I surfed three spots while in San Diego.
#1: Tourmalines/Old Man's and Pacific Beach Point
This spot is what I invision California surfing to be, a parking lot filled with surfers of all ages, genders and abilities. If you need some ideas about outfitting your surf vehicle this is the place. "Four wheeled changing rooms". You can tell there are a lot of surf veterans here. The waves are really enjoyable here. Farely long and soft waves. A longboard spot for sure. The area is crowded but there are inside waves, outside waves and way outside waves when it's overhead. To the far right there is a right hand rock point break. There are several take off spots and with big swells you can hardly see the guys on the outside. There are reefs farther up the point that break bigger. Most of the waves in front of the parking lot were in the waist to chest high range with a few bigger sets. I saw and rode waves several feet overhead off the outside point.
#2 Mission Beach
This beach is walled up and shut down at low tide and big swells. The first day, waves were a couple feet overhead on sets and pounding. With small swells and high tide the wave is fun and workable. The wave were around chest high and I was on the isup this day. I got tired of paddling back out through the whitewater and the crowd closed in after 45 minutes, so I got out.
#3 Sunset Cliffs
This is a great area for SUP. Reef breaks everywhere. I caught a ton of great rides. Each morning I was the first one out around 6:30 and surfed for 20-30 minutes alone. It was hard for me to tell the size of the waves from the cliffs because it was my first time surfing there. I was thinking it was waist high until I got in the water and realized how far out the waves were. My first few waves were around chest high and then I started catching solid head high sets. Perfect A-frames with nice workable shoulders. The ISUP worked great! I caught a handful of waves that were overhead and the board held nicely. When it got to about 10 guys or so I surfed the less popular left in front of the stairs and stood on the inside. Most of the surfers have long boards at this spot and waited for the big sets. I took all the chest high waves that rolled under them and surfed them almost all the way into the rocks every time. It was like my birthday or something! In the video, the break just to the left is a bigger wave that came alive as the tide dropped. I can really see that this spot can get BIG. A couple sets closed off the channel between the two spots. Double overhead waves would probaly make me nervous there. And they can easily get that big during winter NW swells. I tried to dive in with the ISUP from the rocks like the locals and ended up no were near my board. It looked as if I threw my board backward and slide off the rocks. Luckily the tide was still high and no one saw it! I can hear it now, " some kook with a blow up board fell in today". I did witness a shortboarder fall on his ass will getting out. Lucky for him his board broke the fall. CRACK!
This area is truely a wonderful place to SUP/surf in the winter. Swells arive almost weekly and anyone from the east coast would appeciate even the smaller days. The water doesn't get quite as cold as ours does and there are no 30 degree wind chills to deal with. I believe I could wear my 2 mil on the SUP throughout the winter. I saw someone in boardshorts SUPing.
