This week I worked on a NASA panel held at Newport Beach, CA as a consultant. We finished our work by midday today and my return flight is early tomorrow so I went to the beach and rented a bicycle to sight see. While waiting in the lobby for the beach shuttle, I read the local magazine and learned about "The Wedge". I had never heard of it before.

It turns out it was going off pretty big today and I got to see it from just a few hundred feet away. It's impressive as hell, and looked just like this image and video;

http://www.oceanlight.com/lr/tran/wedge02.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNH4lK6FArA

Apparently the Wedge was created totally without intention by the construction of the jetty at the south end of Balboa Penninsula;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedge_%28surfing%29

Recently I read this story of giant wave surfing.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1174157/

I never expected to witness people surfing and being tossed like ragdolls by ~ 25-30 foot waves just a week later.

I think this is the ultimate sport, way beyond skiing. It is also way beyond me. I am a really lousy swimmer. But even if I were an expert swimmer I am too much of a wimp.

(I'm not a /real/ skier so I'm ok)

Living at the beach I have felt the awesome power of the waves to the point of being at the edge of survival.
The 1st link you posted showed a large wave with a Boogie boarder riding it..its all good till you you get caught up in a wave so powerful that you don't have a chance to ride out of it but get caught in the crashing whitewater & then up ended with fins on your feet that won't let you get stabilized so you can get your head above water to breath!

A couple of weeks ago I got caught in a large wave that dropped out on me & I dropped about 5 feet to a crashing thud that almost broke my back.

after turning 50 a couple of weeks ago I'm thinking that its easier to ski.I can control things better + the runs are longer & its just funner imho.
Skiers are wimps?..I don't think so. ever see the videos of dudes going down the side of a monstrous MTN? + I bet not all of those hotshots on the water feel to comfortable staring down a bumped up black Diamond either...specially with a glaze of east coast humble pie!!

yeah, so finally you guys are coming to grips with it...that's cool...

Snowboarders are Gay surfers....

...that's [censored] up...I didn't Capitalize anything...

Just playin homey..I got nothing against Gays..LOL...

Respectfully disagree. There are people skiing stuff that would kill the average person. It's no different than this video, though the video is impressive.

What's particularly interesting about the beginning of the youtube video is that it looks like the break is right on the shore.

Denis, I noticed that too. Not sure why that'd be a whole lot of fun. There isn't much room to even go anywhere after the wave breaks. And if you get flipped you are landing on sand. No water to break your fall like you normally would see.

Well it was something to see in person up close; real close since it was as you say breaking right on the beach. The thrill of throwing oneself into a giant Cuisinart. They were all adrenaline junkies I guess. Riding the wave at its position of maximum height afforded rides of just seconds before being smashed into the sand, or being thrown 10 feet into the air off the backside of the wave. However one guy got several long rides at high speed almost parallel to the beach. He would start right next to the jetty where the wave was little and get into the curl. Then he was accelerated (literally shot) to rider's left as the main part of the wave grew huge. It seemed to be the only way to stay in the curl. The guys attempting to come straight in were all going 'over the falls' or off the backside. A few others tried to duplicate his strategy but nobody succeeded. This seems to defy physics. On the face of the wave, the water is rising up toward the breaking crest - right? That would create a lot of drag and should slow the rider. Mr. parallel to the beach appeared to go way faster than could be explained by the acceleration of gravity, and his total vertical drop on a ride of 100 yards was no more than a few feet.

They were all using soft boogie boards, or even just their bodies. I am guessing they didn't want hard boards hitting their bodies and heads in all that turbulence. It was a miracle that I did not see serious collisions of heads to heads, bodies to bodies, etc. Then there is the inevitable slam into the bottom.

All in all it was quite a show.

http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100919/ARTICLES/100919571/0/NEWS
Igor brought some decent waves..nothing extra large but enough to take a young dudes life yesterday.

Here's a link for you fall surfers. The track maps are especially good.

http://fermi.jhuapl.edu/hurr/index.html

I am actually originally from that area, lived in Irvine and Grandparents live in Huntington... Wedge is amazing, watch some of the videos from July of last year and you will see that people that surf/board there are truly crazy. Almost impossible to get a ride and not end up in some crazy churning whitewater.

As if the waves weren't hard enough!
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/nation...position=recent