Deep South Surfing

[RomanLA]

I've been trying to catch the right conditions for a wave near the saltwater barrier down here for a while. There's a line of rocks between the barrier and an island that creates a wave train with the right conditions. They had the gate open for boats today, so there was no flow across the rocks. I decided to go to the lake side and check out the spillway gates. They were closed, but the river side was flowing over the top of the gates. The six pillars created eddies and the gates made wave troughs. It would flush me out if I ruddered too hard, so it seemed safe enough. I'm not sure what it would be like with the boat gate closed though...there would be a lot more flow and a probably a bigger drop. Oh yeah...there was an Olympic whitewater paddler that used to practice here, so I guess this is as good as it's going to get for me. :)

This is the beginning of the tide going out...


This is about halfway through the tide going out (about a foot drop)...


This is pretty much low tide (that's the top of the gate in the pourover)...

[RomanLA]

I got to surf all the way to low tide yesterday. It got better and better till right at the end. I got too far forward with my bow in the pourover and it felt like it was just sucking me in. I guess the recirc was pushing me forward and the pourover was pushing me under. I had to do some serious back paddling to get out of it. I thought maybe they had closed the boat gate, increasing the flow, but it was still open when we were paddling out. I'm definitely going to leave much sooner next time.

[Cowper]

If I lived near by, I'd check it out too, but be careful. It looks like at certain levels it is taking on the classic features of a man-made low head dam. Those things are easy to under estimate.

I'd also be trying to think through what changes might occur quickly if they adjusted the gates while you were playing. The tide changes occur more slowly giving you time for constant re-evaluation, but if they decide to "tweak" the gate adjustments from some remote location, you might get a change that would cause it to go from "friendly" to "un-friendly" in under a minute.

The things we do for fun...

[RomanLA]

If I lived near by, I'd check it out too, but be careful. It looks like at certain levels it is taking on the classic features of a man-made low head dam. Those things are easy to under estimate.

Yeah...I spent a lot of time messing around in the first wave trough, before I got brave enough to paddle into the pourover. I was in an 8ft boat, so it was long enough that it would flush me if I ruddered too hard. I think I got in trouble by getting too far into it and letting the recirc grab my bow. I was definitely not interested in trying to side surf it! The thing that's weird about it is that the shape is different from a low head dam. The gates are at about a 45 degree angle with the bottoms upstream. I'm not really sure how that would effect a swim. The cables on either end of the gates create some messy eddy lines, so I'm pretty sure I could get out the ends. In the future, I'll probably surf it down to about a 1ft drop and then just mess around in the downstream waves practicing ferries and stuff. I'm also going to make sure the operator knows I'm there, so he can announce any changes over the PA.