(click
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When:
Where:
Weather:
Surf:
Tides:
Who: |
Tue.,
February 18, 2003 - Middle morning session
Middles
70F overnight, upper
80s during the day; water mid-70s
5-6' w/some overhead
clean-up sets, no current
Going to high
Solo with two to four
others |
Started
out before dawn in search of some waves. Having discarded my two traveling
alt.surfing companions, it is back to SALSA ALL DAY LONG <g>. [Listen
to some salsa music at Netscape@Radio.]
Finally found my usual salsa station which helps, but those two are going
to need allot more cultural conversion. Stopped at the corner store for
my cafe, fresh bread and paper before heading north for a series of spot
checks. Picked up a ham, cheese and egg criollo sandwich and more
café at the Borinquen - need to improve upon that nasty coffee,
beer and cig diet that Dan addicted me to. Nothing much happening
at the Wilderness spots (nobody out), two out at Surfers' Beach [some kind
of rescue operations were going on-see pics below], and a collection at
Jobos, but nothing very appealing to me. Checked out a couple of other
spots that were not working the way I wanted so it was on to Middles where
the swell was hitting nicely. Several of the Wilderness gang from
the past few days were there along with some new folks. As I suited
up it seems they nearly all came in, packed up and left leaving only a
few of us out there, all gringos or expats.
Small Surfer's Beach |
Fishing at Surfers |
A nicer looking Table Tops |
Practice or Rescue? |
Not at many boats this trip. |
Middles post session with
the
wind blowing it out |
The
paddle out was easy using the channel current help me along. Just
as I hit the line-up a clean-up set approached that nobody else was prepared
to catch so I quickly turned, took one stroke and dropped seven or eight
feet to the bottom, pulled a hard bottom turn and dried through a section
covering me in whitewater, worked the section a bit further and pulled
out. Thump, thump, sledgehammer banging hard... these are going to be fun...
something I missed at Wilderness even though I had my fun there.
Caught four of these in quick succession just after paddling back out to
the line-up, before some periodic lulls and growing winds that made also
made the sections harder to make, but the drops were thick and fun.
Empanadilla Palace: some
of the best
around - on the road to
Jobos |
View from the Palace -
Joanne loved the egrets |
Lot's of egrets eating up
on the
freshly rowed pasture |
Stopped
at Jim Crotty's place on the way back to Rincón. He proudly showed
off a new camera lens (800 mm Nikon) and tons of slides from the PR NW
area. I was sick. He has shot at least one ton of one of my
favorite truly sledge hammering spots, the tabla de roca... WOW.
Enjoyed some late afternoon
cervezas on my third floor porch with a view of the bay to Cabo Rojo.
Any ways... "I wanna be your
sledgehammer" was dancing away in my mind at Middles... very appropriate. |
