Monday Surprise 03·16·09

March 16, 2009 by admin

Got a call at 4pm…”Hey I’m at “local break” and it’s waist to chest and glassy–get your ass down here!” that’s all I needed to call it quits for the day, throw the Frye singlefin in the truck and head over the hill. Sure enough it was clean and fun. The water was summertime warm and the crowd non-existent. I guess I have technology to thank for that, nobody expected that spot to show today, and so very few checked it…we got some fun rides. One in particular has been stuck on repeat, playing over and over in my mind’s eye all evening. The wave jacked up to chest high on the takeoff, I dropped in and made a wide bottom turn left (I’m goofyfooted) and back up the face and the board just locked in place. The wave kept pitching forward as it dropped to waist high, but I was stuck in that pocket, crouched down, water coming over my left shoulder, left hand dragging through the face of the wave. This board was shaped by Skip Frye in 1968, when he was still shaping for Gordon&Smith, and must be the granddaddy of today’s hulls…the rails are knife sharp, the deck convex and the ride magical. It would be cool if I could move the fin up a bit more, but for a board that is older than everyone out in the lineup today, it feels surprisingly futuristic.