Lessons of SoCal

All three times I have been here I have seen pods of dolphins and a few seals. I like the dolphin experiences over the seal experience; I know how vicious those sea dogs can be. In any case I came here and two of the three times the swell was poppin off . There were pretty good waves to be had and such long rides compared to my home beach. It was only really crowded once, I spent that time basking on the beach and went back in after the crowd had died down a bit. They have this weird thing down here and I think it's called Ku Hoe Heʻe Nalu; to stand, to paddle, to surf, a wave. basically it's like a surfboard on 'roids. Wider, thicker and heavier. One uses a 6 foot long paddle to catch a wave and to get in the line-up. The advantage is that one can catch any size wave from a ripple to an overhead. The disadvantage, as I see it, is that you have to stand the ENTIRE time (I'm just too lazy for that) and the actual equipment is much more cumbersome. There are a lot of people that do it down here and I think it has to do with the breaks.

when a bad swell hits depending on which way the beach faces you can get really good waves and sometimes depending on the wind really bad waves. Having a really long beach, like in NorCal has a lot of beach breaks but they are all separated by outcroppings and cliffs; SoCal has miles of uninterrupted beach. Cove and protected beaches ,like in Norcal, are great becauseSoCal, presents the problem of swells being dispersed out and waves being really small but when it's good you can get rides as long as 20 seconds or more.

Spending time at Sunset Beach, which is right off of "The PCH" Hwy 1 (I don't know why they call it "The", so much easier to say 1) has taught me a lot about how the rich people in LA live. It means you can own a Lotus, Corvette and the beater car is a Mercedes.

I brought my water submersible camera, i wil post pics of this beach later.