About Fort Bragg Surf Travel
The largest coastal settlement between San Francisco and Eureka emerges through a thicket of roadside businesses and widened lanes. Fort Bragg, once a hard-core timber and fishing town, has softened in its economical veins due to severely depleted forests and ocean stocks. Nowadays, the countless urban refugees here toil in the Internet trade, art galleries, antique shops, bookstores and whatever else they can cobble together from the area’s unnatural resources. Rednecks mingle with educated transplants and tourists, creating an interesting jumble of philosophies and lifestyles. The hulking Georgia-Pacific lumber mill hogs the vast majority of Fort Bragg’s waterfront, which means that your surfing options are basically limited to the handful of breaks north of the city limits, some of which can get quite good. The first of these is Pudding Creek, an unreliable, peaky beachbreak that’s only surfable when small and clean. The currents can be bad and there’s the occasional submerged rock. Next comes the southern boundary of MacKerricher State Park and Virgin Creek, a quality beachbreak in a small cove with wedgy rights peeling into a channel. The left can be good, too, but the right is much better — tuberides are possible. The drops are often steep, followed by a shoulder that either peels or backs off. Check this place when the swell is small, clean and peaky; watch out for rocks, too. The soft sand bottom changes sporadically. MacKerricher State Park is six windblown miles of sandy beach and dunes with some exceptional tide pools, driftwood, craggy outcroppings and the small, serene Lake Cleone. It’s basically all generic beachbreak with the exception of Laguna Point — known to have some surfable waves at low tide, but not really a primo spot to set your sights on. Again, this is an area reserved strictly for small, clean, windless days that normally occur during the late spring, summer and early autumn. The bottom drops off significantly from the shoreline, thus inducing some brutal shorepound, undertows and currents. The farther north you go, the shallower and more gradual the bottom gets, so this is your best bet for finding waves. Just north of Cleone is a road called Ward Avenue, which leads you directly to a rocky, peaky beachbreak capable of getting good during lower tides and southeast wind. The small pocket beach at the mouth of Seaside Creek lies at the north end of the state park, where the road momentarily skirts back down to the waterline. This is another rocky, temperamental beachbreak that’s only good when small and clean — mainly a summer spot, best at medium tide. Minimal roadside parking, rarely surfed. Check out the cool sea stacks just offshore.
Once described to be a “candy village made of dinner mints and red licorice,” Mendocino greets northbound visitors with increased traffic and endless B and Bs and is backed by the enchanting Mendocino Headlands and lineup of tourist “shoppes.” Not exactly a core destination for surfers, Victorian Mendocino will please anybody who gets a kick out of sugar-sweet, New England-style seaside burgs, where everything is overpriced and the clicking of Nikons is omnipresent. The place reeks of tourist dollars, so our advice is to quickly check the surf (the spots basically suck, too) and motor far to the north of Fort Bragg. The coastline here is convoluted with cliffs and rocks, but the shore drops off deeply at most places, making it a cold paradise for diving and abalone hunting. All said, if there’s a clean, big winter swell bearing down, you might have some luck at Smuggler’s Cove, inside of Mendocino Bay, on the south side of the Big River. Smuggler’s is a mushy, fat reef peak that only works during winter swells bigger than 6 to 8 feet. Generally a weak wave that’s best at low tide, it can be fun for longboarding. North of that is the mouth of the Big River’s 1,500-acre estuary — kind of a washy, current-ridden, shallow lineup that’s best at high tide with small, peaky swells. Usually pretty walled, Big River can produce some fun waves, and it’s real easy to check from Highway 1. An OK beachbreak when the rest of the coast is flat, but it’ll almost always be better down south or up north. There are a couple of reefs on the other side of the headland (Heeser Drive), but they’re super finicky and not worth your effort. A couple of minutes up the highway will take you to Caspar Creek, a small cove that’s good for beginners. A gravelly beachbreak, Caspar needs a giant swell to break since it’s so protected. There are a few rocks at the south end, but the sandy bottom occasionally cooperates to form some fun peaks. Any tide is workable as long as the surf is clean — a good spot to surf when the rest of the coast is maxed out and/or blown out.