Dr. Jellyfish

We spent Saturday working on the van and around the house while watching the weather.

The forecast called for around 11-12mph, but we were hopeful that it would come up for a nice sunset session. In the middle of the day, our friend Aaron (a flight surgeon) called us and said he noticed the leaves rustling and was on his way to the beach. He called in a live report of 12-14mph and rigged up. A couple of hours later we got another call from him reporting that the wind came up while he was on the water and was still blowing 18-19mph. He had gotten a great session, but had to take off.

What Aaron unknowingly prescribed his patients was a dose of dying wind, followed by a hot jellyfish bath.

When we arrived, everything looked great. The water was crystal clear, there were whitecaps galore, and the flag was flying. By the time we rigged the 8m and 10m, everything had changed. Travis pumped the 10m furiously just to stay up on the board. Woe unto him if he sank into the water. There were hoards of jellyfish just waiting to drape themselves over his arms and legs leaving serious welts on the skin. Travis gave me the 10m and pumped up the 12m. Sadly, it still wasn’t happening. We scrubbed our arms and legs with sand to get the jellyfish off and retrieved the spray bottle of vinegar out of the van.

There we stood: sandy, itchy, and skunked. While we waited to see if the wind would turn back on, we had time to think of Aaron’s perfect timing and sweet afternoon session. He scored it by optimistically driving out to the beach while we waited around at home for a sure thing. It’s like our good friend Jeff Stalnaker always says, “It doesn’t matter what the weather report is forecasting, sometimes you just gotta go out there.”

-Meagan-