Three Fins in the Sunset

Gilgo Beach, the usual parking spot for sail riggers. No sail required.

Fabulous, at least 66 F gorgeous sunny day, with light, gusty WNW winds and just enough leftover surf to get a few quality rides. No complaints.

Plan A was to get up at 6:45 and head to West Meadow and windsurf. But weak numbers in the forecast for 10 a.m. told me it would blow itself out quickly as the sun heated up the land. Not worth the $15 in gas and the 2.5 hours driving time for me, unless you got up at 5:30 and were ready for sunrise. Save it for a better day.

Plan B — definitely get a bike ride in — I forgot the last time I rode ... could it really have been the Sept. 30 16-miler before the New Orleans trip? If that was the case, then I definitely needed to get some miles in. And today I was feeling a lot better.

During last weeks white-knuckle windsurfing I was definitely "sucking wind," and, if nothing else, some sustained exercise was due.

So I took a gentle 45 minute mile ride, with an ascent of Longview to provide some challenge factor, shot some video, but really, just set out to simply enjoy the ride, not get caught up in speed or performance.  Magic recipe. Beautiful riding day.

PLAN-C WAVES, PADDLE, WIND
Marg was recuperating a cold, and visiting her mom, so she passed on the beach trip, but Robby needed to get some school reading done, and Gilgo in October is a nice quiet place to do just that.

As we arrived, Jeannie was just finishing her session — we gotta stop running into each other like this, people will talk ;). A better than average waist high swell was picking up momentum with the incoming tide. Note to those who don't know, an incoming tide around 1.5 hours after low will always boost the existing surf by about a foot. I got that from mike da baker, and it has never failed me yet. I don't know where the south swell came from — can only imagine it's remnants from some storm that had passed us last week. A SW wind swell was messing things up on the inside, but not too squirrely to make it unsurfable.

Robby said it was a tad chilly afterward (always take 3 layers worth of clothing), but you couldn't tell from the water which was pretty warm for this time of year. although I had on a 5/3, I was hoodless, and did not notice anything cold about it on the head. But that could have been because paddling out through  the whitewater got the blood flowing immediately. Just as cardio as was remounting after multiple times being knocked off by cross swell, waves and chop.

I figured on SUP sailing, but there was not quite enough wind to my mind to warrant rigging a sail. A couple of knots more / more consistent and I'd have put up a 5.5 for some basic non-planing propulsion — a sail makes it much easier to keep balance, thanks to its pull. The cross-wave conditions (like cross-chop but diagonally conflicting waves) were challenging to say the least.

Pretty soon I shed the paddle, and switched to simply prone surfing the SUP. The big lifty tail made short work of catching waves, but definitely needed a careful touch to avoid pearling.

Got in some nice long rides DTL, almost a "stretch five" at one point. Alright, I give extra points for the nose-riding possibilities on this beast. The board also has tons of stability and makes it easy to get to your feet when taking off—a good learn-to surf board in small waves perhaps? The three 5.5-inch fins are great for not snagging the sandbars at low tide states. It will rail a turn, to a point, but when the waves get small, the parallel rails in the middle and flatter rocker it will straighten out if you are not going DTL. I'm thinking about a slightly deeper center fin for a little more thrust, lift and hold.

After a good brace of rides to near exhaustion, I decided to paddle out a few more times and see if my timing was any better for Standup. I got a good rinsing again, but not much more.

Surprise moment of the day — a chest-high sneaker set caught me out of position knee paddling the SUP out, and blasted the board away from under me. Never had that happen before.

Note: I would not be experimenting thusly if I had other surfers nearby ... but today there were but three of us on the entire beach...plenty of room for fun all 'round.

Did I say I was amazed at the quality of the leftover waves. My 9-foot regular surfboard would have worked just as well, I think, but the SUP was that little bit more suited to the task.

surfZencalm

Clocks Back, ... Out There, Nothing Like it.

I don't remember when I last enjoyed a surf session this much. And it was all about attitude and gratitude.

Being waaay out of surf shape from the year-long and still-ongoing cervical disk herniation recovery, a properly executed pop up was in the realm of pipe dream.

Sunday Nov. 6 brought waves not unlike like this late summer gem

OWN REWARD
But paddling a surfboard around in light surf can be it's own reward. Such a treat I'd not had in a year, so I was more than grateful just to be able to do it. The water was remarkably clear for Long Beach, and with fall's coolness crisply set in for the season, the crowds were long gone. Only one other surfer joined us; she had the next jetty over all to herself.

ZEN-GLAD
This session fell squarely into the category of "just glad to be out there, and enjoy an almost perfect, zen-calm session. Punctuated by whoops for the waves Mustang caught in the light-to-moderate side-off wind, thigh-to- waist-to-shoulder high, long-period surf. Per Mustang, this came courtesy of what must have been a distant Tropical Storm Sean.

And the best ... no waves crashing on you on the easy paddle out. Did I say paddle? Correct that -- easy walk out, with short dry-head paddle at the end.

Water, maybe a wee bit cold, but with the sun relatively strong, thin open-seal paddling gloves were just fine for the job. You paddled, you got warm quickly.

NOT GETTING ANYMORE PERFECT
The only hard part — dragging my butt out of bed on a Sunday morning at 6:45 a.m. — came a little easier with realizing that with the clocks set back an hour, I probably wasn't going to get back to sleep.

... And the surf wasn't going to get any more perfect for a user-friendly first surf in 6 weeks. If there was any issue it was doubt about the super shallow low tide -- no margin for error on takeoff, which added a level of caution.

Six weeks? That long? How did that happen? Well after the September Surf-Bike Duathlon, the "wheels fell off the bus," so to speak, and the left arm-neck disc issues flared up with an alarming bite. I decided to go with the flow and back off the sports intensity until it died down.

TIMING
It did, and Mustang magically messaged my cell the night before; excellent timing.

Moo toted his 6'2" Nature Shapes quad fish into the small waves with a good degree of success. And some definitely "whoopable rides"

As for my 9'0 Ben Aipa Swallow tail. First time out it always reminds me of its maneuverability, versus 9'6" noserider. But within a few waves you're ready for its eagerness to turn.

Despite the physical neck-arm woes, I was able to manage a couple of knee rides including one very long one with perfect placement on the board to maneuver using just my lower body through the knees. Only one major twinge of nerve pain to report.

The wind switched to stronger side-on just as we used up the last of our "good paddlearms" and each caught a last sled back into the beach. More fine timing. An hour later and we'd have been blown out. Worth getting up for.

BLISSED
So the car didn't start. It was about 68 months old anyway. Who cares? Dug out the jumper cables, and Moo drove down the half-block and gave me a pump of juice. Very little calm lost, and still blissed all the way to Advance Auto Parts in Island Park for a new battery. No problems.

As for the neck/arm continuum, driving home I felt no pain. How's that done? Just goes to show a gentle day of surf has a healing power all its own.

[Day two and three after, well there was a price to pay — as long unused muscles tightened up —but not too bad. The Advil did it's job. (It — or a stomach bug — hit my insides with a vengeance come Thursday, so that's that for the pain killers for a while.)]



QUIZ:

Where's Waldo the Baker?
He's out there. I've seen him; but I'm not tellin'.

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