One night at Rincon my friend and I were out – it was a pumping, tubing 6-10′. We would paddle out after midnight and surf till dawn or later if it was really good. I was at the Rivermouth and took off on a large wave. Before I could get to my knees the wave had pitched out over my head and the lip was coming down in front of me. If you’ve ever surfed the Rincon Rivermouth you’ll know what I am talking about – the wave jumps up and throws out. So I freefell without even getting to my knees and had a nasty wipeout – letting go of my board. Couldn’t find the board so I slowly swam in scanning for it, expecting to see it wallowing somewhere in the water or maybe even washed up on the beach.

Got to the beach – still no board. Searching and searching. HINT: BRIGHT COLORS – paint your spoon with bright, highly visible colors as a spoon will wallow in the water and be difficult to see. So I walked and ran up and down the beach from the Rivermouth to the highway and back a few times – searching, straining to see my board. It was my first and only spoon at that time. I had to find it.

And remember its pitch black at 3:00 AM. After an hour or so of this I was devastated – no board. Ready to give up I was standing ankle/knee deep just outside first point when the board bumped into my leg. It was right next to me and I couldn’t even see it! BRIGHT COLORS.

So it may come down to a choice – your board or your life?

Just to be clear I will have leash attachment points on all my boards from now on. There will be times and places where I will choose to wear a leash. The leash when worn will have some kind of quick release. And my boards will have easily located BRIGHT colors and some amount of buoyancy. How about a GPS homing device? A pop-up buoy. Dye markers. Audio beeper.

And for night surfing that luminous, glow-in-the-dark paint – or would that attract ????