Fri 01.24.14 – Here is a 30 second (top) and a 2 min (bottom) video from this morning’s big surf at Seal Beach, mostly 6-9ft with occasional sets and cross-over ‘A’ frames at double to triple overhead. The Seal Beach Lifeguards were out in full force, keeping the boogie boarders to the right of their trucks and the surfers in the contest to the left.
As I say in the 2nd video, most of the time the surf is tiny in Seal Beach, with the exception of a beach break. We get bigger surf like this morning’s about once every few years, with the last good big surf in 2007 and 2008.
Not only was there a very rare ‘outside’ break by the southern jetty, but occasionally a few big waves would break 1 km out at Esther the Oil Platform. And one set this morning even had waves big enough to be 2/3rds the height of the pier.
Please forgive my bad commentary and panning in the 2nd video, I rarely shoot video and am not very good. Also, forgive any atmospheric haze or lack of clarity, as it was foggy and the fog horn was blowing its little heart out.
But it was good fun standing on the berm with a couple of hundred other folk this morning, and it was quite the party with locals, other surfers, the old guys making comments, pro photographers with their huge lenses, and folks cheering on the brave (or foolish) out in the waves.
Here are a few photos that I sent up in the moment to Twitter and Instagram.
The surf at Seal Beach is awesome and all the pros are out – the pro photographers with the super teles…
Southside Seal is a party…
Broken in half
Breaking inside and outside
Overflowing wave making folks run
Both videos and still shots taken by Ms. Jen with her Nokia Lumia 1020.