Mavericks 12/17/04

Mavericks pretty much kicked off the season on December 9th with some of the biggest surf we have seen in about 3-4 years. The sky was gray, the wind was out of the southeast, and the fog and mist made looking through a camera lens like looking through a wax paper bag.
I started off the morning with a dead battery on my wave runner, even after nursing the battery for the previous week. I threw my hands up in desperation and just headed up to the base with my cameras.
When I got there the view from the cliff wasn't bad, their were several tow teams pulling into some pretty impressive waves with wave heights hitting the solid 20' mark.. I managed to get a couple of stills off before firing up the video as seen below.
As the minutes went by the light changed constantly  and within minutes the fog and mist had moved in and left the visibility to near zero. After patiently waiting for hours for the fog to clear up the paddle in surfers had taken over and the tow surfers quit.
     The light had gotten a little better and I took some video until later in the afternoon.

                                                              

     The following week turned out to be the week we wanted with perfect light and ocean conditions, unfortunately unlike Jaws in Hawaii, the west coast of California was to be denied the full brunt of the swell. Instead we got more groomed, and still respectable size waves.
     The morning started off slow, so I slept in and took my time getting into the channel with my ski. The ocean was a beautiful blue color along with a perfect cloudless sky, and light offshore winds. The wait between sets at first was about 15 minutes long, with not that much size. The tow in guys had long since had to yield to the paddle in surfers, and the crowd was not all that bad.
     My calculations on when the swell was to peak started to pay off as the closer we got to 11:30-12:00. Sets unlike the morning started to increase in size and frequency, and the following photos are the result of what transpired until about 1:30 in the afternoon. 

Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine
Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine	Ryan Augustine	Peter Mel	Peter Mel
Peter Mel	Peter Mel	Peter Mel	Peter Mel	Anthony Taznick
Anthony Taznick	Anthony Taznick	Anthony Taznick	Anthony Taznick	Anthony Taznick
Anthony Taznick	Set Wave	Homer Hernard	Homer Hernard	Anthony Taznick
Anthony Taznick	Anthony Taznick	Pete & Taz	Unidentified	Unidentified
Unridden Beauty	Unidentified	Unridden Beauty

  

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