Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The last couple months have been a whirlwind of busyness. Work wise I came off a slow November and December season, and with the economy the way it is, it had me worried. The beginning of the year brought a magnificent reprieve, both work and surfwise. I got hired on to work on a documentary for National Geographic TV on the Plastiki expedition, and the beginning of January reared some of the best surf I've seen in Northern California to date.

The Plastiki project is an expedition to raise awareness about the effects that the pollution of plastic waste is causing on our oceans and the environmental crisis brought about by global warming. The Plastiki boat is setting sail this March on an 8,000-mile journey from San Francisco to Australia with a crew of six. The voyage will go through the Eastern Garbage Patch, the Marshall Islands, and Tuvalu in a 60 foot catamaran (The Plastiki), hewn from post-consumer plastic bottles. Pretty cool! The boat design also aims to be completely self-contained in terms of its energy generation, fresh water creation and waste treatment.


I'm thrilled to be working on the project (and thrilled to have the consistent work right now). The first photo above is from an attempt to kayak down the LA river. It's gross, as you can see, and this all ends up in the ocean. The later image is from my local recycling plant. This process is really helping me learn about the toll that living in a consumer society is taking on our earth, and I'm getting to witness a lot of the process first person.

Ocean Beach had more back-to-back perfect days then I've ever seen in January. Stiff offshore wind, consistent swell and weird sunny warm weather made for an odd but awesome winter month. We're back to rain, but it's kind of hard to complain after a run like that. I experienced one of my scariest surf sessions to date. Held under for a five wave set on the outer bar on a double overhead day at OB. Ouch. Humbling and scary, yet exhilerating for sure. I think it's impossible to not pay your dues there.

The last few days have also proven evidence that February's storms seemed to have cleaned up the sandbar at Linda Mar and I've had some super fun 3-5 foot longboard sessions on the Gordon and Smith. Woot!