Can somebody explain somethings about Northern Cal?

[badjkworst]

Hey, new to this forum but have got a lot of good info in the past from here so I knew this was a good place to ask this question. I hope this is the write subforum or whatever, but first of all I'm from socal and I've been surfing for a couple of years at my own pace messing around, not doing crazy top to bottom surfing or any cutbacks but heres where everything ties in. I was gifted a pretty thick shortboard when I was like 20 and thats how I learned, I never seemed to had problems paddling for waves or matching the waves speed and was having a blast everything was beautiful. I moved up about 50 miles north of San Fransisco in the summer for some work and did some exploring and had a really good time, but once things started getting bigger and working a bit better, I went down to a spot thats alot like OB(which I haven't check out yet) that's pretty well known called Salmon Creek. This is the spots all the locals were telling me to go, I've gone a few times, once was like some kind of blessing and had nice powerfull glassy and hollow overhead barrels. I remember one paticularly choppy saturday morning and theres about 40 guys there, cool this is more my speed, I was the only guy with a shortboard everyone else had an egg or a longboard. Everywhere I looked eggs all over the place and in different sizes. The wind was only like 7 mph but magic sea weed was giving it loooow ratings and everywhere else was just saying it was a choppy mess. I have never paddled out into something that weird, thank god I was able to duckdive or I would've just gotten crushed all day. Paddling out took me maybe close to 20 minutes, I felt like I was moving in place and getting back in was way worse. I'm still very new so maybe I can adjust to this but , even the local shops only carry these eggs and they are very traditional everyone has very flat nose rocker. I deffinetly want to try the shape now because I never have and I do think people are using them because of how hard it is to get out, but if I'm wrong I want to know what it is, just seems counter intuitive when you have to get out back without being able to duckdive all the way and then drop in on a super steep wave with a longer flater board. If theres any other things I should know about Norcal, aside from the obvious stuff like how much heavier and more water gets moved in the waves and sharks

[surferbee]

It sounds like it had more to do with the conditions than anything else. In summer surf, waves tend to be smaller, crumbly, and less steep, so a board with flatter rocker can be the way to go. I've been surfing my groveller and my funboard (egg, mini-log, whatever you want to call it) almost exclusively since June this year. I can think of only 2 sessions at OB and one in Santa Cruz that really justified breaking out a shortboard this summer. I'm sure there were other days but not that I was able to get in the water.

Personally, I don't know of any shops that only sell eggs or mini-logs unless it's a tourist shop renting Wavestorms or something like that, or maybe Mollusk. Plenty of people surf shortboards when the conditions are right for them - which is usually like 8 months out of the year, depending on the break, of course.

You're right that an egg can be harder to duck dive than a similar volume shortboard. But, the problems you experienced probably had more to do with wind and currents. Currents in Norcal can be pretty f'ing ugly. If you hit it wrong, it can be tough getting out, tough staying in position, and tough getting back in. I've heard some people say that a shortboard helps because you sit lower in the water, so you drift less. I've heard other people say a longboard helps because you have more paddle power to fight the current. Either way, the current is what it is. #resist #gowiththeflow

[RinkyDink]

I haven't surfed north of the Golden Gate Bridge at all. I think your experience is probably due to you going to a break with a lot of longboarders. There are some breaks around Santa Cruz where longboarders coalesce around one peak while shortboarders congregate around another. Sometimes, very very rarely, you'll even see SUP riders find a section to themselves as well. I think you just happened upon a longboard spot and took out a shortboard. From my experience, that kind of situation often leads to no waves for the shortboarder. This doesn't happen to longboarders Muahaha . . . er, unless they go out with 40 SUP riders

Anyway, I don't think the waves had much to do with your experience. Any time you go to a break for the first time, you're going to feel like you don't know what you're doing because . . . well, you simply don't know the spot. In other words, even if you had had a longboard at the spot you went to, it probably would have still felt off to you. I have spots I go to maybe 5 times a year and I often feel like my sessions at those breaks are a little weird because I have to reacquaint myself with the place. As far as the difference between Norcal and Socal goes, I think it's silly to reduce things to generalities. I hear some people make the distinction that Northern California is more about "soul surfing" and SoCal is more about shredding. My own experience, however, is that Norcal is chill and SoCal is usually hyper aggressive with sprinkles of toxic localism (that prejudice is based off experiences from decades ago however. Things are probably different these days. Honestly though, I'm just not much of a fan of SoCal.). I did meet a Norcal surfer the other day who had been down to SoCal and complained that guys in the lineups down there were douches. SoCal, of course, gets a lot more of the German tourist surfer who just has to get some sun on his vacation and, thank goodness, decides to go to SD and to skip anything north of LA. That probably won't last too much longer unfortunately. I do think the waves are better in Norcal, but they're also often more treacherous.