Textured water
A whole gaggle of us showed up yesterday for our Textured Water Paddle. Unfortunately, the texture of Saturday was gone. There was a large swell, but that was all. We wound up breaking into several smaller groups and some of us played at the end of the breakwater in the much smaller breaking waves and foam from the day before.

Others went around the breakwater, and still others went in close to the beach to practice. It seems that everyone was pretty much doing what they wanted - and that was good, because this was a very impromptu last minute paddle for experienced rough water paddlers.

At about 10:30, Paul Chang and Len Goodman arrived and a whole bunch of us just opted to do a rather fast harbor paddle with them. Paul surprised all of us by rolling twice. He made me really jealous, because I was able to do everything wrong on all of my roll attempts yesterday. Fortunately, I know what I was doing wrong each time, and can correct it. The last attempt was perfect, until I lifted my head at the last minute. That extra weight hanging out is enough to pull you back into the water. So much for trying to practice when I was that tired. Oh well, there's always next week.

When we split the group up for the harbor tour, we decided to have everybody meet at 12:00 at the beach so we could at least enjoy lunch together. That part worked perfectly for us and we all headed to Daddy-O's.

Steve Holtzman

Submitted on January 31, 2005