big swell

i surfed caballeros yesterday morning with a couple of friends. a big swell with 9.5 foot waves that were too much for a lot of breaks. it was a challenging day. heavy fog so thick that you couldn't make out points of reference on the shore to position yourself on the break, peaks that were shifting left to right, a current that kept pulling us outside and over to the rocks, and every few minutes a huge set would roll through and you'd have to duck dive three times in a row, hope you didn't get stuck on the inside and then start the process all over. i was paddling out at one point during the session and looked up to see a breaking wave and my friend looked like an ant relative to the all the water behind him. once the sun came out, about 2 hours into the session, i finally caught some waves. but on the last nice wave i caught, just as i was standing up, my board felt slippery and twisted in a strange way. i looked at the underside and saw that i'd broken two fins and two hole plugs during the session. i think my leash tangled around them in a wipeout and they snapped off. most days aren't that challenging.