my stomach is in my chest

thanks for all of the concern fellas. i made it, but i struggled. it was big, mean and cold. i made sure to poop beforehand and i took a big pee in my wetsuit before paddling out. i knew the wax in the ding was a bad idea but i didn't know what else to do. i also threw a few stickers and packing tape on for good measure. it sucks b/c my ding repair guy also shaped the board. he's gonna be very disappointed.

for me, the waves were mondo big. about equal to the biggest waves i've surfed. some of the bigger sets i feel comfortable saying were an easy 10 ft. big spitting barrels. it was just me and my buddy out there. the paddle out was easy. there's a beach between two rocky points and we paddled from there and hooked to the left a few hundred yards to where the sets were coming in. after a few more minutes of positioning my buddy finally snagged one. he came up hollering about 50 yds down. a few minutes later my wave came and i went for it. it was a left and i'm regular footed so i angled and paddled and as i'm pushing myself up i look down this massive face and i committed. i stomped my front foot down and dropped. i made it down most of the face but i couldn't keep my balance so i fell back into the face. i had another chance at another left but same thing i couldn't keep my balance.

i was getting my confidence up and feeling fairly comfortable but then a big set came and killed it all. the problem with this spot is that it's a rock shelf. there's a few rocks in the line-up and when you get inside it's rock city. normally it's a low tide spot but we were surfing it at high tide (probably why no one else was out). so anyways a big set comes and i duck dive the first wave. i start paddling and duck dive the second one but i get kind of slammed and lose my board. i come up and see the next wave coming but there's not time to grab my board. i'm sucking air hard and my head feels like it's going to explode from the cold and the last thing i want to do is go back under water. so i did a **** job of diving under the wave and got tossed. i came up sputtering, swallowing water, and all of the fight i had had was gone. I was just lucky there wasn’t another set coming. I made it pretty far out before I had to duck dive another wave and by then I had calmed down. Mentally I was done though. I had come about 30 yards from the jetty and normally you can exit that way but with the tide so high the waves were crashing directly into it. Any closer and I would have had to worry about getting slammed on the rocks hidden underwater (I mentioned before I’ve busted two boards on those rocks).

Anyways, I hung out until my buddy was ready to go in. he was saying one more one more until he got pushed in by a couple of good sets and had to deal w/ a similar situation. He actually wound up with a fat lip from getting his board slammed into his face.

I hate admitting I got skunked but I don’t know any of you guys anyways so whatever. It was a good reminder of the power of the ocean. If and when I’m faced with similar conditions again I’ll go cuz I’m not a *****. But damn man **** can get real fast and it’s good to keep that in mind.

Happy surfing and no I’m not gonna apologize for the short novel.

 

thanks for the support man.

i hear ya on going to crowded spots. i usually feel safer w/ more guys out when it's that big. but we're talking mass in the dead of winter. there might've been 3 guys at the other potential spot and it's just as sketchy rocks-wise. we made an unconventional decision hitting a low tide spot at high tide but given the size i still think it was the right call. the waves were f*cking macking

 

I don't know how else to defend myself except to say "bro do you even bench"?