Free HD Surf Cam #22, Das River Jetties. « Solspot

Free HD Surf Cam #22, Das River Jetties. « Solspot

Solspot is stoked to announce our newest sponsor McKenna VW (a great place to buy a VW but the worst to drive past while playing “bug punch”). That's right, Surf City VW has joined the Solspot family and you know what that means. Sponsors keep the site free, sponsors make the site better! With the addition of McKenna VW we are launching FREE HD surf cam #22 River Jetties.

Arguably one of the best FREE HD surf cams in our network it is nestled back in upper Newport. This camera points up at River Jetties and slowly pans down the coast into upper Newport Beach. Depending on when you catch the pan this makes our 4th Huntington Beach or 2nd Newport Beach cam. Either way, we look at as another way for you to score more surf.



Make sure to click the post for more information and some ways to win free swag!

Surf Photos: Super Sunday

Here are a few shots of the W-NW swell that hit on Sunday Feb 28th. It was pretty super-size comboing up with a 6’ high tide…which made for some interesting beach scenes.

These first 2 are screen grabs from the HB city camera…





Here are a few that I shot down at Newport Pier…right before a wave jumped the breakwall and sent my 4 year old scampering into the middle of the street.









And here are a few of Seal Beach from blog reader Joshua…









And finally there was a bunch of other chaos up in Seal where waves were washing over the berms and flooding the parking lot. Check out this slideshow over on Foamez.com’s What the Blank??? blog.

http://www.foamez.com/blog/2010/03/seal-beach-big-waves-friends-crowds-and.html

Surf Break Maps: Newport Beach, Orange County, California

Newport Beach is probably one of the most famous beach areas in Southern California ranking right up there with Malibu, Venice, and (thanks to that horrible faux-reality show) Laguna Beach. From a surf standpoint Newport is a veritable smorgasbord of spots packed into a small section of coastline. In Newport it is possible to surf waves that vary in quality, size, and power and are so close together that they can be reached by a short ride on the beach cruiser.

Newport Beach is located just to the south of Huntington Beach and to the north of Corona Del Mar. Most of Newport Beach is actually the northern peninsula of Newport Bay (often referred to as Newport Harbor) and protects one of the most expensive waterfront locations in Southern California.

The north end of the beach is anchored by the river mouth of the Santa Ana River, which is known as the Santa Ana River Jetties, or sometimes just the “rivermouth”. This part of the beach faces mostly to the SW and runs for about 2 miles before hitting Newport Pier. There are a series of short jetties that line up with the various Newport street names…like 56th street for example. At the end of this SW stretch of beach is a spot called Blackies which generally encompasses the area from the 28th street jetty to Newport Pier.

As you move past the pier the beach angles slightly more to the south…(S-SSW to be exact). The transition from the SW facing beach to the S facing stretch is generally referred to as Newport Point even though it is only loosely shaped like a proper “point”.

The S facing stretch of beach is a little under 3-miles long and runs from Newport Pier to the north jetty that protects the entrance to Newport Harbor. There are a number of surf/swim areas along this stretch of Newport but surf shape is generally better in the more northern areas. That being said this part of Newport Beach is home to its most famous wave “The Wedge”, which is snuggled right next to the north jetty of the harbor entrance.

The Surf

Like I said above the surf in Newport is amazingly varied…when you lump it all together it sort of breaks down like this: If there is a decent swell in the water you can pretty much find a wave that will suit your abilities, equipment, or just general ocean comfort level. Unfortunately these waves are not always the easiest to pin down because parts of Newport definitely work better than others as the combination of swell direction and swell periods change.

There are really three big factors that almost always need to be accounted for in the Newport surf landscape…

1. The swell (size, direction, and period)
2. The Sand (where it is and where it isn’t)
3. Newport Submarine Canyon

Okay the first two are kind of no brainers, particularly if you have read my Ocean Science 101: How our Surf is made posts, but the 3rd point is a little more obscure and often overlooked.

There is actually a pretty deep submarine canyon just offshore of Newport Beach…in fact the end of the canyon extends to a point just a few hundred feet to the southwest of Newport Pier… and this canyon does some pretty crazy things to the surf pushing into Newport. The Newport Submarine Canyon can act like part amplifier, part traffic cop, and part deflector. I guess you could think of it sort of like a really messed up freeway interchange for swells. The combination of deep water depths close to the coast along an unevenly mixed sea-floor allow swells to shoal rapidly and dramatically, wrapping around bends in the canyon’s edges and eventually being re-routed along new trajectories as they head to the beach.



“Exactly” how the canyon is going to affect the surf depends on what sort of energy is in the water…swell direction, size, and swell-period are all super important and will greatly affect the most important question of “where will it be best” as they are mixed in different proportions.

What is funny is that a lot of Newport surfers actually have a good idea of how the canyon is going to affect the surf…they just don’t know that the canyon is doing the work. If you are a local and you know that Blackies is good on a short-period W swell, or that the point works on a short-period S swell, or 56th street works best on a long-period S-SW swell then you already know “how” the canyon influences Newport’s waves. (I will have more specific info on how the canyon affects certain spots when you get to the descriptions of the individual breaks.)


Blackball


Waaaay back in 1966 Orange County lifeguards started flying the “Black Ball” flag in an effort to protect swimmers in the surf zone from dangerous (and usually unleashed) surfboards. I do believe that Newport Beach was one of the first beaches in California to use the blackball flag (but my grasp of history can be spotty sometimes).

Newport still has the infamous blackball rules. So if you see the yellow flag with the black ball in the center then it means that no hard surfboards are allowed in the water…even if you are outside of the swim zone. This is for public safety and usually the Newport Lifeguards don’t abuse their authority…in fact Newport gives their guards a bit more latitude than other beaches and the guys in the towers can keep a beach open to hard surfboards longer (as long as there isn’t a danger to swimmers).

There are a couple of areas that have full time blackball rules…or very stringent time periods when they enforce it. The first is around 40th street in the jetties, they have a full-time blackball all year that allows swimmers and bodyboarders in the water, no hard surfboards.

The other area is the Wedge. They enforce a “no floatation device” black ball (no bodyboards, skimboards, or anything…just you and your flippers) from 10am through 5pm. This is only enforced from May 1st through October 1st, which just happens to be prime south swell season.

Parking and Crowds

Parking in Newport can be a bitch most of the time…even for people that live on the peninsula. In the summer it gets even worse…it can take you forever to drive down to the end of the peninsula and back out again. The city also likes to torment visitors by cleaning streets on certain days and at certain times…so if it is suddenly easy to find a parking spot make sure to check the signs…you may be in street sweeping area. To make matters worse the Newport Parking Enforcement (aka the Newport Beach Revenue Service) are pretty on the ball…you spend even a few minutes in a no-parking zone and you will probably get nailed.

4th of July

The 4th of July in Newport is pretty sweet…though over the years it has gotten out of hand a few times so the city likes to keep a pretty tight leash on it. Usually part of Balboa Ave is blocked off to car traffic and everyone rides their beach cruisers, skateboards, roller skates, lawn chairs with wheels, dirtboards, and any other sort of people powered craft, from party to party. It is part parade, part singles scene, and at times can be total chaos. It is usually semi-kid friendly in the morning but as more and more drinking goes on through the day it starts to get a bit rowdy…personally I am surprised that it doesn’t get tear-gassed more often than it does.


On to the surf spots!



The surf in Newport is generally broken into 7 areas…but I have included a couple of others, Harbor Entrance and Baby Beach, which are part of the landscape but are sort of gadget waves.

Here are the areas:

Santa Ana River Jetties
56th Street
Lower Newport Jetties
Blackies
Newport Point
Lower Newport Streets: (Schoolyards, Balboa Pier, and the lettered streets)
The Wedge
Harbor Entrance
Corona Del Mar: Baby Beach

Surf Break Maps: Santa Ana River Jetties, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The Santa Ana River Jetties is actually one large area…but it has several distinct sub-areas. Most people consider the zone that starts directly south of the Brookhurst Outflow and runs to a couple hundred feet south of the Santa Ana River Mouth to be the actual River Jetties surf spot. Personally, because the influence of the river mouth is so great, I feel that you should include all of the coast down to about Prospect St. (which is a couple of hundred yards north of the 56th street jetty).



The northern part of the SNA River Jetties is one of the most visible surf spots in Newport. You can see it as you drive over the PCH bridges that separate Huntington Beach from Newport. It is also sort of a weird no-mans land between the two cities. It is actually managed by the county and partially by the state beach. It has a separate lifeguard agency, from either Newport Guards or HB State Beach, and even the single tower doesn’t have a number on it…just the letter “R”, which I like to think stands for River Tower. What is really nice about this set-up is that they don’t blackball this area…it stays surfable all day even when the other beaches have banned hard surfboards.

The River Jetties has three rock jetties that were put in place by the Army Corp of Engineers to stabilize the sand flow at the mouth of the Santa Ana River. Two of the jetties sit on the north side of the river and the other, which is a little shorter, rests on the south side. It is the combination of the river, these jetties, and the various sand transport currents that helps to build a part of the most consistent sand bar in North Orange County. The bar generally starts up around the Brookhurst jetties and then ends down past the river proper.

While most of the sand stays around the river it does occasionally make its way down the beach…and after good rains or big swells you can have some excellent sand bars down in “official” Newport territory.

Overall the waves in this area are pretty good most of the time and can be excellent on the right swell mix. The sandbar helps keep it breaking through all but the most extreme high tides. The waves are steep, hollow, and can get pretty closed out on bigger S and WNW swells. Combo swells work best at this spot, like most of the breaks in the region, so expect it to get good when you have the magic swell combo mix of S and WNW energy and offshore winds.

This spot actually does pretty well on windswell too. The shallower sandbar helps the shorter-period swell set up further off the beach, and in a more energetic fashion that a deeper bar would.

One big drawback about the River Jetties, and Brookhurst, is the water quality. The combination of pollutants from the storm drains and the junk that comes down the Santa Ana river keeps water-quality on the marginal side most of the year. If there is any sort of rainfall it knocks the water quality right into the hazardous range.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: SE-SW (160-210+) and W-NW (260-290)
Best Wind: N-NE-E, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand…really shallow sand, and few rocks near the jetties
Best Season: Summer, Fall, and Winter can all be equally great. Fall is the most consistent.
Crowds: Most of the time not too bad. But it can get super crowded. You see heavy crowds when it is the only sandbar working or on weekends, particularly in the summer.

Surf Break Maps: 56th Street, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The jetty at 56th street is the most popular and famous surf spots in the Newport Jetties area. It is sometimes called the “100-hottest yards” (and other similar sorts of nonsense by the marketers in the surf industry)…and the name stems more from the type of surf talent that surfs there than the actual surf itself, which is probably a bad indicator as to the perceived mental health of our sport. In general the wave is basically on par with what you find at the Rivermouth but, due to the presence of the jetty, the line-up and the wave’s sections are a lot more stable.

That being said it is still a great magnet for surfing ability for both pros and amateurs. It has a lot of things going for it…it is a good wave, it is close to shore, easy to photograph, and when you get the right swell mix it gets really hollow.

The jetty does most of the work setting up the surf at 56th. It stops and shapes the sand on both the north and south side and can even form small paddle channels as the swell gets bigger. The semi-permanent sandbar around the jetty actually shifts from season to season…setting up a better left in the summer and a better right-hander on the south side in the winter.
It breaks year round and can actually stay a little more surfable than the more open beaches to the north when adverse winds and conditions move through the area. It breaks best on longer-period S-SW swells, short-period S swells (like the ones from Hurricanes or tropical storms), medium/short period W swells, and it can get really good on combo swells that have both W and S in the mix



56th sees some influence from the Newport Submarine Canyon…in particular it sees a cool boost in wave size when we start getting a shorter-period S swell. What is funny is that most Newport surfers automatically think “THE POINT” when a hurricane starts moving through when 56th can get just as good with a fraction of the crowd. What happens is that while some of the energy that is refracted by the canyon heads back towards Newport Point the other portion of that energy is bent towards 56th and will help to shape that wedge of a left that starts to break north of the jetty. It also helps that the sand is usually shaped pretty good by hurricane season and that the shorter period swell is a bit more makeable due to its speed…add those things together and you can pick off a few silly barrels.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: SE-SW (160-210+) and W-NW (260-290)
Best Wind: N-NE-E, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand…really shallow sand, and few rocks near the jetties
Best Season: Summer, Fall, and Winter can all be equally great. Fall is the most consistent.
Crowds: Yes it gets crowded…and the crowd can get ugly sometimes. There are a lot of guys that rip in the line-up and plenty of people shooting photos/video from the beach when there is a good swell.

Surf Break Maps: Lower Newport Jetties, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The lower Newport Jetties are sort of like 56th street but without all of the bells and whistles. The jetties are a little shorter, the sand doesn’t groom out quite as well, and it doesn’t really get that great until you get a good combo swell.

In fact the lower jetties are actually notoriously known for being the place to avoid a large swell…it acts as a good training area for beginners, a few mellower waves for longboarders who don’t want to battle the scene at Blackies, and it even has a bodyboard-only area around 40th street, (which is actually just a fulltime blackball area but it is always filled with bodyboarders).



The lower jetties is made up from a series of jetties (I know that I am a dumbass) that help to brace the area from 56th street down through Blackies. Each of these jetties is affectionately known by its corresponding street. There are jetties at 52nd, 48th, 44th, 40th, 36th, 32nd, and 28th streets…(sensing a pattern yet?). The combo of jetties and number street names make it very easy to tell your friends where you are surfing, or to direct hordes of mindless surf monsters to your semi-secret sandbar by cell phone.

The jetties were actually put in place to help stop the erosion of the beach by the consistent, longshore bar current, which is the north-to-south sand transport current that runs along the California coast. (There will be a test on that later). The jetties are mostly successful but the City of Newport Beach does have to replenish the beach with new sand from time to time…this is sometimes accomplished by dredging sand out of the Santa Ana river…or parts of Newport Harbor, both of which I am sure are very clean and sanitary (hmmm bird flu anyone?).

Anyway…the best swell for the area is actually a short-period W swell…or a good short-period W with some S swell to break it up. The W swells actually get broken up and refracted out by the Newport Submarine Canyon so you can get some semi-peaky shape without a cross-up swell…but the extra energy definitely helps to groom the corners.

When a short-period W swell, (really you want almost a windswell but with just slightly longer periods…basically what I would usually associate with a storm swell), hits you will see the biggest surf around the Blackies area but the jetties just to the north will be almost the same size…you actually see the size drop off as you head further north until you move out of the 40-48th street deadzone…and then size starts to pick up again as get closer to 56th. When you add in the S swell it can actually help to shape up the middle area a little better…expanding the surf zone.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: Short-medium period W swell (260-280) and a touch of S swell.
Best Wind: N-NE-E, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand and few rocks near the jetties
Best Season: Fall and Winter. It is usually more consistent in the winter but cleaner in the fall.
Crowds: The crowds are not too bad…but the surf areas can get a little claustrophobic near the jetties. Weekends, large swells, and good surf in the jetties will help to pack ‘em in at times.

Surf Break Maps: Blackies, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

Blackies is a stretch of beach located between the 28th street jetty and the Newport Pier. It has a style and presence that is unique to the Newport surf scene and can only be found in a few other areas in Orange County (Doheney’s Boneyard, Old Mans in San Onofre, and sometimes Bolsa Chica all have a similar feel but don’t quite have the same mix).

Blackies is part longboard spot, part surf/social club, part beach-scene. There is a public (but metered) parking lot that butts right up to a small sea-wall along the beach. If you manage to pull the rock-star parking along the front you can sit in your heated car, sipping coffee, while you watch the sets slip through. It is hard to define Blackies from the “surf spot” perspective, or at least if you only looked at the quality of the surf you would miss out a lot of what the break has to offer.

It is generally a longboard wave, but not necessarily a beginner break, even though you find a lot of beginners in the water there. You have the full spectrum of surfers in the water, from little kids, old dudes on vintage deathlogs, Juinor College guys that are trying to be 70’s throwbacks, weekend warriors, and the eternal dawn patrollers…all of them in the water…at the same time. Weekends when there is a decent swell running it sort of reminds me of this riot I saw at the circus one time…total colorful chaos.

The wave itself is decent, but sort of soft most of the time. Takeoffs are easy and the wave sort of rolls a little bit before it starts to break. Sometimes on the lower tides you will get a little faster drop and quicker sections along the inside but they aren’t as critical as other Newport Breaks.

The main peak at Blackies is right in the middle of the beach between the jetty and the pier…most people consider that area to be Blackies “proper”…but really most of the beach up to the 28th St. jetty breaks about the same.

Blackies really starts to shine on larger short/medium-period W swells…which are really only generated by nearby storms and sometimes heavy winds in the local waters. The shorter period westerly direction passes over the deeper parts of the Sub Marine canyon and refract as it gets closer to shore. As the refraction occurs it bends some of the swell back on itself and has a tendency to cross up right at the Blackies peak and up through the lower jetties. This cross up action speeds the wave up, sets up some workable shoulders, and generally improves shape a ton compared to a normal Blackies wave.



Unfortunately these swells are on the rare side, are rather short lived, and usually bring along a ton of junky weather and onshore winds. Your best bet is to try and catch Blackies either right before or right after a storm hits…sometimes the winds will lay down, or shift semi-offshore and you can score a few really fun waves before conditions fall apart again.

Personally I don’t think summer is as fun at Blackies as it is in other parts of Newport. There isn’t a ton of swell that makes it into the break and after the dawn patrol starts to break up the beach gets super crowded, parking is a joke, and they have a tendency to blackball pretty quickly…even on the weekdays.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: Short-medium period W swell (260-280) and a touch of S swell.
Best Wind: N-NE-E, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand
Best Season: Fall, Winter and early Spring. It is usually more consistent in the winter but cleaner in the fall.
Crowds: Yeah most of the time there is a crowd. You can still get a few waves if you are patient but expect to paddle battle for most of them.

Surf Break Maps: Newport Point, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

Newport Point is located right on the bend of the Newport Peninsula where it goes from facing SW to facing due S. The wave is just south of the Newport Pier and is sort of lined up with 18th street.

For all intents and purposes I consider Newport Point to be a “gadget wave”…in the sense that it doesn’t really break (that well) all that often. Granted when it gets the perfect mix of swell it can look and sort of act like Pipeline letting you get shacked right out of your gourd. Really though, 9 times out of 10, even when the swell looks right, it just doesn’t live up to your expectations (or you are like me and realize that you don’t really want to surf Pipeline because it scares the poop right out of you and even smaller less deadly versions make you want to surf Trestles that much more).

I think that part of the lure of Newport Point is that it requires a short-period S swell (around 10-12 second periods) to make the wave start to work…and you can only get a S swell with periods that short (and wave heights big enough) from a tropical storm of some sort…usually a hurricane. For people on the west coast, hurricanes are surf bringers. They have us waxing up new boards, thinking about warm water waves from Santa Barbara down through Cabo…it is only natural that we start to romanticize surf spots that only work when there is a huge well positioned tropical storm in their swell windows.



To actually surf Newport Point when it is working you need to have the short-period S-SE swell. A portion of the swell bounces out of the Newport Submarine Canyon and bends back towards the Point right as another set moves in directly from the S. These two waves will combo up right at the point setting up some fast, hollow sections…both rights and lefts…but mostly lefts. The bigger and more stacked up the incoming swell is the better the Point seems to work.

Back in the day when there weren’t surf forecasters, weather satellites, and wave models, Newport Point was sort of a secret spot…it wasn’t consistent enough to be on the surf radar for anyone but the handful of Newport surfers. Now that all the modern world has caught up it is pretty easy to spot the minimum conditions that let the spot work…unfortunately that means that you won’t ever be out alone once the Point really starts to get magical.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: Short-medium period SE-S swell (160-180 degrees and 10-12 second swell periods).
Best Wind: N-NE, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand
Best Season: Summer and Early Fall…hurricane season
Crowds: Most of the time it is empty...but expect to wade through some fiberglass if a hurricane is in the swell window.

Surf Break Maps: Lower Newport Streets: (Schoolyards, Balboa Pier, and the lettered streets), Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The lower streets in Newport…which is basically the area from Newport Point through Balboa Pier and down into the lettered streets of the Balboa Peninsula isn’t really the greatest surf zone. In fact most of it is mix of shore break with a few sandbars setting up a marginally more rideable section.

Most of the time it is on the small dumpy side, unless there is a big S swell in the water then it gets big dumpy and walled up. Occasionally you can get a mix of S swell and bit of W-WSW windswell to cross it up and set up a rideable peak…but honestly I think I can count the number of times I actually saw someone riding a decent wave in these areas on two hands (and this is mostly still in the number streets closer to Newport Point it gets even more shorebreaky as you get closer to Balboa Pier and the lettered streets).

Now while it isn’t great for surfing you can still have a good time bodysurfing and bodyboarding the dumpy closeouts when the swell gets bigger…and the smaller days are actually semi-decent for taking some of the smaller kids out to splash around.

There really isn’t a “magic” swell for this area…just a better than average mix…and if it ever looks really good along this stretch you can rest assured that it will be absolutely firing everywhere else in Orange County. The best mix, like I mentioned above, is actually a moderate sized S-SW swell and bit of short-medium period W-WSW swell to cross it up.

Try and stick to the number streets, and the area with the playground on the sand, (sometimes called Schoolyards)…the further down the peninsula you go the worse the shape will get.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: a mix of S swell (170-190) and W-WSW swell (240-270)
Best Wind: N-NE, light-moderate Santa Ana winds are the best.
Sea Floor: Sand
Best Season: Summer
Crowds: Most of the time it is almost completely empty of surfers…can get a few people in the surf zone on the hot summer weekends.

Surf Break Maps: Wedge, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The Wedge is probably the most famous wave in Newport Beach…it is definitely the most dynamic and dangerous wave. It is located at the very end of the Balboa Peninsula snuggled right up next to the beach side of the northern jetty of the Newport Harbor entrance.

The wave itself is a freak of human engineering…the Army Corp of Engineer designed and built the harbor jetty, which makes the wave what it is…defining everything from its shape to its power.

Way back in antiquity…there was supposedly an outstanding surfable wave along the entrance to Newport Bay, with rideable sections on both on the Newport and Corona Del Mar sides. Unfortunately WWII changed the needs of the West Coast’s harbors and bays and they had to put in the entrance jetties to prevent silting of the entrance…likely destroying what was a good Newport wave. In its place we got a mutant of wave that can put on such a show that hundreds of people will jam the beach just to watch it crush people. Personally I am not sure if it was that great of a trade-off but there are plenty of near-rabid bodysurfers, skimboarders, and bodyboarders that would disagree with me.

Here is some footage of the wedge



There are actually two waves in the Wedge area...one is the Wedge proper right next to the jetty and the second wave is called another nasty shorebreak of a wave called Cylinders, which is up the beach a short ways.



The Wedge
The Wedge is a product of the jetty and the steep drop-off of the sea-floor as you move away from the beach. The Wedge works almost exclusively on S swells, and the longer the period and the larger the swell the better the wave starts to work. What happens it the S swell travels almost directly down the length of the jetty…the part of the wave that intersects the jetty rocks starts to pile up on top of itself and will even spill over the top of the jetty into the harbor entrance on bigger swells. This mix of the normal wave and the bulge will eventually reach the beach and the energy that has piled up on the rocks finds itself shoaling and reflecting back away from the jetty at the same time…this folds the energy back into the more normal wave and suddenly you get the massive wedge peak forming with all of this doubled-up energy that is forced to break in a very shallow water depth…sometimes even on completely dry sand.

One of the byproducts of the double-up and the shallow water is that it throws some incredibly hollow sections and you can get super deep in the barrel before the wave tries to sand off your face. You can get seriously messed up at this place…on big swells it is common to see guys carted away with broken collarbones and sometimes broken vertebrae from hitting the sand at full speed.

There is also weird subwave that a lot of the wedge riders try to capitalize on…you get this bounceback from the jetty that is moving almost completely perpendicular to the bigger wedge peak…they call this the “side wave”. You can actually use the side wave to boost your speed into the approaching wedge, helping you backdoor the section. I would say even if you have a lot of practice with the side wave you still have about a 40% chance of this leading to disaster…but it is a lot of fun to watch so keep trying.

The wedge can be a legitimate big-wave…on the right swell it can break the 18-20’ range…maybe even bigger. As the wave gets bigger it starts to break further off the beach…it is still a heavy section but it starts to get slightly more surfable. On every big swell there will be at least a few guys that paddle out on surfboards once the blackball drops. There isn’t really a good way to exit the wave once you have caught it so these surfers sort of go for style points pulling in deep and hoping that they don’t get wrapped up with the board when the wedge finally punches their ticket.

There used to be a series of power poles running along the jetty so occasionally you may hear one of the older wedge guys talking about a swell in terms of “power poles”. This is actually referring to the number of poles away from the beach the wave was breaking even with. The bigger the swell the higher the number of poles…a 6 or 7 power pole swell would have most people pooping kittens.

In short the wedge at any size is a pretty formidable wave…and you should be very comfortable swimming, bodysurfing, and getting pounded by the surf before heading out even on moderate S swells…as it gets bigger it is better left to the experts and the crazies. (Which really are one and the same.)




Cylinders
Cylinders is also a by-product of the jetty but it isn’t quite as dramatic as the wedge…it definitely doesn’t get as big…but it can be just as heavy. The wave at Cylinders is formed by reflection from the jetty…some of the energy that piles up along the jetty as the swell heads toward the wedge sets to bounce off before it actually lands in the pocket. This excess energy skips over the wedge area and hits at Cylinders…as the swells get a little more S-SW Cylinders will start to get more defined as a hollow right section that breaks back toward the Wedge’s left. Again this isn’t a “surfable” wave but it can be a decent bodyboard, skim, bodysurf spot.

Cylinders seems to break almost exclusively on the beach…it never really sets up further off in deeper water…which is why it can beat you up just as fast as the wedge and sometimes faster on the medium sized swells.

Blackball
The Wedge has a very unique blackball rule that was helped into place by the longstanding crew of bodysurfers that have called the wedge home for nearly ever. From 10am through 5pm during the months of May through October there are no floatation devices allowed in the water. Period. No bodyboards, no skimboards, no floaty inflatable circles with sea-horses on them, nothing. From 10 to 5 it is body surfing only.



Why can’t we all just get along
It is easy to see why the wedge crew wanted a little alone time in the lineup…outside of the backball hours during a decent swell it can be a mad house of skimboards, bodyboards, and bodysurfers flying everywhere, calling each other off, and occasionally fighting it out on the sand. The problem arises mostly because the three different disciplines require different take-off spots but all eventually overlap once the wave starts breaking…this means that it is hard to know whose turn it is. So what happens is that everyone goes at once, get into each others way, get mad and start punching people much like myself after a bottle or two (too much) of whiskey. There isn’t really a solution to the issue short of taking numbers…so the best we can do is be down there with our video cameras to make sure the fisticuffs get posted on YouTube.



To Sum Up
I spent a lot of freaking time on the wedge in this map series…so I will hurry here to get to the point. S swell, the longer the swell period the better, makes the wedge work. The bigger the swell the better the shape. Oh yeah expect an ass kicking from something…either human or mother nature…and if you don’t get one from either then you will be pleasantly surprised. (it isn’t really that bad…but I like to expect the worst).

Spot details:
Best swell direction: S swell, big freaking S swells with looooong periods
Best Wind: Offshore (duh...) actually light winds are fine and it can handle some onshore bump as it gets bigger.
Sea Floor: Coarse Sand, shells, and pieces of teeth from the guy that just took off before you.
Best Season: Spring, Summer and Early fall.
Crowds: Lots of crowds…a crew of guys on it every time it breaks. The crowd gets bigger as the swell gets bigger. It pays off to pay attention to the blackball rules.

Surf Break Maps: Harbor Entrance, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

The Harbor Entrance wave is definitely a gadget wave. It takes a hell of a lot of swell to start a wave breaking in the deep water of the harbor entrance.

When we have an extra-large S swell there will be left section that forms on the South Jetty of the Harbor entrance, out past the bait tank. The wave never really moves away from the jetty rocks to you sort of surf the same distance away from the jetty as the wave moves down the length of the entrance…it is sort of hard to explain but makes perfect sense when you see it.

Unfortunately it is very illegal to surf in the Harbor Entrance…no matter what the swell is doing. If you do paddle out expect to get a fine somewhere in the “hundreds of dollars” range.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: A massive S swell.
Best Wind: Light Santa Ana (N-NE winds).
Sea Floor: Jetty rocks and sand waaaay deep down.
Best Season: Spring, Summer and Early fall.
Crowds: Just pissed off harbor patrol guys.

Surf Break Maps: Corona Del Mar: Baby Beach, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

Baby Beach on the Corona Del Mar side of the harbor entrance is another gadget wave. Most of the time Baby Beach is basically flat…the waves are mellow shorebreak and can barely be ridden by the small kids that flock to this place…in short it is a great place to take your baby.

It does get surfable every once in a blue moon…but you need a massive S-SE swell…basically the same type of swell that would make the Harbor Entrance start to work.



The wave is a right-hander that breaks along the jetty (the south harbor jetty) that faces toward baby beach…the water is pretty deep so the rideable section stays close to the rocks until it reaches shore…then it closes out.

Basically it isn’t a great wave but it can be fun to pick off a few when the other spots are getting too big…and it is always a trip to tell someone that you surfed baby beach on the last big swell.

Spot details:
Best swell direction: A massive S swell.
Best Wind: Light Santa Ana (N-NE winds).
Sea Floor: Jetty rocks and sand.
Best Season: Spring, Summer and Early fall.
Crowds: Lots of little kids on the inside…and near panicked lifeguards when the swell is big enough to make baby beach break.