Surfing Waves

So I live in San Diego and I've been surfing for a few months now. My question is how do you guys find out whether the waves are good or what kind of board to bring? Cause I check this website wavewatch.com and it only has one forecast for the general area and doesn't always apply to the beach where I surf. Do you guys know any other good websites to check on? Or do you just drive to the beach everyday with your whole quiver and see. My main problem right now is finding out whether or not the waves are gonna be at least 3-4 ft so I can surf on my only shortboard.
Thanx.

Great question. Every time you go out check the reports, the wave direction, the size, the tide, wind speeds everyting. Then as you keep going out you start to pick up on the little things that affect different spots. There is no magic, just your sence from doing it over and over.

Like sunset cliffs likes a low tide rising, OB likes NW+W and W+S combo's the best, on a 4ft NW La Jolla will peel perfect unless it's low tide, blah blah blah.

So, the lesson is to use the forcast to know your spots, after a while you'll know exactly when to go where.

Local knowledge pays off big time in san diego as its so diverse with surf breaks. Like teh math teacher says suss out your main local breaks for instance mine are the cliffs (and all of the many breaks found there) OB and blacks. I have surfed them long enough in different conditions to suss out each break that way you maximise the conditions available.

Theres nothing worse than making a fair old hike to a break to find its closed out mush so take the time to suss out the breaks

Howzit guys

I'm obviously new to your forum - quick intro: I live and surf in South Africa (Cape Town & JBay) - been surfing for 8 years now and its pretty much my entire life - I work in the IT field and do so because of the flexibility around the job - allowing me to surf as often as possible - the reason I'm posting is because I came across this thread whilst doing some search engine optimization for my site - which happens to be called SUSS (you've used the word in this thread a few times)

Just so happens that my site (aptly named SUSS - Search Utility for Surf Spots) does exactly what you're speaking about here -

The concept is pretty simple - as you say - specific breaks work differently in any set of conditions - its up to you as the surfer to learn those conditions and figure out where to go using your local knowledge. The tool I've written turns this into a for more accurate and tangible skill - SUSS monitors the weather bouys in your area (ie: it would query MagicSeaweed hourly and record EXACTLY what the charts are reporting while you're out surfing) - recording what they say on an hourly basis - you then come back after your surf and record what you experienced at the break you were surfing (the actual conditions) - using those 2 sets of data SUSS is then able to map how certain breaks are likely to behave in certain types of conditions.

In a sentence it gives you the following reporting capabilities: 'the last time we had conditions like these you were surfing at Super Tubes in Jbay for 3 hours - it was 5ft - 5 Stars and a light offshore' - obviously its not worded like that, thats just an example of the type of answer SUSS would provide to the typical question of: "SHEESH! I dunno where to surf today?" - it simple draws a surf report for you and suggests where and when you should be surfing at any given time by comparing the conditions that were recorded against your previous sessions to the foretasted conditions on the day you want to surf.

Dont stress about privacy or crowded breaks either - ONLY you have access to your profile and the breaks you surf - there is the ability to join or create your own Crews (a crew,in SUSS, is a group of surfers who surf the same spots on a regular basis - ideally you and your mates) - if you belong to a crew then you can share your session data amongst your mates which is then used along with your personal session data when searching for waves for you - basically you each benefit exponentially from that shared data. On top of that you chose what spots and session data you wantand dont want to share - so yea, dont stress about crowds and all that - I dont want guys at my local break anymore than you do at yours - I build the tool with that very much in mind.

anyway - the url is http://www.SUSS.co.za - its free and everything- I wrote it for me and my mates to solve the exact issue that was raised on this forum - it started working so well that my mates asked me to put it online for their mates to use - and word has just been spreading - we've got over 300 people in South Africa using it now

I have only hooked it up to Work for South Africa and Indo (a few of my mates do the Mentawis quite often - so they use it to call sessions there as well) - if you guys are keen to use it for your areas then we must chat - I can hook it up for you - would dig to see how it works down your side - its NAILING it in SA - getting a good bit of publicity around here

its not a totally complete system yet- I work on it almost daily - it's been 2 years in the building and its still got lots more coming -

lemme know if you ous are keen - go check some of the photos in the gallery of the kinda waves we've been scoring thanks to SUSS - for Cape Town waves those things are SMOKIN

as I say - if you're keen to try it out - lemme know and I'll hook it up for your area

Lekke guys - hope you scoring some waves!

go well

ps - a taster of the waves its been finding for us

on nom nom nom!

oh - and when you check it out - you'll obviously have to register under SA just for now - get a feel for it and lemme know if you're keen and I'll hook up your area

sweet

Dude sounds awesome, can you hook this up for New Zealand? I sent you a PM asking

Sure thing bru - just responded!

go well