Magic Things

The summer sea breeze in San Francisco is relentless. Days turned weeks of onshore slop batter the northern coastline, sending salt and fog deep into the Sunset district and onward to the heart of the city. From my apartment, two miles from the coast, perched on the peak between Noe Valley and the Castro, I can still feel the water’s chill when I prop the living room window open. 

Waiting for my ride, on an early-August Tuesday, I watched the fog march east just a few feet above my head. It’s safe to say that my expectations were low. But with a new (borrowed) board tucked beneath my arm and a peaking swell in the water, the decision to journey down the coast in search of waves was an obvious one. 

I sat cramped in the passenger’s seat of a beat-up silver Prius, with our boards to my left and the entire Pacific Ocean to my right. We were heading south to Montara (again) on a hunch that the wind would not be so harsh in the mountain-surrounded cove. Wide-eyed, I watched the ocean transform. White caps, at first suffocatingly dense, dispersed like ripples in a pond. By the time we scrambled down the cliffside trail to the beach, the ocean was smooth like a sheet. 

This isn’t to say that Montara was any less wild than usual. Thousands of birds swarmed in circles less than a mile out to sea, forming dense clouds of their own. After a discussion with a few locals, an algae bloom was deemed the culprit– causing dead, oxygen starved crabs and fish to float to the surface. 

The paddle out through the opaque, red, chocolate barrels was equally spooky as it was difficult. Overhead sets unloaded across the sandbar, seemingly at random, and my eyes scavenged the water for patterns, desperately searching rips, channels, and eddies to ease my journey out to sea. By the time I made it outside I was exhausted, but there were waves to catch and we had a peak to ourselves. 

For the first few waves, I took things easy. Beneath my feet was a 6’9 twin fin; pin tailed, channel bottomed, and nearly rockerless. The board was beautiful. For the past week it sat patiently in my garage, as it was lent to me for a few months of safe storage. But now the sharp, traced lines of the rail were being put to the test in some solid surf. My curiosity hopped back and forth between restlessness and timidity. I wanted every wave, but also only the best ones. I wanted the board to be perfect and I feared that an imperfect ride could shatter my expectations. 

My first two waves were lefts along a rip. Easy paddling, a smooth takeoff, and a couple calculated cutbacks. The board felt good. But a lot of boards feel good. It didn’t take long for me to chalk it up as just that. Good. Solid. Fun. I was happy, and honestly, not even disappointed. I loved how easy it was to chip in early and how changing directions felt seamless. 

It didn’t take long for a crowd to form around us (doesn’t that just always seem to happen?), so we migrated south– chasing peaks and dodging closeouts down the beach to a more empty spot. That’s when I saw the big left jut out of the ocean like an enthusiastically raised hand. “Me! Me!” it said. I didn’t need to be convinced. 

As I popped to my feet, a long, grey-brown wall sprouted in front of me, sucking sand and water perpendicular to the direction of its movement towards shore. It looked like a closeout, a heavy one. Crouched at the bottom of the wave, the board and the ocean came together beneath my feet, neither one willing to budge. I dug my toeside rail and extended my legs and shot down the line like a projectile from a canon. The sudden pop of speed off the bottom nearly flung me backwards. I was absolutely flying.

The closeout turned out not to be a closeout with just a few pumps as I highlined my way across the steep, bending bowl. Kicking out into the makeshift channel, I dove off my board and for a few moments felt stunned. That speed, seemingly out of nowhere. What the hell was that? I didn’t even do anything besides pump across the wave. Why did that feel so good?

For the rest of the session I searched for more of those moments. Those swooping bottom turns and speedy lines. Those closeouts that weren’t really closeouts. I was finding my spots on a magic board. 

But looking back, was it a magic board or a magic session? What does it even mean to have a magic board? Was I just surprised? Did I get lucky? There are so many factors that build up to those fleeting moments on a wave. Some low expectations, a dying wind. Late-season swell, a perfectly placed sandbar. A long day at work, a sunset on the water. A borrowed surfboard, and the wave of the day. These were magic moments coming together like the birds circling out at sea, countless and anonymous, sending me flying down the line into the channel.