about where to go and when to catch a lot of sessions that I otherwise might have missed. My best friends became the people who had the same obsession and ultimately my starvation for the sensation of planing was only fortified. Here I sit, a man whose thoughts are maniacally overrun with one, singular and repeatedly redundant thought:

ME WANT WINDSURF

And me windsurf indeed took place, more so than I ever imagined.

What more fitting word to describe the lusting infatuation I have for windsurfing than "a gross".

In 2010 I windsurfed 144 days.

Planing. No gear over 100L board or 5.6m sail.

An Unusual Session at Linda Mar

Yesterday was forecast to be a solid winter storm heading toward the bay area. This time of year, there are only a handful of sailable days every month. About half of the good-wind-forecast days end up panning out to be planing conditions. Usually the storm winds last about a half hour, and are strongest at sites that are an hour drive from San Francisco in Half Moon Bay. That's why people pack their gear up for the winter around here. Not because they are wind snobs, but because chasing fickle storm winds can end up being very frustrating.

By 11 AM we had gotten a "spike" on the meter. Half Moon Bay's wind meter hit 20, then immediately backed off. For all we knew, that was going to be "our storm". A couple hours went by and the meter hits 20 again, then drops 20 minutes later. We were being toyed with, it was certain. I catch up with Jacob and decide maybe we should go surfing at our favorite kiddie-pool, Linda Mar. Linda Mar is located in Pacifica, California. It has a reputation as "bozo beach" for surfing because it's one of the few places around where the waves aren't always completely and systematically humiliating to an inexperienced surfer. The downside is that it's always really crowded and catching a great wave is difficult because everyone paddles for every wave. Party wave city, forget about going down the line.

Jacob and I got there and it actually looked kinda windy. Hardly any whitecaps, but tons of spray coming off of the tops of the 3-4 foot waves. We always joke about windsurfing this spot. A couple times I've seen it be windy there after storm sailing in Half Moon Bay, but was already too cold and tired to give it a go. This time, we had arrived with the intentions of surfing but ended up rigging 5.0's and 100L boards. There were a few dozen surfers out along the half-mile long beach, much less than usual. They were working pretty hard to stay in the line up because the offshore winds were pushing them out to sea.

I heard the surfers cheering on my way out. I guess seeing someone blasting along on a windsurfer added to their self-validation of lunacy for surfing on such a stormy, ugly day. We got some strange looks, but no one seemed to be too bothered with us. The wind was super gusty. Lots of waiting for waterstarts as well as getting the back hand ripped off the boom.



The wind itself was borderline scary-off-shore. The water outside the break was butter flat. It would have been perfect for freestyle had I had any mind to not be worried about losing ground upwind.


The waves were sometimes 4 feet, maybe a little more. The stronger ones were closing out and throwing pretty hard with all the offshore wind. I didn't endure any terrible over-the-falls experiences, but when I did I was underneath my gear in very shallow water.


The following photo is either the Loch Ness Monster, or me riding a wave port tack. Odds are with the former.

The following photo was a pretty common site. Once you took a wave to the inside you were pretty much at the mercy of the wind shadow and shore break. Also, lining up a beach start is difficult when your gear is being pushed upwind. Hard to explain, but we kept getting back-winded in the impact zone.


There was a walk-of-shame to be done. The only place we could make it in was near the north end of the beach.

My girlfriend took these photos with an iPhone (some through the eyepiece of binoculars). Not too shabby! I'll definitely come back to this spot again to check out the off-shore winds. This session might have been pure luck, or maybe just nobody TRIES to sail here. It was challenging, but at this point I think sailing gusty storm wind on flat water is mainly frustrating. Sailing gusty wind with the odd chance ad a full powered wave turn, now that's fun.