Carls-BAD! Report

[MrPatrick]

Short interval surf and a 48 year old guy with two bad legs, makes for a morning worthy of "The Benny Hill Show". I'm used too LJ surf, linear, steady, predictable and a shallow sloping beach. Carlsbad is the opposite! The frustrating thing for me was the waves would just turn and go at a 45 degree to the beach. I'd time a set and do my not so graceful mount into the kayak and get hit with an angled wave that lifted up and rolled me happened three times. And the tide was coming in to the steeper part of the beach. This caused a shore break that made it impossible for me to get on and go through the set. I couldn't figure out why it was so difficult and why I was falling off to the right. Like I was being pushed off.
I called it quits and dragged my beast to the beach wall. As I was unloading I found out a small part of my problems today.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

.
.
.
.
..

The pad eye that holds the front seat strap had broken and upset my balance. Quick fix and will get at it again soon.

[makobob]

At least it is an easy repair, wish the legs were as easy to fix!

[GregAndrew]

Paddling straight into the waves can be pretty tricky with multiple swell directions. Sometimes the best approach is not to paddle straight out from the beach but square to the direction of the largest swells. Even then, no seat support has gotta suck. Rapid fire multiple big swells can be a good time to practice your good judgment and turn around. Or leave the gear in the car and get some surf practice.

[Hunters Pa]

Looks liek a bit of corrosion on the nut embedded in the plastic. I had a problem with a screw that was frozen to the nut to where the nut broke loose and would turn in teh plastic. I heated them up with a soldering iron on the nut until it was soft enough to pull out about 1/8 inch, enoucgh for an open end wrench to get a grip. Then was able to break it loose. After getting it loose and cleaning both the nut & bolt with a wire brush I put the bolt back in a couple threads, heated it again until I could push the nut back into the plastic and then heated the nut to melt the plastic back to where it got a grip.

Hope you don't hit this issue, but that worked for me

[Zfish03]

Carlsbad is always Russian Roulette for me too...I've lost $$$ to the surf there...Cost of doing business!
Good karma for next time

[Dennis]

I replaced the pad eyes for my seat with the metal ones from westmarine. I had two of them break while adjusting my seat one night.