Corky's Corner

Corky Carroll asks the question just how cold too cold?

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 9 February, 2009 : - - O.K. this has been a cold winter so far here in the normally mild climated Surf City.  Yeah, the last week has been nice but for the most part it has been freezing.  Burrrrrrrrittos!  The other day I was chit chatting with some dudes while checking the surf and stories were being tossed out as to, 'the coldest water, or weather or both, that I ever surfed in.' 

For the most part these tales all revolved around surfing experiences here in Southern California.  So really there was nothing too extreme.  I mean, how cold can it get around here?  Cold yes, but not THAT cold.

My coldest surfing experience came way back in the mid 1960’s.  I was on a surfing trip to Oregon.  That alone ought to tell you something.  It’s way cold up there.  Even when it’s warm it’s cold.  In fact the warmest it ever gets there is about the same as the coldest it ever gets here.  It’s flat out cold.  A lot of wind and fog and rain and rocks and ice on the windshield cold. 

But that isn’t where I was the coldest.  One day while I was there the surf got enormous.  Way too big to surf.  Like a hundred feet or something.  It was hard to tell just how big it was from shore.  But it was so big that the waves looked to be in slow motion when they were breaking.  I had heard about a spot in the State of Washington that was actually 90 miles inland. 

It was near a town called Port Angeles in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The rumor was that there was a perfect lefthand point break there that would break when it got huge in the ocean.  The swells would travel up the strait with an incoming tide and peel off on this point.  So, seeing how I was not in the mood for 100 foot waves, I decided to drive up there and check it out.

It was a long drive from where I was in Oregon to Port Angeles.  I left in the evening and it took an all night marathon to get there at about nine in the morning.  The surf spot itself was on an Indian Reservation.  I had been told that the toll to enter and surf was a bottle of Jack Daniels and/or a carton of cigarettes.  I was ready with both. 

It was true.  Those dudes were not all that friendly either.  They took the Jack and the carton of Marlboros and sort of grumpily pointed me in the direction of the beach with a sort of mixture of distain and disbelief over how anybody could be so stupid as to want to go into the water there.  I soon found out why.

It was a beautiful clear and sunny morning.  The air temp must have been hovering up there around the mid to high thirties.  I had on like three sweatshirts.  The point was perfectly set up for surf.  But there was nothing.  Flat as a pancake.  The tide was just changing from low to incoming.

I sat there and waited as at first little tiny waves started to peel down the point and soon bigger and bigger ones.  Within about an hour it was well overhead and looked like a really good day at Rincon in California except reversed.   I was stoked to the max.  I changed into my state of the art “farmer john” wetsuit.  Short legs and no arms.  It was so cold that my wax was frozen and would hardly go on my board at all.  But the surf was looking so good I couldn’t wait to get out there. 

That was until I got out there.  I had jumped into the water and taken about five or six paddle strokes when I realized that this was something totally different than I had ever experienced before.  This was not cold.  It was freezing.  Holy moley mama fridged freezing.  The water was a not tropical 42 degrees.  Penguins were floating by on icebergs sticking out their tongues at me and laughing.

I lasted two waves.  This was way before we had surf leashes and I did not want to take the chance of falling off and having to actually swim in that just melted snow water. I don’t think I got warm for a week after that.  The waves were really good, but the elements were so extreme that I never had any desire to go back there.  It made the coldest day here in Huntington Beach seem like a south pacific tropical wonderland.

www.corkycarroll.com

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Corky Carroll

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