N
ever leave two feral ‘tweenager’ kids in charge if you aren’t prepared for some mayhem. My good friend, Matt Nelson, and I were paddling over to the wave, when bits of music, giggles, and breathless, impatient reminders and questions crackled over the VHF I wore on my chest. We had just splashed our surfboards and paddled away from Ocean Watch, my 64-foot charter sailing vessel. My daughter, Dagny, and one of her close friends were on anchor watch, and took the job very seriously, while enjoying themselves immensely. When I glanced over my shoulder as I paddled away, I was not at all surprised to see Dagny’s turquoisecolored aerial silk being hoisted on the staysail halyard. It made me enormously happy to see two kids running back and forth between the foredeck and the VHF to intermittently ask questions about the finer points of hoisting a silk, and also remind me that they, too, wanted to take a turn at surfing. The day was sunny and warm, and the eastern end of the Strait of Juan De Fuca was glassy and calm. There was a lowand-lazy west swell running. It was late spring, but felt like summer in almost every way but the swell. The Olympic Mountains shone silvery and watchful in the distance, as Matt and I investigated a spot we hoped would generate some good conditions for surfing. We could see small peelers from the foredeck as we anchored, but wave size is sometimes tough to judge at a distance. With the westerly swell and the slack between the ebb and the subsequent flood, the spot appeared to be working. This wave in particular forms over a pointy reef where the depths of the Strait climb from 200 to 300 feet on average, to under 30 feet in the space of about 2 miles. Typically, the farther east you are in the Strait, the more fickle the surf becomes. This fact is due to its length and the attenuating effects of the currents, as well as the swellabsorbing effects of the bottom contours. Another reductive factor is the gradually decreasing distance between the Olympic Peninsula and Vancouver Island. The greatest allure of sail-to-surf trips for me has always been access. As long as you can find a place to anchor your vessel — and you can commit to not going ashore — you may explore places that most landlubbers may not reach. Although, one of the most challenging, and therefore rewarding, aspects of sail-to-surf trips is the tension between good seamanship and good surfing. A location where you might find a good wave to surf doesn’t necessarily translate to a safe and comfortable anchorage. These facts are how I found myself surfing small waves with Matt that day, as Ocean Watch rolled gently in the swell while two towheaded hooligans kept an eye on things. We had found a spot where a VW-beetle-sized granite glacial erratic split the wave into a left AND right point break…we had options. On that day, if you chose the left, you needed to stay high on the wave to keep your fin clear of the reef as you passed over it. A crash here would have proved educational, and would almost certainly have gifted a few new scars…but the rides were long. If you choose the right, deeper water but a shorter ride would be your reward. Each wave we caught was a cost/ benefit analysis. We usually went left.
48º NORTH
Catching waves in the PNW takes work, but the payoffs are worth it.
31
JUNE 2021
