The Hook

The Hook - Santa Cruz

Here's the best pic I could find online of where Joel and I surfed yesterday--the Hook in Santa Cruz. After so much surfing in HMB beachbreaks, I can't say enough about how nice it is down in SC. Warmer water (no booties, no rashguard...no shivering), glassy conditions, consistent waves consistently coming to the same consistent spot, and a minimal amount of duckdiving..all pretty good stuff. Now take away the 100 or so people who were out there with us--and I'd never go to HMB again! But that's how SC is--almost always better conditions than HMB, and almost always twice as many people.

However, Joel and I were pretty fortunate to get a lot of waves last night. Most of the session, we sat more or less by ourselves on the second peak (we sat basically between a pack of shortboarders at 1st peak right off the point, and a group of longboarders further south. We were able to get most of the waves that came through because shortboarders *usually* couldn't catch up to us, and we had position on all the longboarders), where we were able to catch pretty much one wave with almost every set. It was pretty nice really. I didn't have to back off very many waves, didn't drop in on anybody (Joel doesn't count, right?), and managed a few good rides, and also got a lot of practice really trying to angle my board on take off so that I don't have to go straight down and then make a bottom turn to get back in the face of the wave. Really these conditions were as good as I coud've asked for for practicing that next skill in my surfing progression, and I definitely got a lot of waves to practice on--several of which I turned in to good rides, several of which I turned into who knows what--I even managed one wave where I was basically SITTING on my board, getting a little bit of tube time. How someone manages to sit on a surfboard while getting an (unintentional) mini-tube is beyond me, but I managed to find a way...wish I could see that one on film.

Joel surfed a couple waves on my superboard Kingfish, and he was pretty stoked about it--when we swapped boards and I was paddling on Joel's, I really got to see firsthand how much of a beast my 7'6 is...it was without a doubt twice as thick and 1.5 times as wide as Joel's board, which might as well have been his Poko potato chip board after spending some time on my kingfish. Anyway, he was impressed with how easily it caught waves (really like a longboard) and how manueverable it was once up--really a pretty awesome shape, and like the guy told me when he sold it to me, a 'one-board quiver' good for practically any condition you can throw at it. I need to spend a half day doing some repairs to that board (duct tape only works for so long) and she'll be good to go.

And to make a fun day of surfing even better, after our session we pulled in to Pleasure Pizza for some delicious slices of cheesy goodness. They were closing up shop, and only had a few slices left...so the girl there said she'd sell us all the remaining pieces for a buck a piece. $1! yes! haha--so we did that. Total bill: $3. Add a $2 tip, and we were eatin good for $5. And she must've known how awesome we had just surfed, so she gave us 2 extra slices that were layin around free of charge. 5 slices, 5 bucks - and Joel got his lunch for the next day.

Tip of the day: surf SC when possible on weekdays.
Tip of the day 2: go to Pleasure Pizza at 9:30 PM.