January, 2005 Beach Trip – Paul Scrutton
| River: | Other |
| Skill: | All |
| Trip Date: | 03/19/2005 |
Date: Saturday, March 19, 2005
Where: Masonboro Island. NC
Trip Coordinator: Paul Scrutton
Paddlers: Paul Scrutton – composite K1, Jon Godwin – composite K1, Josh Boyer – plastic K1, Geoff Kegley composite K1, Dan Cox – plastic K1, Chris, Chris and Dylan from UNC Asheville – plastic K1, plastic K1 and composite K1
Planning weeks ahead for a surf trip, is always somewhat of a dubious proposition. Nevertheless, this is what we did. We were rewarded with being on the tail-end of a decent swell pattern. All week, the surf reports were saying 2-5ft, but very choppy and windy conditions. As we went into Friday, reports were coming back that the surf was beginning to clean up, although the amplitude was decreasing.
As we drove down to the beach, seeing the tree-tops shaking back and forth, I called Geoff, our resident surf-kayak expert. Geoff had recently qualified to represent the East coast Surf Kayak Team in the Worlds championship in 2005 in Costa Rica. Geoff also lived in Wilmington, so was a good person to speak to when trying to figure out where to surf that day. Due to the wind, we opted to surf at Masonboro island, which has a jetty sticking out of the North side of it. The jetty provides good wind-shelter, which prevents the wind from beating the waves up too much, creating far superior surf conditions than exist on other spots off of Wrightsville beach. When the wind comes up, we've found in the past, that Masonboro Island is generally a good bet.
Jon, Josh and I met up with Dan at Johnny Mercer pier, and then drove down to the south of the island. We then ran into Chris, Chris and Dylan from UNC-Asheville. One of these guys was sporting the new hot Mega Charger boat designed by Spencer Cooke. This boat is so small at 6'8" long. Rodeo boat sized surf kayak.
We paddled across the inlet and walked around the island to get to the ocean side. Geoff met up with us at the beach, and there were two other folk out there in some other plastic boats, one whitewater, and one a longer style surf/rec sea kayak. We had a total of 9 kayakers out in the ocean at one spot. We had numbers!
The surf was good 3-4 foot conditions, not super clean, but yielded some very good rides. I swear I saw Geoff with the rear half of his boat in a small tube at one stage. Josh was getting some great rides in his whitewater boat.
As the day progressed, and we moved into high tide, the waves started to close-out more. What this means is that the wave forgets to peel and collapse on one side, but collapses on its entire width at the same time. This makes for very interesting elevator drops when you are trying to catch a wave. If you are on the wave already, the wave collapses and explodes right behind you. If you are trying to paddle out, there is nowhere good to go, you are faced with a collapsing wall every 10 seconds in front of you, making progress extremely difficult.
Jon discovered that the closeouts weren't occurring so much very close to the jetty, so we were able to make better progress by paddling out in this area.
Dinner afterwards was held at Flaming Amies Burrito Bar, which boasts a great array of different interesting ingredients, and salsa varietals – think Carrburitos. Plus, they offered a discount on certain nights for displaying your tattoo. Interestingly enough, the local tattoo parlor offered a discount on tattoos if you showed them your burrito receipt. You can't beat that I guess!