POD’s

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Are you biased? Can you you really be totally unbiased?  Can you put your personal feelings aside and see things for what they are and not what you want them to be? I think you can, if you try hard enough, and watching my fellow judges at cramikfest, I know it’s possible for those guys.  Truly, at cramikfest, the judges are totally about doing what’s right by what they saw, not by what they wanted.  Hell, I admit it, I’ve wanted Deebo to win so many cramikfests.  He’s got the skills to win every time, he tirelessly shares his knowledge of how Bodega is breaking and has set us up with a great spot that has produced great cramikfests year after year.  He’s a good dude too.  He should win, but skimming is tough, & cramikfest can be tougher.  Relentless, long heats, not to mention dangerous megaheats and unavoidable inebriation to one extent or another.

Going into last Saturday’s cramikfest, Thomas “2 Time” Corwin was the only two-time cramik champ, having won #1 and #3. That had a good chance of changing as the finals featured 4 previous champs; Square (#5), Thomas (1,3), reigning champ Quiet Wyatt (8), Deebo (2 & wait, hold on a second, Holy COW, Deebo won cramikfest #6 as well!!!)  What the hell???  Jeez my brain is gone, I seriously just found that while looking at the cramikfest pages!  How did this get past everyone, I was yelling 2-time (in reference to Thomas) the whole day!  Humble Deebo never even said a word.  Wow, my apologies.

Also in the final was Sam, who is due to win one of these any minute now.  But I digress.  How were the conditions?  Pretty good. The waves weren’t great, peak tide was probably the best at the start of the first megaheat of the Am Division.   But, not close to epic.  The waves weren’t pushing all that much, but the weather was sick which more than made up for it. 3 Ball Buttnutt always does a great job picking the event date and this year was no exception, even when he had to do it twice.

The first heat was the Champions megaheat which was a lot of fun.  But, the Am megaheat was on fire!  The best waves all day came through during that heat and everyone was going after it.  Of course, Tommer trophies were on the line and that always starts a frenzy.

When it was all said and done, Luke dominated the final in the Ams, taking down Mark, local fav Kevin, and early megaheat standout Andres.  The Champions Division was stricken with some flat wave conditions after 20 minutes and was put on hiatus for 30 minutes or so while the Am final was run.  Then they had to get back in and skim another, who knows, 30 or 40 minutes as it just started to blow out at the end of the heat and the tide started to suck out.  The conditions weren’t ideal but everybody charged.  Wyatt was making a strong push to be the only back to back cramik champ and almost pulled it off, but Deebo couldn’t be stopped.  Whether it was backside urls, frontside laybacks, or a strong aerial attack, Deebo was on point all day and provided many a highlight on his way to gaining his new nickname, 3-Time!  Sam and Square rounded out the top with strong showings as well.

Thanks to everyone for coming out and making cramik the fun, special event that it is.  Look forward to seeing you all when the cramik cup starts!  The biggest thanks go out to 57 for the sick trophies, always the highlight of the event!

Here’s some pics, in order by time, taken by legendary cramik photog Craig Kay and the before posted vid from Selva at the bottom:

[nggallery id=7]

[youtube]http://youtu.be/GuhENVQRwRg[/youtube]

So we begin season 3 in a row at Lefts with no sand, no doubt in no small part due to the Snowy Plover. For the uninitiated, the Snowy Plover is a small bird that breeds on the coastal sands.  Before there was worry of the Snowy Plover’s extinction along the waterfront of the Presidio (Crissy Field), the sand was at 1/5th of the amount that is now present on the main beach on the inside behind Lefts.  Back when the military still controlled the area and had little regard for marine life, the water occasionally ran up to the wall that protects the Gulf of the Farallons National Marine Sanctuary buildings.  Now, and since they restored the Crissy Field Marsh, the water doesn’t come within 50 yards, at least.

Look at this photo on the right from 1993 and see where the water line is.  See how far offshore the breakwater is that protects the observatory out on the pier?

Now look at this photo on the left from May of this year, the breakwater is on shore!  The Crissy Field Marsh restoration completed in 2001 and forever changed the landscape of the coastline of Crissy Field.  And, it forever changed Lefts.  Although Lefts stills has occasion to fire, the current day wave does not resemble what the break used to do.  In some ways the wave has gotten better, on firing days the wave can be accessed much more west of the point, almost all the way to the pier, and that wave can be fast and a good challenge to make past the point.  But, pre-restoration, the wave, when good, seemed to have more power from the point to the inside and also traveled farther, all the way to the cement loading ramp on the inside.  On bigger high tide days, the wave used to even break pretty good to the east of the loading ramp and through the pier.

But, realistically, I don’t think the lack of sand at Lefts itself has a whole lot to do with the plover or the restoration   After all, there were periods in the 90’s with no sand at Lefts as well.This shot below was taken at the start of the 09/10 season, on October 3rd, 2009.  Check out how much sand there was!  I think this might have been the most sand ever at Lefts and this was a good 10 years after the start of the restoration project.  How did this happen?

Let’s look at El Nino history.  From my memory, the best season ever was 97/98 followed by a very good 98/99.  Look at the chart below and see that was the peak of the largest El Nino of the past 45 years (although the length of the 86/87 El Nino looks quite formidable, but I didn’t start skimming Lefts until 1990 so I have no idea what it did at that time).

09/10 was a thin but peaky El Nino.  In real life, this translated to the massive amount of sand buildup at the beginning of that season and led to a great season but by March 30th the sand had left and hasn’t really returned.

Now, look at the graph above again, and compare the recent seasons:

2011/2012 – not bad, pretty decent. Some pretty fun days, but minimal sand really hampered the season.

2010/2011 – worst season on record

2009/2010 – one of the better seasons in recent memory, loads of “fire” days:

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2002/2003 – should have been pretty good, was it? Look at the sand, and is that a plover in the foreground???

Here’s some old video from that season:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrsxHoRB668[/youtube]

Based on the graph, you’d be thinking we were heading into an El Nino, BUT, based on the sand, you’d say we were not.  The forecast on StormSurf says that the next El Nino is 2 years out:

 a neutral pattern biased slightly warm would be good, followed by at least another year of slightly warmer temps ultimately converging in a stronger El Nino 2-3 years out. And historically, this is the ‘

normal’ pattern (a few years of false starts before a legit El Nino forms). We think we are in a slowly building multi-year pattern that will culminate with a real El Nino 2 or more years beyond.

I say hang in there and keep an eye on the sand.  I think the worst is behind us and this year will be pretty decent, just not in the great/excellent/epic sphere.

 

What do you think? Plover or nino?  Or as they say in Ronin, 7 fat years followed by 7 lean years?

 

PS – There’s a new fence along the inside at Lefts, kind of blocking off Inside Pocket.  I thought this might be another beginning of the end, but upon further examination of the signage, we should be OK: