Sunday, August 16, 2009

Surf for Monday – Small swell mix

Monday won’t be much of a surf day.

Well Hurricane Guillermo didn’t end up being much of a swell producer. It wasn’t totally flat…but it came in smaller and less consistent that I thought it would. I did spend the last couple of days surfing around North OC and there were a lot of soft waist-chest high sets and a few shoulder high waves if you were patient (and surfing on the lower tide). I might have saw a shoulder high+ wave a couple of times down the beach…but it was probably some grom surfing it and throwing the perspective off.

Since Guillermo didn’t produce much it looks like we are going to have a weaker mix of fading tropical swell, weak background SW energy, and some minor NW windswell on tap for Monday. Overall it looks like less size and more waiting around for waves than we saw over the weekend.



On Monday the average spots are going to hold around knee high with occasional waist high sets…soft shape most of the day and then almost shut down as the tide goes up in the evening. The top S-SW facing breaks will have some more consistent knee-waist high waves with a few inconsistent chest high sets still trying to break through on the lower tides.

Winds look ok in the morning…sort of variable onshore, not completely light and variable, but not blown out either. Look for W-WSW flow around 2-4 knots in the morning and then onshore winds around 10-12+14 knots by the afternoon.



I don’t think it is going to be that fun tomorrow…mostly mushy soft surf even at the top spots and building tides and onshore winds that flatten it out even more by the afternoon. If you do have to surf try and stick with spots that like the higher tides and have some southern exposure…mostly through the OC and a few areas in San Diego/North LA. Don’t spend a lot of time looking for waves…if you find a halfway OK looking wave, get on it.

Here are the tides…

02:02AM LDT -0.7 L
08:30AM LDT 3.8 H
01:13PM LDT 2.2 L
07:19PM LDT 6.4 H

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

boooooooooooo

Anonymous said...

next week is a work week; week after is a surf week

Andrew said...

Surf may be small this week so perhaps you can chime in on Hurricane Bill in the Atlantic, which at first glance looks like it may set up the best week of surfing on the East Coast in recent history. I have never surfed there but am now seriously contemplating a trip to OBX Thursday through the weekend. oOne question, will TS Claudette cooperate in setting up good wind conditions?

Anonymous said...

Andrew: if you've never surfed OBX (and you don't know someone that can show you around), I would recommend you go to VA Beach or Indian River Inlet in Delaware... OBX is tricky and you might spend more time driving than surfing... Just a thought, from an East Coast transplant...

If you go, hope you score...

Anonymous said...

On OBX: If you stay in Hatteras you probably won't have to travel very far to find a good wave. If you go to VA Beach, the waves will be crowded and the shape won't be nearly as good as OBX. I grew up there, we always took the opportunity to travel the hour or two to surf OBX if we could. Plus, it's way chill there.

Anonymous said...

this is going to sound crazy (sarcasm), but how about buying a ticket to Mainland Mexico instead of the east coast? solid ground swell lining up (fish in a barrel instead of whatever the hell the east coast has in store).