Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Wednesday’s Waves – last chance to surf in 2008

Wednesday won’t really be a “surf day” but there will be a few waves to ride if you have the right gear (and an open minded attitude).

Just looking at the surf here on Tuesday and it looks like a little more local windswell managed to creep in from the outer waters...and while it got pretty hosed by the higher morning tide it did improve in size and shape by the afternoon as the tide started to drop. By improve I mean that it went from flat to about knee-high with a few mushy waist high waves on the best sets.

Wednesday looks about the same but with a little more windswell and just a touch more general background energy. Most spots will start off on the slow/mushy side thanks to a building morning tide...but will have improving shape as we drop to the lower tide in the afternoon. As the tide evens out we should see consistent knee high-knee high+ surf at the average spots and some waist-chest high sets at the top WNW-NW facing standouts. Again shape will still be sort of gutless...but a weak mushy wave is better than total flatness.

Winds look good again as well...light and variable to light offshore for the morning and then only marginally onshore out of the NW around 10-knots for the afternoon.

Since a lot of us have a holiday tomorrow...or at least a partial one...I think your best bet is to take ‘er easy in the morning, let the air warm up and start thinking about a surf as the tide starts dropping. If you have to surf early then try and get on it at sunup...since the building tide is going to swamp it out pretty fast. Make sure to bring your small wave gear too...longboards will be best...but you might be able to get away with a fish at the top spots if you are a smaller surfer/a teenage girl/you really rip/ or can somehow defy the laws of physics.

Here are the tides...

04:31AM LST 2.5 L
10:20AM LST 5.0 H
05:48PM LST 0.0 L

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pulled the longboard out this afternoon and caught a few glassy knee-high sets as the tide drained out.

Conditions don't get much better than this, which is why it was pretty crowded up & down the coast. Still, it was pretty mellow since no one really seemed to care except to get some rays.

Anonymous said...

Isn't December supposed to have a least one massive swell. The beginning of dec 07 was epic.

KennyandtheSkull said...

I'm going to surf tomorrow and drink a beer out there. Thats the only happening thing going on out there!

Anonymous said...

I actually had a somewhat good session today. All the reports said it was gonna be like 1-2 feet, and where I was (which shall remain nameless so I can hit it up again tomorrow) it was consistently 3-4 feet as the tide was going out in the early afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised considering I have not surfed in almost 2 weeks due to the crap we have been going through. Beautiful day, too; no wind and plenty o'sunshine!

Anonymous said...

that last guy lied

Anonymous said...

Nope. HB was consistently knee high with occasional waist high sets every 10 minutes or so. Now, HB is blocked by both Catalina & PV and has a very narrow window provided by the San Pedro channel, which is why OC really doesn't break that well in the winter. (With HB being the best of the worst.)

But if you go north a mere 35 miles, there's a spot that sucks in every remnant of NPac energy from any angle. That's where the previous poster probably surfed. I lived there for years and I can verify that it can be head high when everywhere else is absolutely flat.

Of course, come Apr-Sept, that spot, like SD, goes dormant - aided in part by good 'ole PV (while, conversely, OC goes off), which is why everyone plays volleyball.