years ago when i lived in fremont my friend and i grabbed a map and randomly chose a marina to go launch are 550's at. we werent very experienced riders or anything but wanted to go ride in the ocean. well we ended up going to the marina closest to the maverick's break. we get there and see waves that were 40-50 feet. we were just blown away , i had never seen waves that big in person. they were having the quicksilver cup surfing competition that day and the only people in the water were sufers and rescue crew. of course we couldnt ride the break (not that we wanted to) but it was pretty awesome seeing those waves up close and being out there when its that big