Sunday, January 30, 2022

Early mornings aren’t my favorite time of day, but if it means I’ll have a long fun filled day, you may find me setting my alarm before 8 am. This wasn’t the case for this morning though. Since I was up at Sombrio yesterday, I had to wake up at 6 am the morning prior to today, which meant I wasn’t going to set my alarm once again (especially on a weekend) before 8, even if that meant missing out on better conditions for surfing at Jordan River. 

It was a struggle to even get out of bed at 8:15, but I managed. Jordan picked me up at 9:15, and after picking Katie up, we were off to our third consecutive Sunday surf session. It started to rain on the way up, but that didn’t stop us from wanting to surf. Once we showed up, we noticed the tide was extremely high, with large logs floating about, stealing our waves. We saw a few people surfing in spots we had never surfed at before. We discussed whether or not to get changed into our wetsuits, but after seeing a couple of people catch some great waves we thought we would give it a go. 

As soon as we got into the water we all looked at each other since we had never surfed in such deep water before. We had to paddle out, for real this time since we didn’t have the option to walk with our boards. We felt like ‘real surfers’ which was a total blast until a wave actually approached me. I screamed, saying they were big and scary. I had no idea what to do with myself as usually I would push off with my feet and hop over waves, but with no ground to be felt, I felt trapped and nervous. I thought I’d give a few waves a go, but didn’t catch one. As we were paddling around, I noticed something catch my eye about 25 feet away. It was a seal saying hello! I waved, it didn’t wave back. It then stared at us for a good 20 seconds before it dipped back under the surface, where I feared it would swim under me, or as Jordan said “nibble [my] toes”. New fear unlocked! As more sets came rolling in, my fear of getting smashed by one grew. “We’re out of our league right now!”, I yelled. Katie and Jordan agreed, but we were all ambitious to catch a wave. This ambition quickly diminished after seeing skilled surfers catch the waves coming our way. 

1. We didn’t want to be in the surfers way 
2. We were pretty sure we weren’t going to catch any waves
3. They were larger waves than we were used to, backed up by a strong current and high tide

After contemplating, we decided it was best to abort and have a little swim in the ocean, body surfing the waves instead. Once we got out and changed back into our clothes, the logs had moved from our usual surfing location, but it was too late. 

There is always the chance of the waves not turning out the way they are ‘supposed to’, and that’s a risk we have to take every time we drive an hour and a half to get up there. Unfortunately, the conditions weren’t perfect for us, but we knew there was a chance of this when we left in the morning. Although none of us caught anything, we came a step closer to becoming ‘real surfers’ by taking that risk, and trying. 

Overall Confidence : 2/10

Conditions: 6 foot swell

Busy: No

Best Wave of Session: n/a

Length of Best Wave: n/a

Session Duration: 45 minutes