I've mentioned it before, but I'm thinking it about it again: October can be a good month and a bad month for surf. On the one hand, because we live in south Texas, we can sometimes have mild weather and southerly winds that give us messy, but decent waves. However, cold fronts also start moving through, which CAN, if the timing is right, give us a brief period of beautiful well-formed waves. That was the forecast for this week. SwellInfo had predicted that the cold front moving through this weekend would have strong winds and that the window for surfing would be very small and would probably be early on Friday morning. I, personally, wasn't sure that would even work out since the winds were forecasted to be 20-25, which is much too strong and would make the beach flat. I had a feeling that there wouldn't be any surf at all for me this weekend, so I was glad when I saw on the webcam on Thursday evening and the pre-front waves looked promising. They looked a little messy, but they were definitely surf-able and they were also a decent size: waist- to chest-high.
I left work a little early, loaded up the board and headed down. This time of year -- right before we "fall" back on the clock -- daylight fades away quickly in the evening. I knew that if I made it to the island by 5:30, I would only have just a little more than an hour to surf before the sun went down. I made my way to 36th Street, met up with the surf dude, paddled out and had a ball. The waves were incredible. I caught the first wave I went for and surfed it until it faded away. This time of year can prove challenging for a goofy-footer surfing a left break into the sunset. However, it didn't stop me. I caught several waves. I had one minor wipeout and it actually happened while I was paddling back to the outside. I got caught in a bad place on the inside and didn't time my paddle-out correctly in the inconsistent sets. (The only bad thing about surfing 36th is that there is no jetty to provide the comfortable rip current that takes people out past the break. Using a rip current is like having an escalator to take you from one floor to the next; it requires very little effort on your part.) I had some fun rides. In fact, one of my rides still makes me smile when I think about it. I caught a nice-sized (3 or 4 ft) wave turned left, caught a re-form and sailed down the beach. I was moving so fast that it caught me off guard. I made a shrill sound as if I was riding a roller coaster. (IT WAS A BLAST!) I surfed for an hour and 20 minutes just as it started getting dark. I needed a little light to load the board. I'm so glad I made it out Thursday because although surfers had some pretty, well-formed, small waves early on Friday morning, by the time I got off of work, it was just as I thought it would be: FLAT. And, it stayed that way for the rest of the weekend.
Here's hoping that there will be some waves one night this week so that I can get one last evening surf session in before the time changes. I also hope there will be some waves on Friday afternoon. Surfing is just so darn fun! I'm sorry it took me so long in life to discover it.
