The waves in this wall of corduroy weren’t very big, but they happened to be in one of the best Thai restaurants I’ve ever been in, called Osha. Can you say Green Tea Mojitos?

Maggie grabbed this snapshot of a slightly bumpy Lowers last Thursday. I had the GH fish out here and loved every second. It’s such a fun board to flying down the line getting in tons of turns and bumping floaters off the white water.

The night outside is black and cold, but I’ve shut myself in the camper of my truck and I already feel warmer. The light from a dozen fires surrounding us reveals the number of camps that will spew surfers into the lineup tomorrow morning.

The emptiness of the white noise that fills the air outside belies the violence of the war the ocean is waging with the small point we have camped on. Tomorrow we will wake and observe and prepare and enter the fray between the point and the sea. We will float and glide turn and trim upon the soldiers of the ocean and their fury, enjoying a war that will briefly subside, but never end.

Photo by the outstanding Tom Shepard

Note: I rushed this and accidently combined it with the previous post.

All photos by Maggie Marsek

I’d love to do this sometime. Seems like these guys could be making better turns on less traditional equiment though. No need for all the paddle volume, so I’m thinking 4′10 twin keel - 18-1/2w (6″ back of center) x 14n x 13t x 2thick might be a fun experiment.

I freaking love Wetsand’s State of Surf report. The newest one just came out for July and in it, Nathan Cool explains recent weak southern hemis with the two words every west cost waverider wants to hear most. El Nino. Now, every surf forcasting site on the planet knows that El Nino can boost pageviews (and advertising revenue) more than a Pam Anderson home movie, so a little extra research is in order.

NOAA’s prediction? Normal conditions for the next three months, with a week El Nino forcasted for the winter. It should be noted though that NOAA has labled this prediction with “considerable uncertainty”. It’s bad news for the summer, but good news for the winter.

As for the East Coast’s hurricane season, Cool enlightens us to a variable everyone missed when predicting the severity of the season. Africain dust storms. It seems a drought in Africa has caused greater than normal dust plumes branching out into the Atlantic. These plumes are keeping water temps low over the major storm formation areas. Good news for home owners, bad news for Home Depot’s profit margins and surfers.

So let’s agree right now that 6, 5-8 foot waves per minute that break for 70 to 100 yards in salt water is not a wave pool. Kerry Black has designed a versatile reef he can change on a whim to resemble any of the long list of breaks he has collected precise bathometric data on. Want to surf Chopes? It’s scheduled for May 13th to May 21st 2007. JBay breaks the next week and the week after that The WEDGE comes to Orlando, Florida for 7 days of body whomping, spectated fun. Notice: That schedule is total fiction.

The operators of Ron John’s Surfpark have the ability to make changes to the reef during your session. Imagine a group of ‘locals’ start with a perfectly imperfect rendition of an Uppers right. They shout out instructions to raise a specific panel in the wave pool ‘reef’ 18 inches. This change causes an early section that can crumble on you to jack up, offering a backdoor to the green clear room. A few waves later, everyone in the linup agrees the wave should be tweeked it to present a smackable lip before the tube, which now spits the rider out into a steep, boostable wall. After the session the operator clicks SAVE, and a new wave is born.

With all this potential though, the Surfpark will be missing many of the things that make a less perfect break a classic wave. Sea life will be replaced by screaming kids who’ve dropped their ice cream. There will be no tricky cliff access to navigate, or coral reef underfoot waiting to punish your mistakes. There will be no paddle out (you’ll just jump in) and the lineup will drop it’s UP. It is entirely possible that Shea Lopez will be stuck waiting in line behind you, if he is so inclined to jump in during a regular session. The view out of the best barrell of your life won’t be a Tahitian mountain peak, it’ll be of the surf mom’s in the bleachers directly infront of you.

Perhaps most artificial though, is that no grom waiting on a set will ever wander who first surfed the wave. The photo behind the cash register will be Kerry Black deep in the wave’s first tube.

Lots more at surfparks.com and wired.com