I have a new surf spot that I have lovingly named "Franks and Beans". I suspect that this right-hand reef break may actually be called Scott Creek or something more appropriate, but I'll need Matt to confirm that for me, or maybe Clemm. Bank Wright may have originally called it "Stubs" based on an encounter that occurred in the parking lot between his big toe and a half-buried drainage pipe. Of course, like many of Bank's other landmarks, that pipe is no longer there, so this theory cannot be completely supported.

As I drove along East Cliff this morning, I was disappointed, but not wholly surprised to find that the expected "overhead" swell had not yet materialized. To further confirm this suspicion, I found Aric already at The Hook, checking the conditions.

His first comment: "It’s supposed to be four-to-eight today." I smiled and replied that my buoy reports were confirming the impending arrival of a long-awaited swell, but that possibly tomorrow would be the strongest day.

His reply: "I'm going to paddle out." And then under his breath, he muttered something about Tahiti, and with that he took a walk up to 38th Ave. I can only assume that he wanted to see if it was 4-to-8 up there. You never know.

I watched him walk away into the pre-dawn darkness and contemplated whether to paddle out and sit, or to go home and back to bed. After watching another "set", bed won out.

Once back in my rig, I realized that I was just too amped to go back to bed. The thought of facing another day in my cube without water time was just too much. Quickly stringing together a set of scenarios and excuses, I got on Highway 1, heading north.

About 25 minutes later, I was sitting in the parking lot at Waddell watching only slightly better waves, this time peeling left, breaking on the shallow sandbar. I might have paddled out except I'm too spooked to surf there alone and there isn't much of a crowd on a small Thursday morning.

I decided to head back south and maybe straight to the cube despite my less than professional appearance and my morning, sans shower funk.

About three miles out of Davenport, I came to another small bay that I have checked by on several Waddell runs, and have referenced in earlier writings. I had only ever seen it flat or very, very small at best. This morning, I discovered that it is a westerly facing beach and that there is a reef outside that faces even more west than the surrounding area. A guy with a funky blue surfboard had just suited up and was crossing the highway as I passed. I came to a quick halt on the shoulder and craned my neck to look up at the point behind me. A small, but fairly clean wave was just scraping across the inside. It looked about shoulder high.

I suited up and found the trail down to the beach. I located what looked like a small opening in the reef and with the help of a wide channel, I made for the outside. A single seal popped up several times, tracking my progress, helping me to retain that uneasy, sharky feeling for the entire solo paddle out to the reef.

I watched the surfer with the blue board paddle into a promising wave that promptly backed off and never connected on the inside. His board somewhat resembled a shorter big-wave gun; about 8’0", very narrow, with a pintail. I couldn't really tell if it was old or new equipment. Possibly a vehicle recently shaped specifically for this point, or possibly a design throwback to some former decade. We did not exchange looks. We did not exchange greetings. I simply fell in behind him on the paddle out, waited while he took another wave, and then paddled slowly into the takeoff area. My wave sprang up from out of deep water, and I got a very quick introduction as to how this session was going to turn out.

I have now surfed it only once, and on a lowish tide, but I can still recognize that "Franks and Beans" is a textbook deep water/shallow reef scenario. Swells march in from deep water and the first points of resistance they encounter on this thousand mile journey are two gargantuan boulders standing guard over a shallow, rock reef. These boulders cause the wave to jack up slightly and then force a complete, unnatural collapse of the bowl. I was quickly able to see that the largest waves (overhead + 3 feet) would go unridden by me (and also by the guy with the blue board as it turned out). The largest peaks broke well outside and then scraped in over the shallow reef. The shoulders were unbelievably thick and totally inaccessible to me on my slightly paunchy 7'4".

To my credit, I did catch two head high waves that lined up nicely across the shallow reef and a few somewhat smaller waves that produced challenging drops over the shallowest parts of the reef, but not much else.

Now, I'd like to explain why I call my new spot "Franks and Beans":

The reef is ringed by the most amazing species of kelp I have ever experienced in the water. Reaching up for the sunlight from some unseen anchor point well below the surface, shoots of this kelp reside singly or in small colonies. What makes it truly noteworthy is that connected to a relatively thin, shiny shoot is a stalk about the thickness and length of a bouncer's forearm. Perched upon this stalk is a bulbous gourd, about the size of a cocoanut, and probably containing a similar volume of oil. A run in with one of these monsters while paddling produced a solid "bonk" that I could feel in my teeth and I would imagine that to hit one at full speed would probably ding a surfboard.

Luckily, they grow sporadically and pose a significantly smaller challenge than the blanketing kelp patties of Pleasure Point or The Lane.

About 30 minutes into the session, I suddenly realized what the stalk and gourd reminded me of:

Franks and beans! Franks and beans!

- Ryen Phillips