Dawn Patrol

130

The first faint rays of sunlight hit Pacific Beach, warming, if only psychologically, the crowd of photographers, magazine people, surf company execs, lookie-loos, and hard-core surfers who stand shivering on Pacific Beach Point in the cold morning, waiting for the light.

The bluff they're standing on is historic ground. Surfers have been riding that reef break almost since George Freeth, and it was way back in the 1930s, when this was still a Japanese strawberry field, that Baker and Paskowitz and some of the other San Diego legends built a shack on this bluff and stored their boards here and proudly adopted the name that the farmers gave them-“the Vandals.”

Just off to the north, the big swell is pounding the reef. Sunny stands at the edge of the crowd, her board beside her like a crusader's shield, and watches the sunlight turn the indistinct gray shapes into definitive waves.

Big waves.

The biggest she's ever seen.

Mackers.

Thunder crushers.

Dreams.

She glances around her. Half the big-wave riders in the world are here, most of them professionals with fat sponsorships and double-digit mag covers behind them. Worse, most of them have Jet Skis with them. Jet Skis with trained partners who will pull them into the waves. Sunny doesn't have the cash for that. She's one of the few paddle-in surfers out here.

And the only woman.

“Thank you, Kuan Yin,” she says softly. She isn't going to bitch about what she lacks; she's going to be grateful about what makes her unique. The only woman, and a woman who's going to paddle into the big waves.

She picks up her board and heads down toward the water.