Surf’n Season on the West Shore

A Beautiful Day in Aguadilla

Though Rincon is known as the ‘Surfing Capital’ of PR, surfing takes place all along the west coast.  It simply depends on where the best waves are.  It’s a 2 hour drive from Coamo to the little town of Aguadilla. Once you pass Ponce, Hwy 2 is peppered with about 2 dozen stop lights. We breezed through most of them, but coming to a complete stop really extends your travel time.

The plan was to meet the San Juan Photo and Social Club at Crash Boat Beach. I thought it was IN Aguadilla, but it’s actually north of Aguadilla by a couple miles. I never made it TO Crash Boat Beach. We did hook up in Aguadilla for some surfing shots and then on into the Plaza. So Crash Boat Beach is still on my ‘hit list’ I found its location on Google Earth, after the fact. Crash Boat Beach gets it’s name from the military maintaining a rescue boat launch to go retrieve pilots who crashed in the sea while doing exercises. There is a converted military air base up above Aguadilla on the Northwest corner of the island. What was the Ramey Air Force Base is now called the Rafael Hernandez Airport.

A lot of retired US military live in this area of Puerto Rico.

We hit Aguadilla at 10:30AM and there were already surfers in the water. Most of them were off the south end of the main parking lot, down by the shore. The road (Hwys 440, 111 & 442) runs next to the shoreline for a good ways so there were lots of vantage points to shoot from. We picked a spot with several tall trees for shade. It was also where most of the surfers and some divers were accessing the beach.

Being ‘winter time’ and I use that term loosely, it was very pleasant out. The ‘rainy’ Hurricane season is pretty much behind us now (though it could still happen).  This is a great time of year to be in Puerto Rico. Temps are down by several degrees across the board. When the waves rolled in, they were breaking quite hard. Even though we were up above, by the street, we still got hit a few times. Not much… just enough to remind us to keep an eye on the shore.

Shooting surfers is a lot like fishing. Lots of down time waiting for the next wave to roll in. A bunch of them were out on the water, sitting on their surfboards, shooting the breeze. Next time we come to shoot surfers, we’ll bring folding chairs and a cooler.

I had shot surfers on Maui some 35 years ago.. still have most of those slides.

Long lenses are the ‘rule of the day’. I took most of my shots with a 70mm-210mm F4.0AF on a APS-C digital camera (from a monopod). That works out to about 105mm- 315mm in full-frame, 35mm. Even at that, the reach was a little short considering how far off they were. An 85mm-300mm would have been better… a 120mm-400mm would have been perfect. If you got fast glass, use ’em, but I hate dragging around stuff that will break your back. If all else fails, a 2X tele-converter will help too, but most AF mechanisms gag when using teleconverters on slow lenses. I shot a few frames with my trusty 600MM f8.0 Solid Cat mirror lens (900mm=APS-C). It’s strictly manual focus making it hard to use with any action/movement going on.

Tack sharp don’t matter if focus is an issue.

About noon, a group of 6 divers showed up and set off out past where the surfers were. Another activity Puerto Rico is famous for.. Great Diving! Something I will write about in the future. Still need to ‘christen’ my waterproof camera set!

Around 2PM, we bundled up and went into the plaza at Aguadilla.

I was in Aguadilla exactly a year ago. Lots of new construction going on. Next to the small enclosed beach where the locals come to sun and play in the water is a parking garage and local ‘cop shop’. Next to that is a concrete boardwalk with dedicated vendor kiosks. In the wide panoramic shot, you can just make out the huge construction effort going on next to it. They were driving steel pile and plate into the shoreline.

Just off the Plaza, work was being done on a small high-rise.

The Plaza is one of the nicer ones with a large fountain and a couple of formal statues. I especially liked the old clock standing next to the curb. A clean, neat place… somewhat more upscale in appearance than most of Puerto Rico. A great place to relax and kick back. Clean sandy beaches ‘off the beaten path’ and away from the maddening crowds of San Juan.

When it comes to Christmas, Puerto Ricans take the season quite seriously.

In fact, the season informally begins the Wednesday after work, the day before Thanksgiving and don’t end until 3 King’s Day on January 6th. Seriously!! Christmas decorations were already standing at the Plaza along with a huge fake Christmas tree. We had seen folks taking live trees (from Walmart) home the weekend before Thanksgiving. How they keep them from shedding their needles before Christmas Day, is beyond me.

The photo group from San Juan planned to head back for Arecibo so we said our goodbye’s and we took off in the other direction.

The end of another perfect day.

Note: I had to ‘retire’ the Isuzu and scored a late model SUV with very low miles in San Juan. Creating new posts has been a real challenge, not having a ride I could depend on. That’s all behind us now. ARRG!!!!