Dawn Patrol:

This week I was still focusing on the rain storms and their aftermath.

I revisited the south county spots I’d checked during the storms and got some fun waves at San Juan Creek mouth. The flow went north, across the little jetty and pushed out a lot of sand.

Doheny will be different for a while.

The road into San Onofre is taped off just past the point so you have to walk to Old Man’s. The reefs south were empty — long walk with a SUP or 10-footer.

Thursday I checked the San Gabriel River mouth, the Orange-L.A. county line, and the brown runoff water reminded me of the story I didn’t get to tell last week, about a surf trip Rick Chatillon and I took to Baja after a rain spell.

A mutual friend invited us to spend the weekend surfing at Las Gaviotas, a private community south of Rosarito that can have some good waves. We got there just after dawn, way ahead of our host, so we decided to paddle out. It was one of those overcast mornings where the sky and water blended into the same gray color. In the low light it was hard to pick out the horizon or the incoming sets.

A young Mexican surfer was the only other guy out and we were getting some fun rides and having a pretty good time.

Once in a while a wave would boil over some rocks to the north and the foam looked brown. We also noticed the water had a brackish taste and smell to it.

After a while we knew something wasn’t right and the brown foam thing, now happening all around us, as well as the septic odor became a little disconcerting. We tried to convince ourselves that it was red tide or maybe some runoff water from Las Gaviotas.

Our young friend overheard us and said, “No, there was a big sewage spill in Tijuana two days ago — three million gallons, now it’s here.”

Yeah, well that would explain it.

All we could do was try to laugh. Instead of paddling for the shore like maniacs and showering in chlorine bleach we figured we’d already been out for over an hour and any damage had been done so we surfed for another hour or so.

Rick says he remembers a guy waving at us from the bluff, in retrospect perhaps as a warning.

As we got out of the water the sun came out a little and you could see the reddish-brown patches of raw sewage that looked almost like kelp beds.

Most of the Gaviotas Gringos who were headed for the surf turned back when they heard what was happening, but a few went out anyway. By that time it was sunny and the scum patches were broken up and could be avoided.

We didn’t tempt fate by surfing again that day, and thankfully we didn’t get sick. Later we read about the spill, which had emptied into the ocean via the Tijuana River and prompted beach closures in San Diego County.

It’s a fun story to tell, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again.

JOHN BURTON’S surf column appears Fridays. He may be reached by e-mail at hot_dogger@mac.com.