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October 2006 Issue
BY Terry Lilley
It was a warm August day in Shell Beach, CA, and I decided to go spear fishing in front of my house for dinner. I'm a marine biologist and I live on a stretch of Central California that still has fish, seals, lobster, abalone and sharks. My small house is only a few yards away from a beautiful cove blanketed by a thick kelp bed just off the beach. During the summer I paddle my kayak and scuba dive to fill my freezer with fresh lingcod, cabezon, rock fish and an occasional halibut. I enjoy sharing the abundant catch with my neighbors as I grew up in a Hawaiian culture where we share our food as a gift from the ocean. My Aumakua (spirit keeper and educator) is the shark. I have dove in Kauai with large tiger sharks, in Fiji with a school of 800 lb bull sharks and in Costa Rica with the biggest white tipped reef sharks I have ever seen but nothing prepared me for what I was about to experience in front of my house. I remember my father who was a great waterman and loved sharks, tell me "be careful for what you ask for, it may come true and then you'll need to deal with it!”
( 17 foot White phtotographed 200 yards off Anacapa Island. The shark was munching a filet from a whale that was caught in a commercial fishing net. Photo: David Lominkska)
Wavelenghts: South County Cruising with Bob Byrne
Text and Photographs By Michael Kew
Bob Byrne is a southern San Luis Obispo County mainstay, having spent the majority of his 49 years haunting the funky reefs and beachbreaks around Pismo, raiding the rivermouth sandbars at Guadalupe, and reaping the halcyon glory days out at mystic Point Sal. Currently living in Nipomo, the 32-year South County local says he is ideally and centrally located to unsheathe one of his slick Cooperfishes and score the best Central Coast surf on any given day—that is, when he’s not shackled to his desk job in Arroyo Grande.
Amid the late-summer doldrums, I had a chance to catch up with Byrne, to chat candidly about his South County lifestyle and, in particular, his new custom surf vessel, the M/V Hornet.
Tell me about the Hornet and why you got it.
It’s the end product in a long line of “surf boats” of mine which began with a little 14-foot Whitehouse wooden model powered by an old 25hp Envinrude in 1971. The inspiration for the Hornet was derived from Jeff Chamberlain, who has found success with a remodel on a Whaler 15 hull he acquired.
The Hornet’s base is a 15-foot Hobie skiff that I stripped and hauled down to Anderson Boat works in Goleta, where they fabricated a cabin for me. I did the hardware fit-up myself. I built the boat to surf out of, and it’s designed so that it’s small enough to launch off of a small hoist rated at 1000 pounds maximum load, and to do overnighters in.
You’ve heard the corporate term “think outside the box”? Well, my term for why I built the boat is to “think outside the parking lot.” The Hornet is the perfect vehicle for accessing forbidden fruit. I never rode in it prior to the remodel; it has far exceeded all my expectations and produced many good, isolated surf sessions with just one other friend.
Describe the difference for you between surfing from a boat vs. surfing from a parking lot.
Surfing by boat requires a lot of effort on the boat owner’s behalf. For me at this point, just making the voyage is 75 percent of the fun. If we happen to score an isolated reef or beachbreak really good, it’s just icing on the cake. With that said, the upside of boat surfing means you’re probably going to surf with yourself and whoever is with you; your feet never get dirty/sandy; it’s an easy paddle out (very important as you grow older); and the option to surf pretty much wherever and whenever you want without being concerned about a crowded lineup (with one exception: the area due east of Point Conception has seen better days).
The downsides of boat surfing? Constant boat maintenance, fees associated with launching (in most cases), being gone all day, and there’s always the factor that you may expend all the effort involved with going only to get skunked, which recently happened to me twice at the same spot. But you’re never going to know if you don’t go.
As for parking lot surfing, upsides are that it’s quick, easy, and much cheaper than boat surfing. Downsides are crowds, crowds, and crowds—cell phones and the Internet have ruined surfing.
Where to from here?
I figure I’ve got 10 good years left in me, hence the boat build—the finale, so to speak. I’ve transcended the barrier; it’s all about quality over quantity now. If I can snag one good session out of the boat, I’m good for up to at least 10 days if the surf doesn’t cooperate out in front of the parking lot.
Posted October 2006 Blue Edge Magazine. All rights reserved.
