Bluebird Surf

My friend sent this over to me the other day.  I wasn’t there when these guys were passing through, but had heard that Joe Curren and Dan Malloy had scored some good east coast waves while visiting a few years back.  Some great photos to be found on Joe Curren’s site.

http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=61318921,t=1,mt=video,ap=0
Watch On Surfari: Taiwan online at EZTV Links

Time traveling back to my own Eisbach Adventure in the late 90’s.  It’s a lot harder than it looks…and colder too.

Luckily its been tough to gauge size without humans to provide scale.  Such is the dilemma we all face when going for the dawn patrol.  Not uncommon to get in over your head as many of us have experienced this winter.

Came across a good post via Stoke Report‘s tweet stream that I wanted to share here.  Click this link to read about ‘Playing with the bull’.

The swell arrived yesterday in solid form.  Going from about 5ft to 10ft+ through the course of the day.

The only guy out that I could see

Drops into a solid one and charges across the face

Real smooth like

As he makes his way along, the wave starts to get a bit more exciting

Maybe a little bowly section that causes him to stall a bit

As it hits the inside bar it starts to stand up higher as he shoots down the line

Quickly making his way to the inside, for better or for worse

Starts to wall up again and being pretty far inside

Nearing the end of the ride you can start to see what will await him when he kicks out

Ho brah, need to think about an exit strategy right about now.

..he probably has no idea what’s in store for him at this point.

Kicks out of the foam and has some stacks of water to contend with…hard to tell where the sets start and end on a day like this

Just one of four sets waves to land directly on his head….all bigger than the one he was riding

Leash snapped after wave two and sends him swimming

Board recovered on the far inside and he takes one home

Feels really good to be on the sand having taken on a beast and getting a great ride and then enduring a huge four wave set on the head

Beautiful sunset that reflects the beauty, power, and darkness of the beach we call home.

Typical flow of waveriding.

Excited…

Ooh look at that

Ooh that’s nice too, am I in the right spot?

Oh yeah…compression, can’t wait to see what this one does.

anticipation

feeling good

back to the source

what a ride

kick out and look at what’s behind it.

Just a typical day of fleeting moments captured with the GoPro.

Nice swell this week in the range of way too scary big to more human sized proportions.  The swell seems to be dropping fast today with beautiful hollow DOH A-frames still marching in every 7 minutes or so.  There were a handful of guys out this morning sampling the clean lines on their 7’+ boards to handle all the water moving.  Thinking this afternoon may just get better with the tide.

Here are a few photos shot over the past few days…

One of the best lefts in my neighborhood doing a lumpy version of its thing.  The right is fun too, mostly just a big wall on days like this.

Hard to capture the size and power that a wave out here produces.  Here is a shot of a guy on a respectable board trying to stay close to the power source.

This guy was just milking his all the way to the inside so that he can get as far as he can into the channel before paddling back out.

You’ll get the occasional section that will go top to bottom and start grinding…hard to tee it up, but if you can hang on you get a nice little slingshot action.

Some of the smaller waves had everyone sharing whether they liked it or not.  Karma got this guy out front and he ended up face planting just after this was taken.

The other guy didn’t really have anywhere to go either.

If you were patient you could get one of these which would hold up all the way through.  I had one on Christmas Day that put a grin from ear to ear and cleared the Eggnog fog flowing through me.

Happy New Year!!  2010 here we come!!

Very cool idea that will have you saying ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’

to all!!  These were taken over the past couple days…but today was absolutely epic with only a few lucky ones catching the goods.  I had the wrong lens with me, but may post one shot from today a bit later.  I paddled out at 4:45 and caught the last thirty minutes of light.  Took off on one of the most perfect and solid waves I’ve ever had at OB.  DOH sets and glassy perfection.  What more could you ask for on Christmas!