Kathy Austin got a second chance to surf despite her earleir setback, this time in the Presidents' heat. She placed 5th again, but this was a one-round final, so she received a trophy for her efforts afterall. Thanks for answering the call once again Kathy.

Our four team riders making it out of their respective first rounds on Saturday were:

Quintin Macklin placing 2nd in his Mens' 20-29 heat.

Celia Treamer scoring a 2nd place in her Sr. Women's 35+ round.

Both Pablo Smith and Ron Greene taking 1st place in their respective Grand Masters' heats. Nice work guys.

Thanks to these four fine surfers for keeping PB alive for another day. Thanks also to all the other team riders for giving it their best, yet coming up a little short. Next time will be your time to shine.

When Sunday morning dawned, it was time to put the game face back on for our remaining riders.

Up first at 7am was Patrick O'Connor surfing in the Menehune Boys 14 and Under first round (Menehunes didn't have any heats on Saturday). He surfed a fine heat but came in 4th. No worries as it turned out, 4th place went on to a Repecharge round later in the day, so another one of our riders was still alive.

At 7:15 it was Pablo Smith in the Grand Masters' Quarter Final. Pablo surfed his usual brilliant heat with great kick moves over the nose on two of his waves and earned himself a 2nd place in the heat.

A heat later it was Ron Greene also placing 2nd in his Grand Masters' round and doing it in style with several fine nose rides.

When Quintin Macklin's heat began he must have told himself to pull out all the stops for this one as he did a helicopter on one wave and finished with a 360 on another and blew past the competition with a 1st place in his Men's 20-29 Semi Final. Awesome is all you can say.

At 10:15 it was Celia Treamer's turn in the water with the Sr. Women's 35+ Repecharge. When all was said and done though, 5th place was all she could muster and the last of our women surfers was out. It was now up to our guys to do it or cut bait.

At 12 noon the paddle relay race was to get underway, but we had to scramble to even come up with a team of willing paddlers to fill the six slots as most of our riders from the previous day didn't bother come up on Sunday. Celia went to the judges and asked if we could use people from other clubs who weren't racing, to be on our team. They said go ahead, their teams A and B would be taking first and second place anyway. Luckily for us, Lorraine Schmalenberger from the La Jolla Shores club had been spending most of the day relaxing with us in under our tent and she said she would be glad to help us out. We now had five, but needed one more participant. Enter Summer Masson, a passerby on the beach not associated with any club. We now had our team.

Patrick O'Conner was our lead paddler and got us going strong, albeit coming in last place by the time he rounded the bouy and returned for the handoff to Celia Treamer, who did her best during her run to try and catch up with the next-to-the-last team. Lorraine Schmalenberger took the handoff from Celia and continued our effort to at least get out of last place during her paddle, but it was becoming apparent by now that the gap would be just too much to make up. Never ones to give up, Summer Masson took the next leg and held in there as best she could and then turned it over to Matt Melin to see what he could do. By this time, four of the six teams had already crossed the finish line and it was a race between us and the Swami's team. When Matt handed off to our anchor Matt Dalton, we knew it would be tough to overtake the 5th place paddler, but he paddled his heart out anyway and actually made it a bit of a race in the end when he caught a wave coming in and finished not too far behind the other competitor. Last place was our lot this time and it was back to the drawing board for next time.

While the paddle race was going on, the tandem pairs were working their magic on the waves just to the north. Here, Travis Long and Halley Burd surfed a beautiful set of rides, yet managed only a 4th place this time around, one off from a string of 3rd place finishes in recent history. When you see the kind of maneuvers Halley does while hoisted in the air by Travis (see photo above right), you'd think a better finish than 4th would be their lot. They're still amazing to watch however, each time they take to the water.

At 12:45 in the afternoon, both Pablo Smith and Ron Greene had to compete against each other in the same Grand Masters' Repecharge round. When it was all over, Pablo stood and the top of the heat with Ron placing 3rd. Our one-two punch was able to keep on advancing once again.

A couple of heats later it was Patrick O'Connor's Menehune Repecharge heat taking to the water. This time however, Patrick finished in 6th place, leaving just three of our guys left to surf in their respective finals.

Along with having to surf against the other teams' finalists in the Grand Masters finish, Pablo Smith and Ron Greene had to face each other one more time as well. This time, Pablo scored with a 2nd place trophy, bested only by Oceanside's Bob Hecklinger. Ron had to settle for 5th place, but still brought home some hardware for his mantle. Quintin Macklin wound up with a 5th place trophy for his efforts and you have to think that his mantle must be sinking with the load it continues get, contest after contest.

When all the counting was over and the fat lady sang (or was it Dick Dale had strummed the final note of Miserlou), PB finished in 7th place out of a total of 11 clubs. We've done a lot better recently, with the exception of the poor showing in Santa Cruz, but when you consider that we only got five team riders in the finals, I guess we can't complain too much.

Next... Swami's. Bring it on.