My first surfboard was a blue 9-foot South Coast surfboard made in Imperial Beach. I was thirteen and got the board as a Christmas present, along with an ill-fitting O'Neil wetsuit that never really kept me warm, but it did cut the wind chill somewhat. I spent hours in the waves off of the Hotel Del Coronado in California. In fact, if you go to Google maps and click on photos, you can see a few pictures of me off the Del when I was a thirteen year old gremmie learning to surf.

One morning I went surfing by myself in the fog off of Central Beach in Coronado. The fog was thick, so thick you couldn't see the waves breaking from shore. With some trepidation, I paddled out. Surfing in the fog is really unnerving. You can't see anything twenty feet away so your imagination goes into high gear. Those demons from childhood become real. You know the ones I'm talking about. Those really scary ones. Why you never let your foot or hand dangle off the bed at night.

And there was another demon. I knew that just down the coast at the Tijuana Sloughs, killer whales would come into the lineup when the waves were big and the fog was thick. I'd heard stories around school. Older surfers that had been to the Sloughs and said they'd never surf there again. Coronado is only ten or so miles north so I was convinced I was going to be eaten by a killer whale that day and my family would never know what happened to me. I thought it would be smart to lift my legs out of the water onto my board. As if that would help. A killer whale would have taken me and my board in one bite!

The fog continued to thicken. I lost sight of shore. The waves grew in size so I stroked further out. Out to sea.

There was no warning as the black fin blasted out of the water a few feet from me!

I screamed, I mean, SCREAMED, a loud high pitched scream. The type of scream someone gives before being eaten by a killer whale. Funny, the killer whale screamed too!

To my surprise, the black fin was not a killer whale but a large harbor seal that saw this piece of floating drift wood (my surfboard) on the surface and perhaps thought a tasty crab was sitting on it!

I never went surfing in the fog again...

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