garrett's bay of biscay surf report

or more accurately, surf misadventure report, for all you surf-happy blog readers out there.

well here i am in san sebastian and i pretty much got my ass handed to me yesterday. actually let's rewind a few days. we met up with my old archi-school buddy hayden here in san seb and drove up across theborder to this tinly little town called bidart on the cote de basque. stayed the night in a SA-WEET little b&b, rented a bic-ish board (called 'surf betty' YES!) in guethary, and drove a few miles up the coast to biarritz. gorgeous little town with this cinderella cove (chateau on the point, the whole deal), and paddled out. the surf? a big frothy stormy rainy mess. huge, double-overhead sets, a mean current and very few people making it to the outside. luckily there was a decent channel. but it was one of those bigdrop-to-closeout-to prone it in, then walk down the beach and do battle again kind of days. i think i got 3 waves in an hour and a half. go surf betty. of course there were the 3 or 4 shortboarders who were absolutely tearing it up. fuckers.

now we´ve settled in san sebastian for a few days and this place is absolute paradise. amazing culture, picturesque, tons of unreal tapasbars (truly UNREAL food. even I was saying things like 'that was the best 'X' i've ever had'. steak, mussels, fish, mushrooms, etc. jeez, i just ate and i'm starting to get hungry again just thinking about it), and yes,surf. because we're without a car i'm confined to the main beach called 'zurriola' (or 'gros' if you're basque), and renting from a shop right across the street. the beach is pretty much one big closeout with about six thousand of my new spanish friends out in the lineup. actually there is a decent right at one end, but each wave has easily eight guys going for it and they're all amazingly good. like pro-good. i tried that one for about a half-hour on this rented 7-6 egg, finally got some table-scraps, then got just PINNED on the inside by the shoredump and was unable to make it back out. such defeat! the other end of the beach had this huge mysto mushy left breaking at low tide (like those really bigdays at seaside cove for the oregonians reading this) that i just about got wired until a huge herd of local longboarders just emerged from nowhere and had it all to themselves. so at first my board is too long, then it's not long enough. hm. they say the only time to avoid crowds is before 10 am, but the board rental shack doesn't open until 9:30. see how that works?

anyway, i'm not complaining, no no no. this place is truly amazing. did i say that already? we'll get some photographic evidence up here soon as proof. anyway, there's another cove in this city that is more flat-water, due to an island blocking out all the swell. the water looks a lot cleaner, so i think i'll just hang out there this afternoon and go for a long swim to the island and back, then go for a morning surf tomorrow. they say the swell's going down and the wind's turning offshore, so maybe that shorepound might be a little more, eh, simpático.

well that's your donostia surf report for tuesday, 19 september. so what do you surfers out there think about a month-long september surfari in these parts at some point in the future? not right away, of course but at some point before we die. just let me know. i'll be waiting, planning, saving my appetite.