Climbtrees » Surfing

Boredom Avoidance on Business Travel: Surfing and Fly Fishing in Daytona Beach

Dan Corbett — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:10:02 +0000

The Surfboard, AKA The Floating Couch

Recently I have started taking a rod with me whenever I travel (primarily the March Brown Badden-Powell I reviewed for Backpacker and mentioned previously on Climbtrees) as sitting in a hotel room is quite boring. However at this location, Daytona Beach, I had the additional attraction of ocean waves.

On Thursday when I returned to my hotel after finishing work for the day I observed surf out the window. Not big surf, but surf nonetheless. Enough to make a quick decision at least. I wandered down the beach to rent a surfboard. The shop guy asked me about my skill level; I said better than completely aweful and but below not quite good. We mutually agreed that I should grab a longboard, though perhaps it would be better described as a floating couch.

Immediately upon walking into the water I stepped on a fish; I doubt I have ever mounted a board as quickly as I did then. Next I experienced a riptide that quickly tore me down the beach and eventually tossed me out the deeper water. It was the first time I had really experienced a “strong” tide (I still have too few experiences with them to fully quantify) – and now I understand why surfers think they are a great way to get out fast. Unfortunately this one would dump me a bit beyond where almost all of the waves were actually breaking. The waves were small, with most under a 1.5 meters. Towards the end I caught one that might have gone almost 2 meters. Huge, I tell you..

I rented the board a bit before six and came out of the water around 8:30. Why did I come out? The surf hadn’t changed, the temperature had not really dropped (though 3 of my fingers were a lot more white than flesh colored). I had a porpoise or dolphin (I live in Colorado, do you really expect me to be able to tell the difference) come in to me. It was fairly dark so when I first saw it I only caught the dorsel fin coming directly towards me. Seeing as I doubted anyone on the beach would be able to see or hear me (not that it mattered, there was no one on the beach), I was quite releaved when I saw it come up again with a nice comforting marine mammal beak. In any case, it was time for me to finish up for the day. I tried getting up with dawn the next morning, but the waves were all but nonexistant. I suppose I could have tried however the prospect of riding the fins directly into the sand felt like a bad idea.

Late in the afternoon on Friday the waves were barely improved so I returned the board and broke out a fly rod. While less traveller friendly than the Badden-Powell, the Temple Fork Outfitters “The Clouser” in a 4-piece 9-weight still could be attached to my luggage with minimal difficulty (review forthcoming in the Backpacker blogs).

I wandered into waist deep water (with the surf occasionally knocking me around) and attempted casting almost 90 feet of line. The last time I threw so much line was in 2005 for salmon, when I still lived in Oregon. Making it even more difficult were the 10-12 miles per hour winds; I did successfully wack myself twice with a #2 Clouser minnow.

Early Morning Sunrise at Daytona Beach

After about an hour I felt something hit – hard. It quickly took me out into the backing. I reeled the fish back onto the flyline; we repeated this twice when suddenly the fish got a lot heavier and a lot faster – the line broke a few moments later. What happened exactly, I don’t know. Off hand I am saying my fish got eaten by a bigger fish. Maybe. At least it sounds good.

I got up Saturday morning at 3:45 to go try fishing the inland waters, from the shore and the docks. There was a fair amount of commotion in the water, but after almost 4 hours and probably a dozen flies I gave up and headed for the plane back to Colorado. While I would have thought my fishing adventures ended here, the TSA agent was concerned about how thick the fly line was and proceeded to dig at it with a knife; he said he might have nicked it. I thanked him for ruining my $70 line. Alas.

Extended Weekend Wedding in Santa Barbara + Cycling and Kayaking

Dan Corbett — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:21:48 +0000

Katie on Santa Barbara Beach

This past weekend Katie and I met up with my parents in California for my cousin’s wedding. I had not seen Ian in over a decade and never met his wife – I had no idea what to expect. Katie however, long holding a dream of being a California girl, was not concerned; she adores any thought of beaches and oceans. We rented a moderately sized townhouse four blocks from State Street and approximately a mile from the ocean. Being two couples, the townhouse was a spectacular deal when compared to renting a pair of hotel rooms. Further, having a full kitchen and living room is really comfortable as opposed to being cramped in a small room. The weather forecast had predicted temperatures with highs in the 70s for our entire trip; this grew to be a running joke.

On Friday morning we drove to the wine country with the intention of cycling; unfortunately we arrived in Santa Ynez at 11 am when the temperature had already reached 98 degrees F. We aborted the cycling plans for the day and enjoyed lunch before venturing out to a lavender farm and the Alma Rosa Winery. The organic Pinot Noir wines were stellar, though my palette is far from sophisticated. On our way back to Santa Barbara we stopped at a small roadside stand and purchased the juiciest strawberries ever! Concluding our overheated day we ate Southwestern for dinner at Left at Albuquergue where we unintentionally ran into the rehearsal dinner for the wedding party.

Dana and Dan in Wine Country

Katie and Dan at Alma Rosa

The next morning we woke early and headed back to Santa Ynez for a second attempt to rent road bikes. Pulling into Santa Barbara Wine County Cycling Tours at 9 am the temperature was 70 degrees F and we were roaring to go. My father rented a carbon Specialized Roubaix Compact while Katie and I took aluminum Specialized Allez Sport Triples. The store had a decent selection of pedals so we were all able to use our regular road biking shoes. Unfortunately the store did not seem to have a good maintenance program for the bikes. Both of the rear derailleurs on the Allez bikes were horribly out of alignment; while mine was easily fixed with the barrel adjuster I could not get Katie’s to stop jumping. After watching her ride I could easily see that a link in the chain was not bending as it went through the derailleur – I can only imagine how miserable the later parts of the ride were for her. Compared to my steel Lemond bike, the aluminum frames conveyed every little bump in the road. My other complaint was the route recommendation. We asked for a 30-35 mile loop suggestion; I turned us around at 20 miles with the turn for the loop obviously still miles off. We returned to the shop at 11:45 am as the temperatures rapidly approached triple digits.

That afternoon the wedding was held in a beautiful setting at the outdoor atrium of the Fess Parker. My family learned something important at the wedding when we saw people enjoying the 98 degree F ceremony in shorts – events that you would normally wear formal clothes can be drastically dressed down in California. The wedding and reception were completely first class and it was wonderful to catch up with family infrequently seen.

Santa Barbara Sea Lions

Katie Kayaking in Santa Barbara

On Sunday morning Katie and I wanted to go surfing; unfortunately my complete inability to read surf forecasts led us to believe the surf would be awful. How wrong I was. We rented sit-on-top kayaks from Paddle Sports of Santa Barbara and paddled out of the harbor. We initially headed out to a buoy that was known to carry a number of lazy sea lions; it did not disappoint. The sea lions reminded us of Sherbert as they contorted their bodies to rest their heads. Up the coast we ran into small waves that were ideal for surfers of our caliper. We returned to port before driving back into the hills to a biker bar for lunch with the extended family. Continuing the trend of heat, it was 101 degrees F with no air conditioning. We all went back to the townhouse to crash in the air conditioning before closing out the trip with wonderful seafood at the FisHouse. The next morning we flew home out of LAX and saw the ever growing fires billowing smoke into the sky.

New Zealand Honeymoon, Part 2: Surfing in the Northland

Dan Corbett — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 23:48:36 +0000

Waiting Surfboards

Pretending to be recovered from our trip halfway across the world, Katie and I woke up after our first night in New Zealand ready to go surfing! We signed up for a five day surf trip with New Zealand Surf’N’Snow Tours based out of Ahipara. We met up in the morning at the Waitemata (Auckland) harbor with our guide and the rest of the group. The group consisted of a couple from Utah, also on their honeymoon, and a selection of girls from Minnesota, Canada, England, and Sweden. Our guide Rangi was quite pleased with the male/female ratio, perhaps more so as the two guys were both on honeymoons…

Drunken Canadian Girls

After quite a drive up into the Northland we arrived at the surf house. The house reminded us of an off-campus college house with ancient couches and a pool/ping pong table; the primary difference was that the sliding door opened directly to the beach. We lost out by two days on booking the room with a double bed; single beds in a private room would have to suffice. In any case a private room was better than sharing the bunks in the back with the drunken Canadians. Shortly after unloaded everyone headed down to the beach for some instruction and a surf. Katie was excited to wear her new neoprene booties and was a bit slow… The guides offered about thirty minutes of guidance in the sand and assured us that we would not end up “beached as bro”, whatever that happens to mean. And then off into the water!

Riding the Massive Whitewater

This was the only real bit of on land instruction that we received; perhaps as the waves remained tiny the entire week it was not deemed necessary to further work on the beach. That is not to say we were left on our own; the guides would offer bits of advice as we failed on more and more waves. The first afternoon I focused on standing up in the whitewater; Katie was a bit more advanced from her surfing experiences in New Jersey. On the second day I learned to get up before the wave broke; unfortunately it was not until the third day that I learned this did not mean the instant before the wave broke. It certainly was a lot more fun not just getting slammed down! Now that I could constantly get up, it was a lot more fun; of course staying up for more than a few seconds was a bit of a challenge.

Shipwreck Bay

Finally on the last morning surf the waves started to get bigger, up to a bit more than 1.5 meters. I rode a few and then got on a pretty good one. I was cruising down the wave when I suddenly heard the roar of the barrel directly behind me. Instead of leaning my weight forward to speed up like I was taught, I looked back just in time to see the wave smash me down on my board. With a few bruised ribs I paddled back to shore to close out my surfing adventure for the trip. Katie likewise had a rough last day with her board smashing down on her head a few times.

Of course there was more to do in the Northland than just surf. Or perhaps because no one was strong enough to surf all day that we did a variety of other activities. We went up to Shipwreck Bay (apparently there is great surfing though the water was perfectly flat when we visited) and did some sand boarding down the dunes. Falling off the board resulted in sand going everywhere (I think I was still finding sand when we got down to Rotorua) as you can see by my picture. We found some mussels in the tidal pools and had a huge mussel bake later that night.

Sunset from Ahipara Beach

The couple from Utah were big into Yoga and led a few classes on the beach that Katie really enjoyed. And being a honeymoon, Katie and I took a lot of walks down the beach at sunset. Supposedly there was a penguin by us on one of the walks; we are still uncertain if the guide was just messing with us. After our five days had expired, we headed back to Auckland for the next part of our adventure!

New Zealand Honeymoon, Part 1: Landing in Auckland

Dan Corbett — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:00:41 +0000

On a volcano with the Auckland skyline as a backdrop

Ah, your honeymoon; time to go relax on a beach and drink brightly colored beverages with little umbrellas for a week or two. That sounds amazing, or amazingly boring.

Opting for the second, Katie and I went for more of an adventure honeymoon. We wanted a holiday to play, ideally somewhere warm since it was the middle of a Colorado winter, and surfing, mountain biking, and a dash of fly fishing seemed to fit the bill. Now we just had to decide where to go for such an adventure. Sure Florida, Hawaii, Costa Rica and Mexico were all valid options but this was our honeymoon. We needed to go somewhere more anomalous, more riveting than we would otherwise normally travel to. And the winner was New Zealand, a land I have lusted after for years. As much as we would have liked to visit the entire country, we only had two weeks and stayed on the northern half of the north island. Clearly now we have to return to explore the rest of the county.

The flight over took a long time. A very long time. Waiting to board the plane in San Francisco, I had quite a few people came chat with me regarding my fly rod, a brand new 4-piece 5 weight Sage FLi, very obviously attach to my pack. Given how much New Zealand was revered as a fly fishing destination in my house growing up, this should have been no surprise. What was a surprise was the fact that I did not have any firm plans on where I would fish. I heard all sorts of great places to go fish (I am not sure that if I had a month, I could spend enough time to properly explore all of them. Not that I wouldn’t be willing to try…).

We finally boarded our flight, on Air New Zealand, and settled in for 13 hours in a very confined space. As uncomfortable as it was, Air New Zealand did their best to make it enjoyable. We had an excellent meal and the entertainment systems had more movies and TV shows that I could possibly stay awake for; Katie did her best trying though. If you have to fly for that long, Air New Zealand was a great way to go.

Surfers at a black sand beach, west of Auckland

We landed shortly after 5:00 am local time and were met by an old friend who resides in Auckland, Rebecca Tetley. While I am not sure when the last time Rebecca had to get up that early was, she cheerfully picked us up and guided us around Auckland for the day. We ate breakfast on the harbor and then followed the cows up a volcano for a great view of the city. After a failed ferry ride (something like $200 NZD, we passed), Rebecca took us through some attractive wine country to a black sand beach on the western coast. We saw a bunch of surfers, enjoyed the rocky views, and Rebecca introduced us to Hokey Pokey ice cream. On the way back we stopped at a small winery and tasted the local fare; if we knew more about wine it would have been awesome. Finally, and thoroughly exhausted, Rebecca left us at the Rendezvous Hotel and we fell asleep shortly after seven. If we had the energy, surely we would have dreamed about the surf camp that was to come in the morning!