July 1965 The cry surf’s up is a siren call to any surfboard enthusiast. And it’s not surprising to see the lengths many aficionados of the sport will go to-- to find surf that is up. A group of San Diego surfers went out of the country last weekend to find their spot. And they had the surfing time of their lives. They also indulged in a bit of international goodwill which may be hard for some people to understand. They traveled by car caravan to Ensenada and nearby San Miguel. Later they loaded their boards aboard a Mexican fishing boat to seek out their Shangri La—a spot that supposedly had never been surfed before. Several years ago—Thor Svenson—was on a trip to Mexico when he spotted what appeared to be an ideal surfing spot off the coast of Baja California. Last weekend, he organized a surfing safari to the spot. The men—most of them from the Windansea Surf Club and many of them champion surfers put on an exhibition of their foam and fiberglass talents at San Miguel. They also carried official greetings to the City of Ensenada from San Diego Mayor Frank Curran and had dinner Saturday night with the Chief of Police at a banquet. And they remained on their good behavior in a determined attempt to dispel the unfortunate reputation that some previous surfers had earned in Mexico on past occasions. After the civic festivities their Mexican guests provided this boat for the 40 surfers to finally get out to surf the spot they had been waiting for. The scene is about ten miles off the coast of San Miguel: the Todos Santos Islands. Here, as the story goes, the Japanese current hits a reef and mounds up and breaks over a sandbar. The surfers were sure they had found one of the top surfing spots on the West Coast. The surf was down in San Diego that weekend, but it was up here. Much of it was as high as 8 feet. The surf here offers a fairly fast whipping break. It’s fast-moving surf and it runs right up to a rocky shoreline. Surfers compared it to a cross between Windansea and some of the surfing found in the Hawaiian Islands. They said it was a great spot to surf. Even when the breakers are small elsewhere due to poor ocean conditions, they probably run fairly high here. They named it after the discoverer calling it Thors Hammer. It’s about ten miles from the shore. Mel Knoepp report.