Wednesday, July 31, 2002
Took the LongBoard out along PCH tonight around 6:00. There didn't seem to be any swell above Rincon but there were some waves at the beachbreaks south of there. A little bumpy and sectioning out sometimes, but I caught some waist high rollers and practiced cheater 5's to the sand.
For those of you looking to get away from fiesta, my old stomping grounds of good old ventura is having Figure 8 races, and a Demoltion Derby Thursday night at the County Fair.
link to this
Lo Siento, but work was busy so i have no reports today. will get one in tonight for y'all. I did have the chance just now to add a little script to the sidebar for some quick links. my idea here is to have surf links i use often, with an emphasis on content that is updated daily such as surf reports. Most stuff will remain in the "links" section still.
link to this
Tuesday, July 30, 2002
I've been getting ready to start doing a daily surf report much like Tim had going since 1995. Trying to figure out if I'll do it in the style he did, or perhaps a simpler(yet less searchable) way to post. I did a little cleaning of the report section, tried to tie up the loose ends. Once I get established the front page would mostly be for news and info and there would be a whole new section for the reports. I'm trying to pick up on Tim's style as far as listing where he surfed. Obviously it is no problem listing places like Rincon and C-Street, as these places are well known...but what kind of report do you file when you surf somewhere a lot less known? Not that there are any secret spots up here...but there are spots people don't go to often and I don't want to be responsible for directing more. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying localism is cool or I want to be secretive about the spots...but I think there should be spots out there left to the adventurer....places that are fickle and only break on certain swell angles and certain tides and take a good hoof to get there. Would Tim mention these?
One thing that shouldn't be a secret is Wetsand Magazine. Just realized they have an online existence.
link to this
Monday, July 29, 2002
Ok, I think SBS should be up and running now. It was up and down from Thursday-Sunday for a little server swap.
The swell has been treating me pretty well. I made the trek down to Malibu for the weekend to stay in a friend of a friend of a friends house along Broad Beach. Friday around sunset Leo Carillo looked good, everywhere else looked messy. Saturday was mostly speant in pounding shorebreak along Broad Beach with the exception of a sunset session at Leo Carillo. There was a Japanese guy out there who had one of the best drop-knee bottom turns i've ever seen. Sunday the swell seemed smaller in the morning but started growing in the afternoon. County Line was a little overhead on the sets around 3:00. The problem was navigating the scores of Harleys and Rice Rockets. Closer to home, Rincon looked flat so I think every surfer in Santa Barbara was surfing south of it, judging by the crowds and cars. Even places like Mondo's were showcasing some head high waves. If you didn't stick on the outside there, the littoral drift would sweep you down practically to Tanks. Wetsand says we have even more in store.
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Friday, July 26, 2002
Blame it on the wind. the am session was not all that i cracked it up to be. Some swell out there but everywhere i looked south of Rincon was lumpy and messy. Perhaps some places were able to clean it up a lot better. I had the pleasure of surfing with the brother of last year's College Longboard Champion, Jon Husak. I hope the afternoon sessions will be better and this messiness will settle down.
This site will probably be going down every now and then over the next week or so. My servers are doing weird things and I am trying to get it right. It is also possible I may need to re-propogate the DNS in which case it could be down for 72 hours. I'm sure you'll live.
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Thursday, July 25, 2002
I finally got some of the swell. nothing epic, but in comparison to our totally flat summer it was nirvana. a little sunset session with a fun group of guys out there. good vibe. the tide was high so it was bumpy from the wall, and there was a little bit of wind on the water. Some of the sets were head high but the lulls were long. out there i heard war stories of barrells and fast rides at places up here that don't break very often. I hope you were one of the lucky ones to get some of those rare jems.
Tommorrows low tide is at 6:05am and it's a -.4. It's times like these i wish i didn't work. Keep up the good vibe in the water out there*...this should stay around long enough for everyone to get plenty.
(*if you surf at Rincon or C-Street good luck getting some good vibes)
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Ok. So I think I've touched on a sensative subject with the Gaviota Coast debate. So, to offer a differing view than the Surfrider view is an email I received yesterday from Pete who can be reached at pete_sproul@yahoo.com for additional comments/debate. By the way, I fully encourage this type of feedback if you feel like speaking your mind, or sending links to others viewpoints.
"I was disappointed to see you post the Surfrider petition on the Gaviota Coast on the SBS website. Surfrider has bowed to pressure from extremist environmental groups for too long. The proposed national seashore is a horrible idea that will bring hoards of tourists to Gaviota and take control out of the hands of the local landowners and place it in the hands of the federal Government.
There is no risk of further development beyond the the Naples project on the Gaviota Coast.
Have you taken the time to speak with any of the local landowners who are in danger of loosing their land? Many of them are surfers and want nothing more than to manage and preserve their land. The last thing they want to do is see any development on the Gaviota coast.
Just because Surfrider has 'Surf' in their name don't believe that they have the interests of surfers in mind."
Pete
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the swell from the south is now 2.9ft @ 14s from 185. an interesting way to look at the Hurricanes is ocean weather's map. the two hurricanes seem to be heading more westerly which will throw swell towards Hawaii and not as much to us. from what i understand, the swell we are seeing now is from Douglas and towards the weekend we'll be seeing stuff from Elida. Elida seems stronger and with a more northerly track than Douglas.
I've enjoyed following Elida on the NCEP page. here are some outtakes from the forecaster:
Wed 2am: I HAVE...PERHAPS CONSERVATIVELY... RAISED THE OFFICIAL INTENSITY TO 95 KT. I CERTAINLY WOULD LOVE TO HAVE HAD AN AIRPLANE OUT THERE TO VERIFY THESE NUMBERS.
Wed 8am: A CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR/SIMPSON SCALE IS RARELY FORECAST BUT WITH THE OBSERVED TREND AND HE CURRENT INTENSITY GUIDANCE...
Wed 2pm: SATELLITE PRESENTATION IS OUTSTANDING.
Thur 2am: WAS ELIDA A CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE...WHILE I DOUBT WE WILL STILL BE DEBATING THIS IN TEN YEARS...IT IS A GOOD QUESTION FOR TONIGHT.
Each time has a different forecaster and i think the one at 2am is more personable then the rest. Good luck out there finding some swell.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Tropical Storm Douglas hit the big leagues and made it to Hurricane status. Throwing swell our way for later in the weak. Wetsand is also talking about Hurricane Elida which is busting out 140mph winds and at class 4.
The next Surfrider Foundation meeting is Thursday August 8 at 7:30. "Guest speakers: Lane Goodkind and surfing's 1977 World Champ, Shaun Thomson, will be presenting their new park design for Rincon."
Tim may have posted this months ago, but Surfrider has a link to a petition to Save the Gaviota Coast. I'm not so sure on the verbiage, and I'm not so sure what happens to the signatures, but it's keen to be informed on the key decisions being made now that will affect this coast forever.
(image borrowed from Conception Coast Project)
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Monday, July 22, 2002
a fairly flat weekend yet Wetsand is saying that some goodness is on the way from the south. To top it off Tropical Storm Douglas is next in the queue this season but not expected to bring a whole lot.
For those of you that were hanging around Leadbetter this weekend, it was a hub-ub of activity with outrigger canoeing, Yacht Club races, swimming races, kayak demonstrations.....and 6" waves at Leadbetter. Point Blanks gave away a $1200 longboard with a wood vaneer finish on top and carbon fiber on the bottom (don't know if CF was real or vaneer). the board was sick and was won by some guy from Marina Del Rey.
link to this
Saturday, July 20, 2002
a little dawn patrol down south this am netted knee high rollers. water = warm.
link to this
Friday, July 19, 2002
A site similiar to SBS, yet in the bay area, seemingly hosted thru salon.com can be found by clicking here.
link to this
swell is so supposed to increase a little bit this weekend but i don't think much.
in local going's on we have the Santa Barbara Outrigger Canoe Club's State Sprint Finals on saturday at Leadbetter Beach from 8-5. "Take Advantage of this rare opportunity to see traditional Hawaiian outrigger canoe racing as teams from California and Hawaii participate in 1600 meter sprint races with flag turns along Leadbetter Beach." I also noticed that PaddleSports is having a kayak demo day at Leadbetter on saturday. free testing of all their kayaks.
I forgot to mention the surf movie at Arlington on Wednesday (and I forgot to go), but the oft cheesball bar Sharkeeeeez is going to show Taylor Steele's "Drive Thru" next Wednesday July 31. The movie, it seems, is about Donovan and crews California trek in which the unveiled they USO.
link to this
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
boy the buoys look really bad, but did you catch that sunset last night? insane. i think the patchy clouds were remnants of the tropical depression that fizzled apart over us leaving us with a humid and warm evening.
i like the way tim set the style sheets up on this site but i just started to fool with them. kinda pump some life into the front page. let me know what you think.
Some local news that is of interest to SB water people:
Simon: Oil rigs vulnerable to terrorists
Sunken ship no dead zone
link to this
Monday, July 15, 2002
ok, so the tropical depression was over-rated by me, but there was still some fun stuff to be had out there this weekend if you looked in the right places.
an LA Times article on El Nino says don't hold your breath too much.
link to this
Friday, July 12, 2002
And they called it....CRISTINA . Not much of chance of a Hurricane but throwing some swell our way as we speak. Apparently i got a little too excited about this system...the amount it'll add the the southern hemi and NW stuff sounds pretty small. This information, as always, comes from Wetsand.
link to this
Thursday, July 11, 2002
Tropical Depression 4E is still chugging along. still heading to the west at 35 knots but expected to turn north and ramp up to 72 knots. i'm not Sean Collins (who, by the way made Surfers top 25 most powerful people in surfing in the their annual giant summer issue) but it looks like it'll throw some stuff our way if we make our way our of the Channel Islands shadow.
did a visual check on Deveraux/Sands and Haskells today at 15:30. Sands had some inconsistent yet glassy waist highers, while Haskell's looked near unsurfable save the knee high shorepound that came in every so often. I didn't head out to either because i'm a loser and parked at West Campus and fled when i saw campus police. i gotta find out how to get one of those permits.
oh..by the way how funny is this movie gonna be?
link to this
Wednesday, July 10, 2002
Wetsand has informed us that the bump they saw yesterday has been upgraded to TD-4E which will hit on the 14th or 15th.
the water right now is a sweltering 65 degrees.
link to this
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
Wetsand is tracking a tropical disturbance slated for July 16, but NOAA has yet to classify it. stay tuned
To quote: "There is a tropical disturbance brewing around 11N99W (near Mexican coast). Models today favor this one moving North towards Baja, then up towards SoCal. This has potential to hit SoCal with some South swell from 170-180 degrees by the 16th."
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Friday, July 05, 2002
hope everyone had a swell 4th of July. I'd like to not normally advertise on this page, but i think this particular post has some historical and cultural significance:
Stephane contacted me and asked if any readers of SBS wanted to buy this 1971 VW Van. you can read more about it here and here. or check out the flyer here.
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Wednesday, July 03, 2002
I realize this is old news...but still worthing of posting: a Swell.com article about Mexico's quest to build a series of harbors along Baja California, ruining 6 great breaks, including Scorpians. I had not realized this till i began reading my Surfer this month.
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Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
