Surfing Grayland

On Friday we headed to Grayland to meet up with the crew at "The Whale Blow Inn" for a weekend surf trip. Chester, Setsuko, and Dave made it up early to check out the surf at Graylands and reported clean breaks at a gentle 3ft or so. Saturday morning, Meg and I fired up a warming breakfast of pancakes, bacon, and eggs for the crew and we headed for the beach.

Naturally, after a few pleasant, sunny days at the office, we made it to the beach in cold, drizzly conditions...a fresh wind blowing from the southwest with a westerly 4-5ft swell. But, we came to surf, so out we went. It was a relatively uneventful time...the receding tide gave us a small zone near the beach to play in and a couple larger zones further out to practice in. Sean found a wave to snap his paddle in, leaving him with a long swim in from the surf zone.

Once we had Sean safely in, we decided it was time to break for lunch. Alex arrived fresh from the Tacoma news-scene and joined us in the water after lunch. The wind picked up over lunch and I spent much of the afternoon paddling into the wind to avoid being blown to Canada. A few paddles back up the beach into 20+ knot winds wore me out and realizing that I was getting to tired to handle the bigger waves, I moved into the smaller surf near the beach to work on skills in more manageable waves and work on maneuvering in the wind...good times were had by all in the afternoon and as we loaded our boats onto the cars and cinched down the last straps the wind petered out, cleaning up the surf zone considerably. It didn't seem worth dressing and pulling 50lb boats off the car and into the water though and most of us retired to the beach house for a pasta feed and hours of kayaking and wilderness talk.

A great weekend...thanks to those who came up, especially Dave, Bob, and John in particular for giving up their time on the water to watch out for the rest of us as we messed around in snotty weather!

Click here for Pictures (Thanks to John for loan of the camera for pics and video)