Hurricane Bill mission- Day One

The trip over was a long one.  Up before 5am on Friday, August 21st, we wrangled the groms out of bed and made it to LAX at the perfect time in the pre-dawn darkness.  Parked at Lot B and took the shuttle to the terminal, got through security (a nightmare with little kids!) and finally onto the plane for the 4 1/2 hour flight to Dulles Airport.

My daughter is a pretty good photog for a 6-year-old!

Once there, it was a solid 2 hours before we got the rental car!  So, the plan was to drop the kids at my sister’s in Baltimore 1 1/2 hours away, and then make the 2:45 drive to Ocean City.  Well, once at my sister’s, heavy thunderstorms, combined with exhaustion and a morning forecast for south wind led us to decide to stay the night and leave early Saturday morning.  That turned out to be a good call!

So, up at 5:30am Saturday (2:30 Cali time…Ugh!) and we were on the road with a quick breakfast stop.  We pulled into OC and found some lumpy, high-tide, head high long lines sweeping in from the south:

Lumpy and dumpy!

There was some fun to be had though, so I picked up my board at my Mom’s place and we headed out for a session at the OC Inlet at the south end of town.  We hooked up with team rider Brian Stoehr and some other local rippers like Micah Sklut from Swellinfo.com as well as long-time chargers Joel and Tim Tice and rode some wedgy, lumpy, but fun slightly overhead waves for a couple of hours!  I was told the water temps were in the upper 70′s, but as soon as I hit the water in my trunks, I knew I was going to be suffering.  Apparently, as I had feared, the large, long-period swell had churned things up along with the south wind on Friday to knock a good 8-10 degrees off the water temps, putting things around 69 or so.  I was basically shivering like a scared little girl for the entire 2 hours out there, but just tried to keep moving.  Got a few sick ones and saw some people out there that had no business being out there.  I actually got pretty worked a few times as well, and toward the end of the sesh, it was picking up for sure! Stoehr was killing it out there as usual!

So, we headed up to my Mom’s sub shop for lunch and then met my old buddy Mark “Buckwheat” Thomas for an afternoon session at 45th st.

Jay and Buck reliving the old dayz

My very earliest days in the sport back around 1980-1986 or so were spent riding with Mark and we’ve been buds now for 30 years, so it was great to paddle out with him.  We also hooked him up with some Droplet Rashies so he could represent.  Also ran into local legend sponger Chuck White, though we never got close enough to chat, and we had Jason Skinkle on the beach shooting, and local friends Michael and Jacqui Damico paddle out with us too.

The afternoon sesh was a bit bigger with sets pushing the 8 foot face mark, and pretty hollow, but the shape was marginal and the current was crazy strong, so it was a two-hour kick fest just to stay in place.  Tomorrow (Sunday, 23rd) is forecast to be offshore with a shorter period to the swell, which “should” mean peakier and cleaner surf.  Stay tuned!