Well, it was another foggy morning here in NorCal, but who cares when the waves are pumping! Went down to the beach early this morning and was greeted by solid South swell #2 in full metal jacket mode. Just a thumping beach break; they don't call it Slammin' Creek for nothing! There are a few people looking at the surf, but no one out. What the f_<k are you people doing? Get out there! So, I did. Heck, I love to show off a bit for a peanut gallery. I put on my still wet suit, grabbed my 6'10" Charlie Smith classic Local Motion, and headed out. I had noticed a bit of a rip tide paddling channel while watching the waves; okay, so it wasn't really a channel, but it was at least the best strategy for making it out relatively unscathed; which I did amazingly easily, because the waves were heaving and throwing square barrels! What? I got a wave pretty quickly, kicked out and barely scratched back out. Got another same story. Then, there was a Bomb looming on the outside, I got into perfect position, no easy feat out there, I can assure you, especially when the fog is so thick that you can't see the shore and have no way to line up your positioning. It was a super late drop, I was barely able to get my nose up to keep from pearling, and flicked the TunaFin, pulling in easily. And got freaking shacked! That thing was heaving and throwing! One other dude had just come out and was paddling out with the perfect view of my best barrel in months! I stood tall and put my arms out to the sides; nothing but spittle and that roaring sound so unique to the barrel. The guy said he was hooting his lungs out, but I didn't hear a thing! I got blasted out and just made it over the next un-makable section, jumping back onto my belly and stroking for the outside without pause. I got through one wave and then came face to face with a double up grinder and it was going to impact right in front of me. I should have bailed my board, but opted to try the duck dive. That didn't work! The wave annihilated me! I got hammered down to the sand, picked up and shot into the air, back down into the washing machine, to the surface again in a cauldron, and sucked back down before it released me. Won't need to use the netty pot today. I tried to get back out, but I was in the washing machine current and wasn't getting anywhere, so I went in. Yes, peanut gallery, that's how we do it!
So, out surfing yesterday evening, I struck up a conversation with a young guy, and we carried on an often interrupted conversation, as one or the other of us caught a wave. It's one of the really nice little pleasures of surfing. A simple conversation, that otherwise might only take a minute or two, can take half an hour out in the surf.
He was clearly from somewhere else, turns out San Diego, and I showed him my TunaFin set up; he was riding a quad, and we had been talking about the pros and cons of the different fin arrangements. At some point I asked him what brought him up to Sonoma county, and he said it was a job; he's a business law attorney. I quipped that I might need some legal advice at some point, and we agreed to exchange contact information back on shore. So later after we had changed out of our wetsuits, we were talking, and he was interested in the TunaFin, so I pulled out my best prototype to show him. And after a minute (I am going through my spiel about the fin, this and that), and he says, 'I've seen this before somewhere.' I'm all, no this is totally new, and we talked about a passive hydrodynamic fin system that a dude in SF had invented (basically the fin oscillates due to the hydrodynamic forces on the fin as the board goes through it's motions). It's a passive system, which was its downfall since the fin is driving you rather than the other way around, with TunaFin you are driving the fin. Then he looks at me kinda funny and says, 'I know where I've seen this before!' He had been in the parking lot when I had left that same board at the beach, like, all day a few days ago; and had seen me pull up and grab it, all relieved. But get this! It turns out just before I got there a kid was eying the board and had picked it up to take it (obviously not a surfer), and Theo had asked the kid if that was his board. He answered that it was not and put it down. It was then that Theo had gone over to check it out, having noticed the novelty of the foot pad and fin set up. And finally, just before I got there he had been the one who put it down in the location where I had found it, ten feet away from where I had left it! The dude saved my lost board from getting lifted off the beach by some hodad! Now that is a serendipitous encounter with a stand up dude who was able to fill in the details of the story behind the mystery of the board levitation! |
AuthorKlaus Dilling is a lifelong surfer and designer with a passion for innovation. ArchivesCategories |