Quite a few, fast moving storms hitting the northeast. Mostly misses than hits tho’ for southern New England as the tracks have taken an inland rather than the classic nor’easter track which generates swells for MassBay.
Yesterday’s storm did take a nor’easter track, albeit a fast mover. Tonight a bigger storm with the same track. In between, nice 6’ plus swells @ 10-11 seconds rolling in under sunny skies. Gentle offshore breeze to clean up the faces. Air temp at fairly mild 40 but a chilly water temp of 39 degrees.
Had a lousy first – my seatbeat unbuckled on it’s own in the middle of a ride. I Slid off the seat area. I quickly pulled my feet outside of the footstraps to avoid having my knees torgued. Tried hanging onto the paddle which was leashed to the waveski. No dice… The paddle pulled right out of my hand as the waveski kept surfing along in front of the big foam pile. Probably had a 60-70 yard swim in. Another surfer on shore saw my waveski headed towards the rocks, grabbed and saved it from a smashing. He waited for at the dumping shore line. Good thing – I appreciated his hand in helping me stand back up and get back up on the steep shoreline. “Bit of a thrashing there, eh?” Yeah…my legs were pretty wobby from swimming (side-stroke) through the breakzone.
@Rookie said:
sing, you’re one tough paddler. Glad your ski, and your body, didn’t come to harm.
It was a pretty lousy swim. I was wearing neoprene impact vest (with thin foam padding) which gives a 1/4-1/3 of the buoyancy of a PFD. This allows one to duck dive if need be with a crashing wave. So I was pretty low in the water. While my winter wetsuit was fine, what sucked was how cold the water felt on my face. Sidestroking in, i kept an eye on and prepared for the oncoming breakers. I didn’t feel panicked, but I kept saying to myself – “Aw… This just sucks…” Had to take a good 15 minute break to get my legs back before going back out to catch a couple more rides and practice a couple of rolls. No way was I going to end the session - first in a month - on a bad note.
Think Surfer Dan has been pretty much grounded since Lake Superior was at 91% ice cover on Monday. Probably more now as overnight temps were subzero. Negative 25 in my area.
