Punta San Carlos report (03/24 - 03/30)

genek · Since 21 Jul 2006 2165 Posts East Po KGB

We were at San Carlos in Baja for a week (Sat-Fri) and just got back last weekend. Here's a report on the riding and road conditions from an email I sent to my friend.

Punta San Carlos was amazing! It blows any wave riding I've done out of the water. The only sketchy part (which makes the wave riding good) is that the wind is side-off shore so if you break down you better get to shore quickly and might even need to ditch your gear so you don't float away to Australia. That said the waves are SUPER friendly, smooth and crumbly ramps (unlike the shore break we get here) and typically only a small section of the wave would break and then another section further down might break, but you can just keep doing bottom turns and smacking the lip as you go down the line for hundreds of yards (almost a mile according to the windsurfers we were with).

In the Chili bowl the wave just keeps building in front of you so it feels like a never ending wave (that's where you can get rides over half a mile long). (Disclaimer: this is not always one continuous wave since you sometimes need to connect briefly from one wave to another) On top of the waves being really gentle and smooth the side-off wind allows you to basically just park your kite near the edge of the window to your left and "surf" the wave with minimal kite adjustments (unlike here where you need to constantly move your kite with almost every turn to keep it from stalling). I even rode Adam's surfboard strapless for about half of my wave riding, and it was really fun. I'd never ridden a strapless surfboard before and it was really easy to pick up there because of the forgiving waves. I even slashed the top of some waves as they were breaking and dropped over the top of the waves into the front, which I doubt I could do here on a strapless board without some more practice. Even on the day we had 1.5 OH swell I still felt comfortable carving up the waves strapless.

Bottom line...San Carlos is quite possibly the best wave riding you can do in this part of the world. However, if possible check the surf report for your trip since out of 7 days there were only 2 days that had sizable swell (over head high), and it would be a bummer to go there and not get any waves (the rest of the time the waves maxed out around chest high or so, which is barely enough for them to break). There's also some fun flat water near where you launch, but it's not the best for progressing your freestyle since the wind is patchy due to an island upwind and the side-off winds keep you from doing anything too crazy.

Also, the launch was never an issue for us since we never needed to launch during high tide when the beach is gone and you have to launch and land from a 12ft cliff while the kiter is in the water (the cliff edge is a bit jagged so ideally you don't want to drag your lines over it, but it is mainly hardened clay). Except for a couple hours during each high tide we always had some beach to work with and had our windsurfer buddies help with launching and landing. There are relatively few kiters there (as in most likely it'll just be your group unless more of them show up during peak season) so someone may need to self-launch or land unless you have a big group of people with you like we did. We only saw two other kiters there the whole week and they left after two days.

Finally, the road is in really good shape right now (as good as anyone has seen it). It's basically no worse than most dirt/gravel roads you'd encounter with a couple worse sections near the end (steeper and less even). However, a little Chevy Cobalt made it in there (it's a small sedan) so I think most cars could make the trip right now. If heavy rain falls the road can get washed out and get harder to travel on, but it doesn't rain down there too often so it'll probably stay nice for a while. You might want to air down your tires for the 40 mile dirt road to make it smoother and be sure to bring beers for the ride Wink

I'll try to get some pics/video up in the future, but the only pics we've uploaded so far don't really have any riding.

Oh, and the trip took us about 21 hours from the SF bay area, but we wasted a few of those trying to get find blocks of ice, etc. so it's probably more like 18 hours from here. Speaking of which the dirt road only took us about 1:40 instead of the reported ~3 hours. That's how nice it is right now.

As a note for anyone going down there. There's an ICE FACTORY on the outskirts of Ensenada (you'll see it on the left side of the road on the far side of the city when driving down there). It's called Polar Hielo and looks like a big dinky warehouse. They can cut you a block of ice of any size you like (at least as big as a cooler) so you can have ice for an entire week or more. It was cheap too ($6 for enough blocks to fill a bit more than 3 coolers).

There's also a Costco, Home Depot, and Walmart now in Ensenada (towards far end of city as well) in case that's useful to anyone.

Let me know if there's other questions.

genek · Since 21 Jul 2006 2165 Posts East Po KGB

Here are a few of the pics from the trip. No riding in them, but you'll see the area. I'll post more in a few days once I get the footage from my buddies. There's no waves really in these pics, but you can see the area where they'd build. They can be the length of that entire beach you see in the pics. And the Chili Bowl is further past the point to the left that you see in one of the pics. I caught waves that started by our campsite and went well into the Chili Bowl around the point.

gabe · Since 16 May 2005 475 Posts Obsessed

very nice. looks kind of like rufus on the sea. how windy was it for your time there? is there a place to eat, or do you need to bring everything? maybe i'll join you next year.

how'd you like the new harness?

genek · Since 21 Jul 2006 2165 Posts East Po KGB

The wind on most days was in upper teens to upper twenties average range. Usually it came up to at least 20mph in the mid afternoon. On the Tues. we were there it was gusting to 50mph (as windy as it ever gets there except for different wind direction during storms) and we couldn't kite all day, but it made for the best swell of the trip on the next day. I used my 9, 11 (12m Octane), 13m kites.

This is a remote location with only a small fishing village a couple miles away. We never got food from them, but hear that it's possible to buy some fish. Basically you pack everything in and out (food, water, etc.). The building you see in the background in one of the pics is Solo Sports, which has a lease on the land and charges $5/night/person for camping there. They organize trips down there, but they're probably too expensive for most people.

The Mystic Firestarter harness is great. It made me a little sore from the stiffness and friction of a new harness the first few days, but now that is pretty minimal. It definitely has more freedom than seat harnesses, but is pretty stiff along the spine for a decent amount of support. It also stays down surprisingly well and the spreader bar doesn't really dig into your stomach even when you're being yanked up. I find the harness almost never rides up more than a little bit, and I can usually bring it back down by bringing the kite down low over the water. All in all it stays down really well for a waist harness, and offers great range of motion (it's pretty small compared to other waist harnesses) with a good amount of support (support is probably even better than other bigger waist harnesses but not as good as seat harnesses). My stomach and back do get more tired than they used to after about 3 hours of riding, but that'll probably get better as my body gets used to it. It's also a lot easier to go unhooked in this baby since the hook sits higher up than a seat (which seems to be all the rage for wave riding these days). I was surprised by how easy of a transition it was from a seat harness, and it would be hard to go back now just in terms of the performance. I haven't tried other waist harnesses from '07, but I bet this is one of the best ones out there. However, if comfort and riding really long sessions (regularly over 3 hours) is your priority then a seat style harness might be nicer. Or at least having one so you can switch off after 3 hours. Only downside is the $230 price tag, but I'm hoping it'll last a while.