Session 69 - May 1 - SC Beachy

Thursday May 1, 6:30-8, 6'6 quad

Took a bit of a thumping on this and the following sessions, but that's good for me. Surfing point perfection all the time will make me soft...gotta mix it up from time to time! Plus, I do love those lefts. So made the call to avoid some crowds and avoid long rights and took the quad out to a (slightly) less crowded spot in town. Definitely have a bit of swell in the water so waves had some punch to them, overhead on the sets, and conditions were a bit funky, waves kind of doing whatever they wanted, pitching here, backing off there, kind of all over, but hey that's what beach break is all about, right? I caught some fun ones, as well as taking a couple sets inside on the head, but all worth it.

One thing a lot of people probably don't realize about surfing is that there is so much skill involved, not just in the actual act of catching and riding the wave, but in terms of positioning and knowledge and understanding of where and what is going to happen. The actual 'waveriding' part of it is such a small fraction of all the things that need to be done...surfing these kind of spots helps to remind you of that. It's easy to look at all those surf mags with their up-close in the barrel shots or look at all the people surfing perfect Pleasure Point and think, wow that's easy...but what that doesn't show is how much mayhem can be going on in the water right around that perfect barrel. It took a ton of skill and knowledge for that surfer to put himself right in that position for that barrel photo to even happen. Enough rambling but I had a fun session and good to challenge myself and mix it up. And good to surf some lefts.