Mythology of the Orange Cap

I asked a guy who obviously knew his way around NorCal lineups…

“Ever see any other bodysurfers around?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen a couple. Always the orange swim cap. Or is it pink? Well, whatever color it is, she shows up when it’s biggest and heaviest and most perfect…she swims and plays when the local tough guys are salivating but scared on the beach.

IMG_4741She gracefully and joyfully swims around giant, swirling, relentless Ocean Beach and maxed out, draining Fort Point when the Coast Guard plucked a couple surfers headed for Potato Patch. I’ve heard she swims laps through the impact zone at solid Mavericks just to see it and feel it.”

The mythology states she was a swimmer before she was a waverider. She swam La Jolla Cove with the masses but when the NPAC threw heaps down the Canyon, she became the lone swimmer…getting kicks and fun licks in big surf. Locals gave her fins and taught her to glide. Now she quietly dominates heavy lineups all over Nor-Cen California.

Search at Kellys“I pulled up to OB one February morning- predawn. Buoys read 20ft at 20sec. High pressure Santa Lucia winds whistled offshore A-frame, all-time perfection. She appeared…orange cap moonlit with the swell lines…way outside. The horizon accordioned with XXL energy. She swam to the set’s very apex and gracefully swam into myth.

Other guys in the lot that morning still talk about it reverently- Greg Noll Makaha like Story. The Sun rose shortly after, most local experts couldn’t get outside, too big too perfect too much. But there she was, perfectly pocketed in the most perfect wave. Maybe she has webbed digits and mutated gills…Anyway, she’s super radical. Maybe she doesn’t even exist.”

She is either a mythological creature or one of most radical waveriders in California. There are plenty of extreme heavywater, “orange cap” stories around to make the case.IMG_5177

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Swell Lines Magazine

Bodysurfing yarns woven 'tween crest & trough