Surfs Up

[JTG]

Marconi is our usual spot, but I’ll hit up Nauset Light or White Crest on occasion. We are down in Chatham. Nauset Beach in Orleans is closer, but the surfing there generally stinks!

 

[JTG]

Only had an hour at Santa Monica before we had to get ready for our flight, but it was a fun hour!

Surfing on the west coast is very different. Put another way, a 2.5 ft wave on the Cape is generally nothing like a 2.5 ft wave on the west coast….as simply looking at wave height can be deceiving. I don’t pretend to know how it works (some combination of swell, period, and wave height), but the volume of water moving in “2.5 ft” west coast surf seems massive compared “2.5 ft” east coast surf…..leading to a lot more energy in the waves. That makes for some fast, fun rides once you make the adjustment and actually get on them!

 

[Crazy Otto]

View attachment 14629
Only had an hour at Santa Monica before we had to get ready for our flight, but it was a fun hour!

Surfing on the west coast is very different. Put another way, a 2.5 ft wave on the Cape is generally nothing like a 2.5 ft wave on the west coast….as simply looking at wave height can be deceiving. I don’t pretend to know how it works (some combination of swell, period, and wave height), but the volume of water moving in “2.5 ft” west coast surf seems massive compared “2.5 ft” east coast surf…..leading to a lot more energy in the waves. That makes for some fast, fun rides once you make the adjustment and actually get on them!

Cowabunga! \000/

The Pacific definitely has a different feel to it and California feels different from Hawaii. The water feels like its alive in Hawaii, can't really explain it though. Looks like a great southern California day out there. Surfing (and other ocean based fun) is pretty much the only thing I miss about living there.

 

[Crazy Otto]

Marconi is our usual spot, but I’ll hit up Nauset Light or White Crest on occasion. We are down in Chatham. Nauset Beach in Orleans is closer, but the surfing there generally stinks!

I saw in an earlier post you were wondering about LI and NJ. Not sure if you've done much research into them yet, but I've got a lot of intel on a bunch of places in the northeast, from Maine to NJ. I'm happy to share what I know and I'm always looking for people to surf with, since I'm usually just out by myself. I'm in Westchester, NY so on good surf days I usually try to keep my driving within 2 hours, which puts will around Robert Moses Beach on LI and Asbury Park in NJ if I go the whole two. The Cape is too sharky for my tastes these days, but am getting to the point where I'm starting to rationalize it.

 

[tirolski]

View attachment 14629
Only had an hour at Santa Monica before we had to get ready for our flight, but it was a fun hour!

Surfing on the west coast is very different. Put another way, a 2.5 ft wave on the Cape is generally nothing like a 2.5 ft wave on the west coast….as simply looking at wave height can be deceiving. I don’t pretend to know how it works (some combination of swell, period, and wave height), but the volume of water moving in “2.5 ft” west coast surf seems massive compared “2.5 ft” east coast surf…..leading to a lot more energy in the waves. That makes for some fast, fun rides once you make the adjustment and actually get on them!

Never tried board surfing but have body surfed southern Cali in some big waves years ago.
Could’ve used a helmet and shoulder pads.

 

[tirolski]

Surf’s been up in Cali.

 

[D.B. Cooper]

I don’t pretend to know how it works (some combination of swell, period, and wave height), but the volume of water moving in “2.5 ft” west coast surf seems massive compared “2.5 ft” east coast surf…..leading to a lot more energy in the waves.

That may have to do with the depth of the water. When the water is deeper, there is more space for the wave's energy to dissipate (see cycle of arrows, lower left side of diagram).

Now think about a swimming pool for swim races with that same cycle of arrows. Pools that are more shallow are faster, because that underwater churn has less place to go. In this case, the arrow that rises from the bottom comes up and helps propel the swimmer forward.

 

[Temp6]

@D.B. Cooper @JTG It is the period of the swell otherwise known as interval. Essentially it means wavelength as seen in the diagram above. 20 second swell period means 20 seconds in between wave crests in the open ocean. The height of the swell matters but the swell period matters a fair bit more. You can have a 6 foot swell but with tiny 4 second interval that’s a small wave with not much water in it. Now imagine how much water is in a wave that’s 6 foot at 20 seconds. In the same light, 2 foot at 20 seconds has a nice wall of water pushing while 2 foot at 5 seconds is nothing but a piddly ripple.

Most of east coast can only really handle swells of 10-12 seconds interval because of the shape and depth of the sandbars. Some point breaks and reef breaks up and down the coast can handle bigger.

Those long interval swells in the pacific travel great distances and organize themselves into sets with long swell periods. The farther they travel the longer the period. Atlantic Ocean storms are generally much closer to our coast and thus the waves don’t have as far to travel and organize, resulting in shorter periods.

 

[D.B. Cooper]

I find that sometimes if you hack together a response to something, it can prompt (and maybe irritate) someone more proficient in that field to respond with the real right answer. Thank you Temp6.
<self high five>.

 

[Harvey]

So it's like seeding the clouds?