High Surf in Los Angeles



For the past few days there has been a high surf advisory and the waves have been very big in Los Angeles. Most spots were 5-7 feet but today was a very big day and one of my favorite spots, El Porto, had 10-15 foot waves. There were even some 20 foot waves breaking outside according to the surfer with the broken board in this video. Someday I would like to ride waves that big, but I would like to ride on top of a dolphin instead of a surf board....or maybe a whale shark.


You can see another video of high surf at El Porto last year at the same time. Both videos are taken at El Segundo Jetty. This year is much bigger.

12 foot waves and the surfing dolphins of Ventura

I just got back from boogie boarding 10-12 foot+ waves in the city of Ventura. It's about one hour north of Los Angeles.
People call these waves "double over head". I have surfed double-baby overhead before, which is about 2 babies high, so I thought I could handle these, but when I got there, I saw that the waves were too big for me to surf, so I brought out my boogie board and flippers. It was very rough, and hard to paddle out to the waves. When I finally got there, my breath was very heavy and the waves looked like giant apartment buildings coming at me. Just as I was thinking about what kind of fish and creatures live in these liquid apartment buildings, I saw two dolphins surfing on a 10 foot wave. I wrote an earlier blog post about seeing dolphins surf. I really wanted to catch the wave with these dolphins, so I turned around and paddled, but I missed it. I didn't see the dolphins again. I guess they rode that wave in to the beach and went home.


It was pretty scary to be out in these big waves and paddle over them. At first, I was scared of them, but then a giant one broke right in front of me. I was in the worst place to be. It was a lot of water. I took a big breath and dove under the wave and waited to be thrown around by the ocean and held under, but Mr. Ocean only shook me a little bit for a few seconds and then popped me out onto the surface. That was very kind of him.

I caught a nice 10 foot wave, and rode it all the way to the beach. At the end of my ride, it broke in a hollow tube, and I popped out of it. When I grow up, I want to be a wave just like that one, or a fire truck.