South Ocean Beach Surf Guide

South Ocean Beach Surf Guide

Ocean Beach is the most emotional stretch of beach in all of California, because it's located in the middle of the coast, and open to every burble and bellow from the north and south. The winds are dynamic, but the real factor is the tide. All that water moving in and out of the Golden Gate sweeps up and down Ocean Beach with enough force to dislocate swell and shift sandbars hourly.

Ocean Beach has many, many moods: clear, blue, offshore fall days; the doom and gloom of a stormy winter; windy spring; gray summer… No stretch of ocean in California changes as much from hour to hour, day to day, season to season. Ocean Beach is bordered by Kelly's Cove on the north end and Sloat Street on the south end. In between are three miles of beachbreaks, which become emptier and lonelier from north to south.

When Ocean Beach is on, three miles of shifting, meaty, dark-green offshore peaks, from head-high to triple-overhead, cannonade the surf zone from south, west and north. A perfect day here can be a mind-boggling sight: mile after mile of perfect surf, with scattered humans doing their best to paddle through the impact zone, make it out the back, and catch one. Sometimes, just getting out can be a major accomplishment. Depending on swell, tide and sandbar, on many days there is a 200-yard "zone of death" in between the beach and the lineup. It takes knowledge, skill, strength and courage, but the deciding factor on big days is still dumb luck.

Make it outside, and there are rewards, but your troubles aren't necessarily over. A good day at Ocean Beach is as good as any beachbreak in the world, but the best peaks here have a maddening quality of always being 50 yards away from where you're sitting. Even good surfers who surf the place all the time will get skunked, catching maybe one or two waves an hour, while paddling back and forth trying to hunt down the big, shifting beasts.