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Chic Chat: Small Surf Smiles To a beginning surfer, small waves are gifts sent by God. When I first learned to surf, I was one of only a small group of female surfers in the area. Every morning before school, two guys picked me up to take me to surf/p.e. at Torrance beach. As I sat in the backseat of their beat up car amidst wax, sandy wetsuits, and stinky towels that hadn’t seen the light of day in weeks, I listened to their predictions of how big the waves would be and silently prayed that it would be small. Luckily for me, the surf in Redondo Beach is usually small by most standards, but on those rare occasions when huge north swells parade down the coast, Redondo Beach turns into a giant washing machine of whitewater closeouts that are scary even to look at. So I did what any sane beginning surfer would do, I prayed for small playful waves. |
Now, several years later, after surviving the consistently big swells of the El Nino winter and powerful waves at Blacks, Puerto Escondido, and Pipeline, my idea of what constitutes a "big and scary" wave has changed dramatically. While I still don’t particularly enjoy paddling out at a beach break when the waves are huge and thumping, I love the feeling of dropping in on a big powerful wave. I especially hope for big waves during contests. Being 5’7" and 130 lbs, I am bigger than most of the girls I compete against. This puts me at a slight disadvantage in small surf because I need a bigger wave to push me. There was an NSSA college contest at Blacks last year where the surf was 10-12 foot and really pounding. I won the contest easily because I was the only girl to paddle out to the outside and take off on set waves. Now that the cold water and fewer swell-producing storms have replaced the abundant surf associated with El Nino, big waves are things you hope for rather than expect. This year, the contest season has been plagued by consistently small waves. A few weeks ago, I woke up on a Sunday morning to bright sunshine and a complete absence of wind. Driving to Oceanside for one of the last NSSA contests of the season, I thought to myself, "finally the conditions are good, but the waves better be bigger waist high!" To my disappointment, I pulled up at the beach to see small, mushy waves lapping up on the shore. "Ugh, not again!" After the contest was over, I drove home cursing small waves the whole way. Fortunately, the Lakers were playing, so I flopped onto the couch to relax and forget all about the contest. Before I had settled in, my boyfriend came over and tried to convince me to go surfing. "There’s a few little waves coming in out front, it isn’t very good, but it would be fun on the longboards. Are you upfor an evening glass-off session?" I told him about the contest and how frustrated I was with small waves and announced that I was staying right there on the couch to watch the game. Not listening to a word I said, he waxed up my longboard, threw my wetsuit at me and said, "come on, we’re going surfing!" Reluctantly, I lathered up my face in sunscreen and followed him out the door. The surf was so small at El Porto that the waves were only breaking in one spot, but other than a few boogie boarders, there was no one out. Paddling out with the sun on my face and warm Santa Ana winds at my back, I remembered what surfing is all about. We were just goofing around, trying handstands, 360s, and fin-first take-offs. We even took off on the same wave and I jumped onto his board to ride tandem all the way to the beach. Just then I remembered that riding big barrels or tiny mushballs, surfing is about having fun with your friends. |
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