From Tip to Tip With Some Drama in Between

Knowing that the much-anticipated swell had finally arrived, I met up with some bros and went from one tip of the South Bay to the other in search of the best breaking spot. Instead of finding the best breaking spot, however, we found some drama.

At the first spot we checked, we were chilling on the beach and observing both the waves and two surfers who were already out. The next thing we knew one of the surfers was clinging onto the side of a jetty while the second surfer was rapidly paddling towards that same jetty. Just as the second surfer grabbed a hold of the jetty, we saw something big and dark partially emerge from the water only a few feet from where the second surfer was. I initially thought it was a sea lion, but I wasn't sure. So when the two surfers finally climbed onto the top of the jetty, I approached them - one of the surfers was none other than Chris Taloa - and asked them what had spooked them. Chris adamantly said it was a shark. He said he saw a crescent tail moving side-to-side (as opposed to up-and-down like a dolphin's tail) and a white belly. Needless to say, surfing at that particular spot was not in our best interest and we decided to move on.

We pulled up to our second destination only to see a couple of fire trucks and an ambulance. I instantly thought "this can't be good". To make a long story short, the story I was told was that a lady had drowned and the lifeguards couldn't find her body. As you can probably imagine, that put a damper on my desire to surf at that particular spot, and we ultimately decided to move on.

At the end of the day, we didn't find a spot with perfectly peeling a-frames, but after so much drama, finding Indo-esque waves was the least of my worries.