The surf’s been up this week in California, so far up that H.E. and I have been to the beach a few times trying to get some good shots of surfers doing their thing, and so far up that surfers have been advised not to do their thing. No beachside rescues are made in these kinds of conditions, so no sane surfer goes out.

But the surf is impressive. The waves break hard and high, creating so much mist that it’s hard to see past a few lifeguard stations. And I post a photo, but it can in no way convey how impressive the surf really is because there is nothing to show scale, no surfer to show how big the waves really are.

Now, if this were Hawaii, these waves would probably be a joke. 6 to 10 feet might be average there, I don’t know. Here, it’s something.

People went surfing in Carlsbad, though. One surfer’s dead body washed up on the shore. In San Diego, another broke his leg. And the night before last, a huge industrial tube broke off a construction site along the shore quite a few miles north of here (the surf was that strong), and as it floated past where H.E. and I were shooting, people kept passing by and asking us if it was a whale.

All this, and yet…

A handful of brave souls in Huntington Beach finally went out yesterday, but I’ll bet it wasn’t easy. We watched one guy warm up for over half an hour before he even ventured out into the water, and in the time that we watched him, he couldn’t get past the first of three breakers in a set. His board flew out of his hands at least two or three times in the first five minutes alone.

We saw two guys who somehow made it past the first three breakers, but we never saw them take a wave. So we didn’t get any surfing shots that day. The shots we did manage to get look pretty tame.

I did get one good surfing shot on Sunday, though, before the big surf advisory.

The wave already looks pretty big to me in this shot. So imagine if anyone was brave enough to go out there while the surf was up this week AND if I had a 600mm zoom lens.

Then I might have really had something good to post.

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