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Author: Alex Hayes

  • Mavericks: Northern California’s Big Wave Mecca (Vol. 20)

    Mavericks: Northern California’s Big Wave Mecca (Vol. 20)

    We’re revisiting this topic after hearing from more of you — here’s the updated take.

    Thirty miles south of San Francisco, a submerged rock formation called the Mavericks reef transforms winter groundswells into some of the most terrifying waves on the planet. On the right swell, faces reach forty feet and beyond — cold, powerful, and unforgiving.

    The break was kept largely secret by local surfers until 1990, when Jeff Clark finally convinced a group of professionals to paddle out with him. What they witnessed changed big wave surfing forever. Within a decade, Mavericks had become the proving ground for the world’s most fearless watermen.

    Today, an invite-only contest draws the elite of big wave surfing to Half Moon Bay each winter. But the real Mavericks experience belongs to the dedicated few who monitor buoys obsessively, make the call on twelve hours notice, and paddle into mountains of cold water because they simply cannot imagine not doing so.

  • The Art of Reading Ocean Swells (Vol. 10)

    The Art of Reading Ocean Swells (Vol. 10)

    Bringing this back around with a couple of updates worth sharing.

    Understanding wave formation separates good surfers from great ones. A wave is not just water — it is energy that has traveled hundreds of miles across the open ocean, shaped by storms, underwater topography, and the angle of the seafloor as it approaches shore.

    Groundswells, generated by powerful distant storms, produce the long-period waves that California surfers dream about. Wind swells, created locally, tend to be choppier and less consistent. Learning to distinguish between them — using buoy data, wind charts, and simple observation — is the foundation of session planning.

    The key metrics to track are wave height, period (the time between waves), and direction. A 6-foot swell at 18 seconds of period will be dramatically more powerful and better-shaped than 6 feet at 8 seconds. Pair that with a favorable tide and an offshore wind, and you have the recipe for a session worth waking up early for.