“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore”

Ocean Beach San Francisco

Vincent Van Gogh famous schizophrenic must have been talking about needing to paddle out during our northwest wind swells.

I was watching a couple of guys trying to paddle out at Cardiff this morning. After no surf for so many rainy days you can't keep us from the water. I was reminded of the paddle out at Ocean beach in San Francisco.

The average paddle out was about 45 minutes when it was this big and you could travel up to a mile up or down the beach depending on which way the tide was pushing the water in or out of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Not only was it cold and big but it was heavily localized. The scariest crew back in the late 70's were the dreaded 'KNEE MEANIES'

Yes, I kid you not these guys were like a splinter group from the other unhappy locals. There were four guys who kneeboarded. That was weird enough but they all had crew cuts and drove around in a 64' dodge dart. They wore those coats like they were in some paramilitary Ruby Ridge thing. And for reasons unkown to us they always loved to hassel us.

But, I respected the Knee Meanies. They were so out there you had to love their commintment. Like Van Gogh, they were about one missed dose of Haldol away from giving an ear to some unsuspecting girl.

Yet as always I degress. Tomorrow we hope it cleans up and we can surf. The last sunny day before the storm and I plan to not go gently into the night.

Victory at Sea

So we drove down to the beach this morning just to see the waves and Logan said 'it's Victory at Sea'. He was right of course but when I asked him what it means he just said blown out.

Man, he didn't know the reference to best war TV show of all time! Victory at Sea. I loved this show! I am a failure as a parent and pop culture historian. I immediately had to go to Wikipedia and YouTube.I found it and it still good. enjoy

Wikipedia: Victory at Sea was a documentary TV series about naval warfare during World War II that was originally aired by NBC in the USA in 26 half-hour segments on Sunday afternoons, starting October 26, 1952 and ending May 3, 1953. The series, which won an Emmy in 1954 as best public affairs program, played a major role in establishing historic documentaries as a viable television genre. When it first aired, NBC thought it so important that it had no commercial breaks.

We used to watch this show and it was great. I tried to find out when the expression was taken by the surf community, but there was nothing really in print until the 90's.

victory at sea -idiom
(idiom) ocean, Ocean conditions very windblown and messy, possibly to the point of being inimical to surfing and other water sports.
1995, Tom Tweed, 1/5/95 sd cali. surf 7-8' onshore slop

I remember the expression when I was a kid in the 70's and I am sure they used it from the 50's after looking at the opening segment.

All dressed up with no where to go

Hale and Lucas got up early. They spent last night rewaxing surfboards and talking heat strategy. We were ready for 5:30am departure. Then we got the email:

Offical email from ISF

isfsurfteams@aol.com to me show details 5:12 AM (6 hours ago) Reply

Please note the contest is canceled today due to weather and unsafe conditions. thank you, Carolyn.

INTERSCHOLASTIC SURFING FEDERATION6774 Camino Del Prado, Carlsbad, CA 92011760-476-1694 http://www.isfsurfing.org/

It rained like crazy last night so the water was dirty and unsafe.

Here is what Ocean Beach looked like from surf shot.

But you know groms, they were still begging to surf this morning so I drove down to Ponto about 7am to show them it looked like 'Victory at Sea'. Now I just have to keep them occupied without going stir crazy the rest of the day.