What Chuck Does

El Porto January 9, 2009

I kicked off the new surf year by doing dawn patrol over at “El Porto” (Manhattan Beach 45th St.) this morning. Waking up at 5:40 is never pleasant but when you’ve got jet lag from having been in a country with 16 hours of time difference, it’s really not that bad… earlier this week I was up at 4am.

I get to El Porto by 6:45am, after having gobbled an Egg McMuffin (my breakfast of champions). Suited up and in the water by 7:20 with my surf brah Matt B.  Tide just hit a high of almost 7 ft. but there’s definitely some size to the swell. Mushy but well shaped we catch a few waves during the first hour.

By 8am however, things really stepped up. Waves that were coming in were building to almost 4-5 feet and catchable from the outside break. At around 7:50am I caught this sweet right that built to a decent size and showed some great face. I was carving it up to the best of my abilities on the longboard (9’0”). I rode that wave close to 100 yards all the way to the sand - all the while with excellent shape.

The second memorable wave I caught was with Matt B. We doubled up on a “party wave” with me on the inside and him on the outside and dropped into it early thus beating out all the other El Porto surf bums on their shorter boards. It was a well shaped wave and even though it threatened to start breaking on my shoulder 1/2way through the ride, it backed off and reformed thus providing an “extension” to our ride. I remember yelling to Matt “Here we go! Round two!” while still on the wave. We rode that one all the way to shore also.

All in all a great session. Matt B. and I caught a nice wave back to shore when we decided to leave. I think the other surfers were glad we were gone.There actually weren’t even that many other surfers. I think they knew the tidal conditions were going to be poor and most of them slept in. That was good for us because it was practically empty at the lineup. Well, empty for El Porto standards. Parking was easy for once!

In retrospect, I was out of shape from not having surfed in almost a month. Paddling was easy but my muscles were weak and I was huffing and puffing in no time. The water was very cold (mid-high 50’s). My 4/3 Excel is not holding up well with the leaks under the arms. Every time I hit the water after being on a wave, I got a flush of cold water in my suit that made me want to vomit. But who cares? I got a few memorable waves and I got back in the water with a great friend. Total win!