Its been a busy few months, I took a position at VMware as a Social Media Producer, got a new car and continued my goal of surfing 200 sessions this year. I have not been making the time to blog until now so here it goes. If you have been interested in what I do on a more frequent basis please follow me on twitter.

I am currently on my own Surf Safari in LA picking up a new board.

This is to replace my beloved 8′ Harbour I broke in February.

One of the goals I set back in 2009 was to surf all of the spots in Surfing USA before I am 40, I am happy to say that I am slowly working on this goal. Its tough because most of them are in SoCal and I only get down there once or twice a year.

Today however, I surfed San Onofre and It is truly worthy of being sung about. Nice big slow waves that were long and very fun. Got a full on stoke on the new Harbour, great day.

So on to the new updated list. I might try and nail a spot or 2 tomorrow as well.

Since I have been surfing I have been digging up some old surf rock and newer surf music (wezzer, nada surf, etc) to get me pumped up before sessions. I have found one song while silly actually has a ton more meaning than it used to when I was younger, The Beach Boys, Surfing USA. I was surprised when I listened to the song of how many surf spots are listed and how I had surfed many of them. So my new goal is to at least paddle out and try to surf each spot in the song.

They are as follows:

• “Del Mar” – Del Mar, San Diego County, California
• “Ventura County Line” – Ventura County, California
• “Santa Cruz” – Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz County, California
  I regularly surf Santa Cruz if the swell is too big up north.
• “Trestles” – San Onofre State Park, San Diego County, California
• “Australia’s Narrabeen” – Narrabeen, New South Wales
• “Manhattan” – Manhattan Beach, Los Angeles County, California
  Surfed the day after Thanksgiving 2008 -Good beach, hollow wave, totally owned by ocean
• “Doheny” – Doheny Beach, Dana Point, Orange County, California
• “Haggerty’s” – Haggerty’s, Torrance, Los Angeles County, California
• “Swami’s” – Swami’s Beach, Encinitas, San Diego County, California
• “Pacific Palisades” – Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles County, California We got really close on this one this trip. We surfed Surfrider Beach (A.K.A Malibu) which is just north of Pacific Palisades on October 2nd, 2009
• “San Onofre” – San Onofre State Park, San Diego County, California
  I surfed this July 31st, 2010 session #140 of 2010 – Awesome long slow longboard waves, will surf it again.
• “Sunset” – Sunset Beach, Orange County, California
• “Redondo Beach” – Redondo Beach, Los Angeles County, California
• “LA” – Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, California
  Surfed Thanksgiving 2008 – Surfed Hermosa, Manhattan and Santa Monica Pier over the 3 days. – Also now have surfed Venice Beach in LA as well.
  I also surfed Seal Beach July 31st, 2010 session #139 of 2010
• “La Jolla” – La Jolla, San Diego County, California Done. Surfed La Jolla October 3rd, 2009 Beth got a lesson from Surf Diva Surf School
• “Waimea Bay” – Waimea Bay, Hawaii

Last night a question was asked of me on twitter that I found quite interesting:

How do you select the boards for your quiver?

The answer I would love to give is very carefully, but it would not be the truth. Unlike the pros who get given boards like candy myself and all the other surfers I know have to acquire our gear the hard way. Buying it.

My quiver has pretty been created by luck and craigslist. The first board I purchased was my harbour 8’0″ from a couple in pacifica. It’s beatup and has a bit of delam, but it was the first surfboard I owned. I only surfed it a few times before I found a 9’0″ Dick Brewer longboard on craigslist a few weeks later, unfortunately on a fateful night at the jetty I broke the tail of the brewer and I needed a replacement. This was only a month into my surfing career so I didn’t know much about boards other than I wanted one as long as possible.

I got very lucky 2 days after the brewer broke and I scored my 9’4″ Jeff Hakman wood board. For over a year this was my go too board and I had most of my major firsts on it, very fast and a very stable ride, for a long time it was the only board I rode. I still take it out on small days or at cowells or capitola when I feel like logging it up. I am starting to learn cross stepping so I may ride it more in the future.

The next board I acquired was my 7ft Strive in November 2008 as a gift from a relative. The full story is linked here. It’s an odd board, and I don’t take it out much but it’s and interesting ride. Now that I am riding shorter boards I might get better at this one. This biggest issue I have with it, is that it is 3″ thick while great when I was 250 LBS it’s a lot of unneeded foam for the current things I want to do.

The last board in my main quiver is a Butch Ramirez 6’10″ x 18.5″ x 2 7/16″ rounded pin shortboard. This is the first board where I really took into account the thickness, the width, and the length. I wanted something smaller than everything else I had that would get me in to bigger higher performing waves. This did it’s job. I tried a friends 6’8″ and found I could successfully ride it so after a lot of discussion with some knowledgeable surf buddies, I found what I was looking for, where else on craigslist.

So there is the story of my quiver, I will add some pics and links to this post soon. See you in the water.

If you don’t want to read the story and just want to see the pictures you can go to my Flickr Gallery here : http://www.bit.ly/mavs10lk

I moved to Half Moon Bay in April 2008 and took up surfing shortly there after, so saying that I was excited and looking forward to the Mavericks contest would win an understatement of the year award.

I was hoping that last year would have had a contest but no luck, that said, good things come to those who wait. The contest yesterday was an epic sight and site to behold. High drama, horrible wipe outs both onshore and off and some of the biggest waves being ridden with style.

I had been tweeting and taking pictures of the contest site almost every time it broke this year so figured I would do my best to share the experience of being there the best I could.


The call was made Thursday at 1pm February 11th, 2010 with a tweet from @Mavericks_Surf account. From there the planning rush was on. I decided early that I was going to do my best to get a good spot on the bluff by arriving earlier than anyone else, and since I could use my local knowledge of the site to my advantage. I just had to secure all the pieces of my gear.

The good news was the Nikon D70 that I had just gotten repaired was back from the shop and ready for me to learn how to use. This is my first DSLR so I figured what better place to put it through it’s paces. I had owned and used SLR cameras before for Astro-Photography but this would be my first time using an automatic one for sports photos.

I got very lucky in renting the last Super Telephoto for Borrow Lenses in San Mateo Friday night. I ended up with a 80-400mm f4.5-5.6 Nikor VR lens which was going to be in for repair due to it not focusing on anything less than 15 ft away. Since the Bluff is almost a mile from the break, I figured this wouldn’t be a problem. I also rented a 4gig CF card as it was just more convenient than trying to make it to Fry’s. While this lens worked for my photos, I ended up using it in Manual mode as it would never focus in Automatic. Borrow Lens gave me a good discount for it, so I am not unhappy, I do want to rent it again when it is fully functional.

I got home and started packing my gear my load out which I hauled from the airport to the top of the cliff was as follows:

Backpack:
Nikon D70
18-70mm lens
80-400mm lens
Skywatcher 80mm Refracting Telescope
3 eye pieces and diagonal for scope
Tripod control cables
USB hub
15″ MacBook Pro
Power cords and chargers for MBP, D70 and palm pre.
Extra Palm Pre Battery
Flip HD Video Camera
Pentax Optio V20 point and shoot digital camera
Mini tripod
Agent to the stars by John Scalzi
3 8.3oz cans of Sugar Free Red Bull
Beef Jerky
2 bags of Exploders Gummi Candy
2 600ml bottles of Throwback mountian dew
1 600ml bottle of lipton green tea
Cliff Bars
Swiss army Knife
Tilly Hat

Yes it was heavy.


I also carried with me a small 3 leged foldup chair and a heavy duty Alt-Az Tripod with fine motion controls. This tripod was my best equipment choice and it performed like a dream with both the D70 and the Telescope. The chair was also a good choice, I was comfortable sitting in it for the 8.5 hours I was in position on the bluff.

I over packed a bit but did end up using or eating most things. Next time I think will leave the Telescope, Computer and the chargers for each at home. I also would get a bigger memory card which I have on order from Newegg.

I was all packed and was in bed at about 9:30 pm Friday night.

My Alarm on my Pre went off at 4:15am and I headed out to beat traffic, people and to secure the best spot I could. I was concerned that they would only let media on the main bluff so I wanted to be there before they could close it. This proved to be the right decision. I considered many places to park but went with the official parking at the Airport as it let me be reasonably close without having to fight security goons or worry about security as street parking did. I was the first one to park there.

I loaded up and headed out for the few mile walk to the bluff. When I was almost to the trailhead a bunch of security goons blocked the main road into Mavs and said they weren’t letting anyone in until 7:30. I knew Save the Waves Volunteers were supposed to meet in the parking lot at 6am so needless to say there were some ticked off people. Thankfully Joao from Save the Waves showed up, corrected the issue and they opened the gates for all foot traffic. I was in!

I was the first one through the gate and made about as quick as a beeline as I could to get a spot on the bluff. It had rained the night before and I knew the main trail would be steep and muddy as well as the possibility of running into someone that didn’t want me, a non media badged photographer up there. So I climbed up a side route covered in grasses which was steeper than the main route but got me to the top faster.

After a few heart pounding and sweating minutes I made it to the top to only find maybe 10 people up there! I quickly got my tripod and chair in place and claimed my spot looking over the edge of the bluff with a clear unobstructed view of the whole break. I would not leave the bluff for the next 8 hours. It took me from leaving my car to the top of the bluff setup and shooting almost exactly 1 hour. First Shot was at 6am.

For the rest of the day I shot surfers, people, disasters and wipeouts. I have loaded most of my Photos to my Flickr stream and will be loading more as I finish processing and culling. I think I got shots of almost every wave surfed from 6am until 2:30 so if your looking for a bluff top angle of a particular ride let me know.





I also want to give a shout out and thank you to my surfing buddy Cynthia who kept me company the whole day and helped carry stuff back to the car. Also the people around me that were shooting from the very early morning were awesome at keeping people from getting in front of me and others and blocking the shot. I had a great time on the bluff and will be back up there next time mavericks breaks.

I have uploaded a full gallery of images to my Flickr account which can be found at http://www.bit.ly/mavs10lk

With the release of Poster for my Palm Pre I have almost got everything that I used my iPhone for in my Pre. Only thing that I am missing is TideApp for tide data, which I am currently building. I also want to build an app that will give a better view of surfline for pre users. So the question to other Pre users which apps are you missing that you used to have on other platforms?

I now have Evernote, Sunrise sunset, foursquare, ashphalt5, infopedia and a few others that make my pre a joy to use. Multi-tasking on webOS is a dream to use and I miss it everytime I fire up my iPhone to test something.

Now that the holidays are behind us my job search is moving into high
gear. I had a few interviews with some great companies before the
holidays started in earnest and now that its a New Year I’m looking
forward to more interviews.

So if you or someone you know is looking for a NABCEP certified entry
level solar installer, energy auditor with some AutoCAD experience and
PC and Mac computer skills, hardware and software, let me know. You
can contact me at bethjkilpatrick at gmail.com . You can check out my
linked in at http://www.linkedin.com/in/bethkilpatrick or follow me
on twitter http://twitter.com/bethkilpatrick or you can take a look at
a PDF version of my resume right here.

I am really looking forward to the new year and all the promising new
green technology that is sure to come out. This is the year for Green!

Beth Kilpatrick’s Resume (PDF)

Critical thinking solar technician who is deeply passionate about the design, development, and construction of alternative energy power systems. Bringing a deep understanding of computer hardware and software as well strong experience working with diverse teams successfully.

Over the past year and a half I have been surfing, I have tweeted, reported and taken pictures and video of many of my sessions but unlike my regular surfing friends Stokemaster, Tracey Thompson or SurferGrrrl I have never kept much of a log of my sessions or a count.

So my New Years Resolution is to start logging my sessions. A few weeks back I looked into the best ways to do this. I did not want this blog to become just a surfing log book for 2 reasons, 1 the focus of this blog is not only surfing and 2 I don’t think the short format of a log is something I want public.

I decided to use Evernote log for my surfing.

Why Evernote?
First its private so I can list out my thoughts on conditions, my session etc without a public face. It is also a fast system that has a great app for my palm pre as well as apps for almost every other operating system out there. I really wanted something that no matter what type of internet access I had I could log it. Evernote also works in an offline mode perfect for logging those sessions on the lonely coast between HMB and SC, not that there are any surf spots between SC and HMB right?

So far I have logged 3 Sessions starting on new years day. Last year I figured I did anywhere between 100-200 sessions but I did not want to go over all of my tweets and find them, so this year I have set my self a Goal of 200 sessions. Since I have had stretches last year where I surfed 40 days in a row I figured this is an achievable goal.

I will include some blog posts on sessions I had that I really enjoyed or were interesting in some way but for the nuts and bolts my log will be my own.

So a few questions to the other Surf Blogger/Loggers, what stats do you usually record? Winds? Swell? Who is there? How many waves? Let me know in the comments, I am hoping with the data I collect my forecasting will be better and my spot selection will improve as well.

In the past month I think my surfing skills are finally starting to dial into the point where I am catching waves, getting down the line and actually getting turns in on my rides. I have been working hard at bringing up my skills since July of 2008 when I first started seriously surfing almost every day. Since then I have only had about 3 weeks total out of the past year where I didn’t paddle out and ride (or attempt to ride) waves in California.

I have hit a few milestones that I think as a surfer are important, these are:

• Catching a wave – July 08
• Standing up on a wave – August 08
• Riding whitewater (longer than just planting your feet and falling) – Late August 08
• Riding on the face of the wave – February 09 – This is the point where I think you go from someone learning to surf, to being a surfer
• Riding chest high+ waves – March 09
• Landing drops on an head high wave – August 09
• Riding a wave more than 2000ft – November 09
• Getting Barreled for the First Time – December 1st 2009
• Paddling out, catching and riding well overhead waves -December 09

As you can see many of what I view in my mind as 3 milestones of my surfing experience have happened in the past 2 weeks. Since the clocks fell back for the switch back to standard time, I have been going for a Dawn Patrol almost everyday and then going further afield on the weekends.

I think one of the reasons I feel that I have progressed so much in the past weeks is that I was able to get a ton of board time in over thanksgiving weekend. There was huge swell in the water and most of my usual spots I felt were either too big for me or were closed out and onshore, so to Capitola I went. While there, something just clicked and I started to find myself in the right spot to catch a wave more often and to know where to position the board to extend the ride. With the nice easy breaking shoulders of Capitola I really started feeling in control of my direction and speed. I surfed there Thursday and Friday of the holiday.

The Sunday of thanksgiving weekend was a special day that I will remember for a very long time. My friends Sheila and Tracey met up with me in San Mateo and we headed to a spot that is well know and is usually the playground of surf schools and kooks, Cowells. I had watched the tide and swell, and figured that Cowells would be amazing in the afternoon. I was not disappointed. When we paddled out there was maybe 50-60 people in the water, but in spot as busy and as big as Cowells this is light crowd. After getting setup and doing a long paddle out I proceeded to catch long ride after long ride. I even caught one where I had paddled almost to the end of the pier, picked it up in the right section and was able to take it all the way to the beach as the longest right I have ever had. I was on the wave for well over 2000ft, I was so stoked about it that I did not even feel tired riding it as it felt like it was almost 10 minutes!

I think that this large amount of on the face wave time has improved my skills and has made me want to push to the next level of surfing. I have since done a Dawn patrol almost every morning since then at the Jetty, even braving almost freezing temps. I started going after the peak more, taking off later and just going for it rather than waiting for the next smaller one. With this new found stoke, I was able to get down and into the pocket and take waves at the jetty further than I had before. The conditions have help a ton but going for the wave at the right place at the right time has finally clicked for me. My greatest example was actually getting a small low barrel on December 1st. I walked around with a Stoke smile for about 3 days after

I dawn patrolled almost every morning last week and so far with the exception of Wednesday everyday this week. What made my sessions since Friday even better though was my new suit. With the near freezing temperatures, I for the first time started wearing a hood and even put on gloves! I guess if it is 34°F out then only having a small part of your wet face exposed is a good idea. I have caught at least 3 waves every session I have gone, and most more.

I have started to really understand and see how the Jetty reacts to different swell and tides, while I don’t really pick my times to surf (dusk or dawn is pretty much it) consistently surfing one spot many many days lets you learn it and predict it as best you can. Since I have learned where most of the peaks are or where they might be, I have gotten much higher wave count sessions and the confidence to go after the big waves on bigger days. See my previous post about my experience in that matter.

If the swell keeps coming like it is predicted to all weekend I doubt I will be stopping anytime soon. I am hoping to get more waves, more barrels, more strength and loose more weight with this hobby (ok, I am calling it a hobby, if you are a surfer you know what it really is) of mine.

I also want to give a thanks to my surfing buddies who have pushed and pulled me to get up and get out and kept and eye on me in the line up. Also special thanks to my good friend and neighbor who has taught me more about the culture and respect of surfing and the ocean its self than anyone else.

Hope to see you in the water soon.

Cryptomail, one of the surfers that I follow on twitter and know through other friends wrote a great post about meeting his fear at Ocean Beach I started off as a comment but I figured I would do a post of my own.

Today, I went after my fear as well, and beat some of it today. I went out to the Jetty for a 7:30 dawn patrol, the buoy was reading ~7ft but with a 17sec period I didn’t know what to expect. Yesterday with a bigger reading the Jetty actually looked pretty reasonable, maybe 4-5 ft. I decided to hike up to mavs and see what it was doing as I had been on a marathon everyday surf kick since last week and I wanted a day to rest. So when I looked at the buoy today I figured hey its smaller than yesterday, the jetty will just have fun little waves and the rain will keep the crowd down.

From the Cliff at Mavericks from Luke Kilpatrick on Vimeo.

Some video I shot Wednesday.

I was right on the crowd, wrong on the waves. This morning and all day Half moon bay had this amazing offshore east wind, I am sure you all know how rare this is. So combined with the swell and the wind the jetty was well overhead, nobody except a pair of SUP’s which kept pulling into some of the most amazing glassy clean waves I had seen here. Normally I would chicken out and say it was too big, but today was different. I watched the Eddie, I went and watched Mavs yesterday so I had a bit of inspiration that I needed to surf this swell. I also had my wetsuit already on and I will be damned if I didn’t go to all that trouble and not paddle out.

So I did.

During the time I was pulling out and waxing my board I kept asking myself, are you sure you want to do this? I then saw one of the SUP’s get a wave that was at least a foot over his head and I really started having to psych my self up. Your already dressed, you got to go. I grabbed my 7’0 Strive Quad and headed out.

The long period with a several minute lull helped on the getting out, however I didn’t expect the waves to jack up as high as they did. I have been surfing the Jetty for over a year now and I know it well but today felt different. The SUP’s were sitting just off of the first peak and then paddling for it. I picked my spot a little inside and to the north of them and setup to wait. Pretty soon after I was out I saw the outer reef go off and I could hear the big drum of the Eddie contest in my head as this set of waves started to bear down on me. I almost went for it until I realized I was too far in and it was going to close out on my head. I paddled towards this and made it up the face just missing the point of going over the falls. That paddle however set me up in position for the one behind it… I turned, paddled hard and to my surprise, landed the popup mid drop and made the wave. I was so shocked that I caught it I almost didn’t do the bottom turn to keep going down the wave. As I went faster on a board than I think I ever had I looked up and saw the lip peeling off in the offshore above my head. I knew at this time the wave had closed out behind me but I rode it out and went for another one with more adrenaline in my system than I think I have ever had. Totally stoked.

After such an amazing morning I wanted to charge it 1 more time. I worked hard from home and skipped lunch and headed back out at 4:30 to catch something before sunset. With the tide lower and the crowd larger I just about turned around again, but I suited up, and took out my faithful 8’0 Harbour. It might have been too much board for the 8-10ft waves out there, but I can duck dive it and I wanted to go after the second peak which was a bit mushier than the first which was crowded with a ton of short boarders. I made the paddle out with no issue and then proceeded to find the right spot to be. I found the spot twice, and the extra length helped me get down and fly at speeds I wasn’t expecting. I felt these waves were even bigger than the ones I had caught this morning so I was even more pumped and stoked about riding them, 1 I even got to ride out to completion as it didn’t close out as many of the others did. I caught a few more rides where I made it down the face as the wave closed out behind me, but it was those first 2 rides that made my week. I saw 4 guys get barrels tonight while I was there. I then proceeded to miss a bunch of waves bringing myself further and further into the inside. I was just about done when I saw a quickly reforming wave coming behind me. I though this was my epic ride into the beach, however the ocean had other ideas.

As I paddled into the spot I realized to late that I had taken off too late with too much board and ended getting pulled up and slammed by the lip and face all at once. After doing a few underwater cartwheels I got a breath and then got wacked again by the first waves set mate. I guess I feel that If I had not been worked hard at all today then I might have thought that I could get away with charging overhead waves and not paying for it. Sometimes you beat the Ocean and it gives up wonderful rides, other times the Ocean beats you and puts you in its own personal spin cycle, but if you don’t get the spin the rides wouldn’t be as sweet.

I headed back out after that, and caught a small wave and some whitewater to the beach and walked out with respect and one of the biggest cases of Stoke I have ever had.

This will be my first review of some of my Surfing Gear on this site. I finally feel that after more than a year of surfing almost everyday I figure I can say with some authority about the gear that I have acquired, why I went with it and how it worked out for me.

So first up is my new wetsuit, the 2010 Rip Curl 4/3 Insulator. I have now owned 3 other wetsuits and when picking out a new one this year for Christmas I had to look at a lot of choices. Just so there is some comparison to the other suits I have used I will give a quick list out of my current closet of suits.

• First Suit 07/08 – Rip Curl Core 4/3 Backzip – Green – XLS – My First Suit fit well when I was 245 lbs but now is good on days when my other suits are all wet and being a bit heavier to get down the wave is a good thing. Since it is almost 18 months old it has held up very well with just a few issues in the legs that are mostly wear and tear which Rip Curl fixed very well for me at little cost.
• Second Suit 12/09 – Rip Curl Core 4/3 Backzip – Grey – L – I found with loosing a bunch of weight that my XLS was heavy and I wanted to see if I could get a better fitting suit last Christmas. I was very happy with my other Rip Curl Suit and after trying on a bunch of others I went with a smaller size of the original suit I had. I have never been cold in these suits in the Northern California waters. This has been my favorite suit for the past year. It has taken 1 trip to the Rip Curl repair center as well with the ankle seams not holding up to the near daily abuse of going over booties.
• Third Suit 12/09 – O’Neil Psycho 1 – L – I found this suit on Craigslist and after being used to at least a 2 suit rotation I wanted a 3rd so I could send my XLS into Rip Curl for repairs. I purchased this suit off a guy in the Sunset for 50 bucks and it has been a soild if not the warmest suit. I have a very good cold tolerance so I have not found it cold but due to its age, it has started to degrade a bit. I usually wear it as a last resort or on a day that I want to be as light as possible but still wearing suit. Decent suit was worth the money.

I surf on average 4 to 5 days a week at places ranging from as far north as Bolinas to as far south as Manressa. I ride mostly a 9’4″ Longboard and a 8’0″ Funboard/Hybrid as well as a 7’0 Swallow tail Quad. I find having a few different boards in the quiver lets me pick the right tool for the conditions. Lately my 8’0″ has been getting most of the work. My suits get a lot of use and are not treated perfectly. If they get a fresh water rinse once a week they are lucky but I do my best to hang them out to dry in the shower. They do usually sit all day in the back of my car or truck balled up and sandy until I get home though.

So on to the Rip Curl Insulator

While my other suits have been working well for me, I have been finding I have been wearing my large Rip Curl suit the most, even putting it on wet even if my other suits were dry as it felt the best fitting and I felt I have better movement and control with it. My surfing has been improving a lot lately so I have not wanted my suit to be slowing me down. I spent several sessions this summer wearing only board shorts and a vest so I have felt first hand how no suit effects your performance (most people in norcal think I am insane for surfing sans suit but I enjoy the freedom)

Bearing these things in mind I wanted a suit that would replace the large as my favorite, so I started looking at the upper end of the spectrum for the suits. On thanksgiving weekend I stopped in at the Santa Cruz Rip Curl Outlet to see what they had as they were running a big sale (as usual) while there I tried on a Medium Tall (MT) E-bomb back zip suit. I was very happy to find that it fit me very nicely, this was a big event for me as I have been trying to get down into a MT suit as my weight has come off. With this knowledge I headed up home, and dropped off Beth and headed over to Sonlight Surf Shop in Pacficia.

After trying on a few Chest Zip E-bombs at Sonlight I found that they were hard to get in an out of, also they were missing the sticky front rubber panel on the suit and the fireskin insulation inside. I really wanted to try a chest zip but I didn’t want to go all the way up to the $400+ F-Bomb when I couldn’t see a ton of significant difference between it and the Core suits I have been enjoying all this time. Then Robin presented me with another option. The Rip Curl Insulator.

This suit was just about perfect for what I was looking for ~300 bucks with a chest zip entry as well as a color on it that would be easier for Beth to see me in the Line up (Much of the time wetsuits come in any color you want as long as it is black). I was hot and sweaty from trying on 3 other suits but Robin convinced me to give this one a shot. I liked the over the head chest zip system rather than the attached shoulder of the E-Bomb as it allowed for this huge entry point. If you look at the image you will see that the top of the suit has a split in the neck which makes this the easiest to put on wetsuit I have ever tried. If you wanted to try a chest zip suit but didn’t want to deal with needing a shoe horn to get in and out then give this suit a try.

After putting it on and moving around a bit, I found my shoulders to have a great range of motion for paddling, it felt even better than the E-Bomb as I didn’t have a zipper pulling right on my shoulder. The other feature I noticed and really liked was the rubber front panel and the fireskin material on the inside to keep me nice and toasty. The last thing about this suit that I didn’t expect is that it came with a detachable hood. The way the hood works is very neat, it simply zips on to the front on the inside of the lower part of the chest zip then simply goes on underneath the neck piece of the chest zip, then a small flap folds over the neck and it forms a super seal that gives you 3 layers of neoprene at your neck, but still remains flexible. I had the suit put on layaway and Beth picked it up a few days later after an unexpected bonus came in.

So this is all well and good but I am sure you want to know how it performs in the water. After 2 sessions in it, all I can say it is the best suit I have. I tried the hood out on the first session with it as it was a bit of a windy dawn patrol at the jetty, at about half way through the session I was roasting but for the first time I had a hood that didn’t feel like a diving bell every time I duck dived. This morning I ended up surfing at Linda Mar in some of the most lousy blown out conditions I have experienced in a long time. 3-4 foot waves with a 10 knt onshore wind was a pain to paddle through but with the warmth of the hood and the extra flexibility in the arms of this suit I felt I didn’t tire as fast as I normally would in those conditions. The hood again helped as I am sure with the wind and the water getting into my ears I would not have been as happy of a camper. I found I had no trouble getting into the right spot and snagging out several shoulders out of the mess of a break Linda Mar was this morning but I am not sure if the suit or the board had as much to do with it. Still both sessions in this suit were very fun and I am happy with my choice. The last thing that is always important in a wetsuit is how does it perform in the parking lot. I can say that this is the easiest suit to get in and out of I have found, even easier than my back zips as the zipper and velcro do not snag on you as you take it on or off.

If your looking for a well priced winter suit I highly recommend this one, only Sonlight has them in the bay area so stop in and visit Robin and Dan and try one on.