You can just barely see the promontory in Half Moon Bay where the Mavericks are held.
Looking out over Half Moon Bay you can see for miles across the water. The “waves” you see in the deeper field of this picture are actually swells. The water comes up on the shallow ledge and rises up into the world-famous waves, breaking on the rocks in this little cove. Although there are no people in this picture, there were a few tourists down on the beach that day (late October 2011) to the left of the camera view. Had those people been included in this picture, they would have been dwarfed by the house-sized boulders you see.
From up high you feel like you could almost wade through the water along the shore but the waves were high enough to knock a grown man down. This water was not really safe for swimming. You cannot see them but there were seals in the water, and a few were sunning themselves on the rocks — or perhaps they were resting after fighting the waves.