San Onofre to Cardiff and Del Mar

Thursday started with a demo at San Onofre and just as we thought, waves were the best we’ve seen so far. Head to head and a half high and clean. We setup at the point and while we did some people out on the boards, the waves were so good that we found most people just wanted to take advantage of the swell on the boards they knew the best, their own. It was ok with us though because it gave us all a chance to hit the water ourselves. We did meet up with a couple locals who were building our kits as well as some old friends of Randy’s and Mike’s from our days in Burlington Vermont, one of the coolest towns there is.

After a sweet breakfast at the Sugar Shack, we headed down to Icons of Surf in San Clemente. This was a real standout shop for us, filled with just surfboards, beautiful different and stunning surfboards. We’ve seen a lot of fishes along the way, but they’re collection of twin fins, quads and bonzers was inspiring. We had a hard time leaving, but we did.

We headed over to the Longboard Grotto and got our fill on surfing’s rich history. If you’re looking for old boards, magazines, books, wetsuits and other nostalgic items from surfings early days, this is the place to be. The afternoon found us at Swamis where we setup our boards at the top of the staircase. We had perfect view of the famous break and everyone who was either heading out or coming in stopped to to look at our boards. Greg and Mike took the longboards out for a while. There was a buzz around the wood and a bunch of surfers took them out to catch a few waves before sunset. Matt and Randy joined some of the locals for some overhead surf until there was no more light to see.

After a quik clean-up we made a mandatory Pizza Port stop for some great pizza and beer and went to bed at a reasonable time for the first time in days.

Well rested and ready to go again, we set up our final demo at Cardiff. There were still waves left over and the light offshore winds cleaned things up to perfection. We ended on a really positive note as all boards were out the whole time. Some guys came in and switched boards multiple times. Even one of the lifeguards came over and tried the single fin and the quad fish, quite a different scene from our home town where the lifeguards are chasing us out of the water all day. They even have stands up and down the beach for waxing boards. This is a real surfing town and the response was amazing. After packing things up we stopped at another staple eatery РPipes Caf̩.

We had some of the best breakfast burritos ever and then headed over to Encintas to visit our friend Tim at his shop called Univ. After a quick stop at Hanson Surfboards, we headed over to DelMar fairgrounds to set up our booth for the Sacred Craft show. There were some beautiful boards in there including other wood boards from Paul Jensen and Danny Hess and we’re looking forward to the show tomorrow.

We ended the day by pulling into the driveway of our weekend residence. Our good friend and customer named Paul generously offered to let us stay in the beach house that he takes care of. After almost two weeks living in a sand filled RV, with infrequent showers, sleeping amongst our boards and gear, eating on the go, and with our only choice a public roadside bathroom, we were beyond ourselves to have a hot shower, a home cooked meal and a clean bed.

We’ll have an update from the Sacred Craft Show in DelMar California shortly. Thanks for keeping up with us.