Turn On It, Tune Out, Drop In

W WIND 15 TO 20 KT...BECOMING SW 20 TO 25 KT IN THE AFTERNOON.
WIND WAVES 5 TO 6 FT.
W SWELL 16 FT AT 13 SECONDS.

Here's a story of Origins from a Central Coast surfer...as you may be able to discern, he didn't learn to swim and Surf in Oregon:

[My] first memories are swim lessons around the age of four in the salt water pool, from a guy that was still teaching kids their first swim strokes 15 years later. I swear he was wearing the same khaki hat with sun flaps and the same sunglasses he had on when he was teaching me.

My father had a swim regime on Saturdays, so I tagged along to the Olympic sized pool at the Racheal Finlayson Baths, another salt water pool. After he was done with his laps, but before leaving for home...I got to dive for change. He would reach into his pants pockets and make a big deal of whether he had brought enough then toss a small handful into the deep end, 10' down was my "pocket money" for the week, all I had to do was get my 7 year old ass down there to get it.

No fins...because he thought they made a swimmer lazy, and no goggles just because that would have made finding the coins too easy. Free money being free money, I scoured the bottom till I had collected them all, great conditioning for wipe outs. There were also other old guys in the pool and seeing me dive for cash cracked them up, so on their way out they started tossing coins for me to get, I scored heavily some days and lost my fear of getting under the surface. Money talks, I guess.

Piggy backing while he swam out to the backline was the first foray into the ocean. I can remember the blue glass surface of the sea to this day, of what was probably a small day at South Beach. The shoreline seemed to have shrunk when I next looked back and then I felt him reaching around behind him to pull me, a very unwilling me, I have to say, off his back. Frantically kicking with my legs while he held my arms he told me to bodysurf the next wave in and not to panic. No matter how much I begged and pleaded he wouldn't take me back onto his shoulders, and at some point swam away leaving me to drown I was sure!

Soon a wave came and those lessons and the pool diving all came into play as I swam into my ride, desperate to get back to somewhere shallow enough to stand and escape from the sharks that I was certain were homing in on me. After that terrifying intro, I was mat surfing within months and at 9 got my first glass board. The Wave Master. Orange speckles over a clear top deck with a green/white resin swirl on the bottom and a hatchet fin on the back complete the picture.