My First Vlog Post: A Trip To The Wedge

I visited The Wedge in Newport Beach this afternoon. It’s a famous surf break. Lowell, a not as famous Eastern Pacific tropical storm, has blessed The Wedge with heavy surf.

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I visited The Wedge in Newport Beach this afternoon. It’s a famous surf break. Lowell, a not as famous Eastern Pacific tropical storm, has blessed The Wedge with heavy surf. Not great surf, just big.

This is the story of my trip to photograph it and some of my shots. Please click the button and watch my short video.

4 thoughts on “My First Vlog Post: A Trip To The Wedge”

  1. Wonder what that guy had tatoo’d up his spine—at first glance I thought that was you—but he was smoking.
    Actually the waves looked rough, but not that big. I have seen waves that big at Redondo Beach, and with an undertow. The sets are different too, in comparison to the East Coast—don’t know if that is still true. Anyhow—good pictures– Thanks for sharing.

  2. Having done a little surfing myself, your 100% correct Geoff – there is a big difference to surfers between big waves and good surfing waves (which are better if they are long period, slow rising trough to crest waves). However, it is fun to see the huge breakers pound the shoreline. I’ve seen some waves in Hawaii, California, and North Carolina. In fact to this day, the biggest waves I ever saw are still from Hurricane Gloria in 1985…and the drama of what happened is still a very exciting memory only a weatherman would find interesting:

    I was in my 20’s and my friend was on his way to Fort Benning, GA (in military). I thought it would be cool to drive him down there and stop and see the big waves roll in near the Outer Banks. As we drove south on Route 13 we had the car radio on and the news just kept getting worse: First Gloria had 115 mph winds, then 125 mph winds, the 135 mph winds. Seas were rising fast with reports of 40 foot swells off the East Coast. As we crossed over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel near Virginia Beach (this separates the Atlantic and lower Chesapeake Bay), we saw massive Navy ships fleeing port in Norfolk heading out to the open sea to get out of Gloria’s path. For some reason, even more than the swells and quickly darkening sky, this unnerved us more than anything, seeing these massive ships running from the hurricane.

    As we crossed over the islands of the Bay bridges, each time we would come out a tunnel – the seas looked worse and larger. Heading down route 12 on the Outer Banks was even more unnerving – the whole area was basically preparing for Armageddon it seemed. We pulled into the parking lot of the hotel (they had official closed 12 hrs before)… the car radio crackled that Hurricane Hunters had found a pressure of 919 mb and 150 Mph winds in Gloria. We scrambled over the dunes, and there, maybe 300 people or more were staring (as if in a trance – lol) at the ocean. The waves, which had to be conservatively 25 – 30 feet high (the crests seemed to tower over the puny two story hotel when they would rise up), crashed with a fury the SHOOK the ground. My last memory on those dunes – standing right next to someone you had to “shout” just to be head above the roar of the crashing waves. Gloria was still more than 300 miles from the Outer Banks at this time! We split back to VA Beach and went through Gloria in a concrete hotel far from the ocean the next day.

    Of course the rest is history, thankfully, Gloria weakened greatly down to 100 mph before the eye swept over the Outer Banks…. and then down to near 80 mph when it struck the Long Island/CT area.

  3. Thanks, Geoff, for the great photos. It’s nice to live vicariously. And thanks, John, for your memories of Gloria. It’s funny how we all can share in the same events and yet our own experiences are so different than others.

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