Santa Barbara Surfing
Frequent: Surf Reports. Surf Photos. Weather. News.
Monday, March 31, 2003
<---- New Reports from Friday and Sunday, and a March wrap-up.
As we say goodbye to a windy March it appears the Southern Hemisphere is starting to wake up. StormSurf is saying that Tuesday am could be landfall of some decent waves for South facing beaches (without 4 Islands blocking them) so save up your gas money.
Hele is a Tahitian company that makes surf necklaces from black pearls. Check them out.
link to this
Friday, March 28, 2003
<----- New Report from last night's wind-fueled session
This Sunday Night @ 8pm Absinthe is hosting the surf photography of Branden Aroyan set to a DJ spinning some Intelligent Breaks. Absinthe will again host surf photograhy on the following Thursday. Also keep a look out for the SB Whale Festival down in the districto turístico.
Link section has been updated because Friends of the Ellwood Coast has a new site. FOTEC's goal is to preserve the Ellwood bluffs and right now is trying to raise $6M by June '03 to buy the 137 acre Ellwood Mesa property.
link to this
Thursday, March 27, 2003
If you can find shelter from the 20knts winds:
...South of point Conception...The Northwest direction of this swell will prevent most of the swell Energy from reaching the inner waters. However...Above normal surf of 3 to 6 feet will affect the West facing beaches of Ventura and Los Angeles counties tonight and Friday....
link to this
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
today: warm wind and perhaps the smallest day in awhile and for awhile. various predictions calling for some NW with offshores starting tommorrow followed by some SW in the near future. surfregister.com is an interesting approach to surfboard theft.
link to this
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
<---- New Reports for 19 21 22 24 25 of March.
I've been busy keeping informed on news so I'm a bit behind. For the link deprived you can check out the site of Nicolas, a French surfer from the West Indies who has Bungalows for vacation rentals. He will visit Santa Barbara soon and was just making sure we didn't hate the French. Although I myself had a bad experience trying to get a French Surf Shop Punk (as if California Surf Shop Punks weren't bad enough) to rent me a board in Biarritz, I assured him he'll be fine.
link to this
Wednesday, March 19, 2003
This mornings session was perhaps my coldest of the winter. 48 hours of strong winds pushed a lot of water out of the way and some deep, cold water is now near shore. Brrrr.
Monday's water quality reports have no closures but several warnings:
Arroyo Burro Beach
Butterfly Beach
East Beach @ Mission Creek
East Beach @ Sycamore Creek
Goleta Beach
Hammond's Beach
Leadbetter Beach
Refugio Beach
Sands Beach @ Coal Oil Point
link to this
Monday, March 17, 2003
Big water this weekend in the form of waves and rain. For the last 24 hours has been big wind. Burke wrote a weekend wrapup of his experiences with our first big swell in over a month:
"When I checked out our local / nearest spot, IV and Deveraux at about 10am, I called my son, to get the surf gear ready, as I saw overhead waves at Deveraux. We surfed there for 2 hours, and 15 minutes, and caught so many waves that we both had no strength left in our arms...."(continued)
Some local curiosity revealed....Jimmy Walters is the guy who is buying giant adds in local and not so local papers about the Iraq issue.
link to this
Thursday, March 13, 2003
Marine weather statement
National Weather Service los angeles/oxnard ca
630 AM PST thu mar 13 2003
...High swells expected Friday through Sunday...
A series of strong Pacific storms moving across The Eastern Pacific
will create a large West-northwesterly swell. This swell will
overspread the coastal Waters off Central California coast on
Friday...And will push into the inner Waters late Saturday.
Swell Heights will build to 14 to 17 feet by Saturday across the
outer Waters...And 10 to 13 feet across the inner Waters by
Sunday.
This type of swell will produce surf of 10 to 13 feet North of point
Conception...And 7 to 10 feet South of point Conception. This will
likely require the issuance of high surf advisories by Friday.
More hype by Wetsand and Surfline, but StomSurf comes in as the 3rd party verification. The California buoy peaked at over 18ft at 1am today but thus far the energy does not seem to have swung around conception.
Sadly pope is out of town starting friday am, so the readers of santa barbara surfing will have to do their best to document the swell with images and words submitted on monday.
In other news, if you are figuring out how to best complement that Montecito Mansion you've picked up recently, may I recommend Chef Palmerton, private chef in Santa Barbara.
link to this
National Weather Service los angeles/oxnard ca
630 AM PST thu mar 13 2003
...High swells expected Friday through Sunday...
A series of strong Pacific storms moving across The Eastern Pacific
will create a large West-northwesterly swell. This swell will
overspread the coastal Waters off Central California coast on
Friday...And will push into the inner Waters late Saturday.
Swell Heights will build to 14 to 17 feet by Saturday across the
outer Waters...And 10 to 13 feet across the inner Waters by
Sunday.
This type of swell will produce surf of 10 to 13 feet North of point
Conception...And 7 to 10 feet South of point Conception. This will
likely require the issuance of high surf advisories by Friday.
Monday, March 10, 2003
A pretty flat weekend in Santa Barbara but augmented by a lot of surf movies. The only one I made it to was Siestas & Olas, which Tim and his amazing memory reviewed back in 1998. DanO was there to present the film and answer questions afterwards. He spoke a bit about a movie he's got in the works, of which I'm sure to post more info as it becomes avails. If you didn't see the flick he's got DVD's & Videos for sale on his site.
Although it seems like the winter storm track has deserted us, there seems to be some systems out there that could bring something rideable soon. In the meantime cozy up to your boss and earn some hero points.
link to this
Friday, March 07, 2003
The Film Festival ends this Sunday. Here's the Lowdown on the weekend's flicks:
Saturday
2:30 Surfing For Life @ SB Museaum
4:30 Local Boys @ the Granada
9:00 (Surf Music at the Mercury Lounge in Goleta)
Sunday
11:00 Heart of the Sea @ the Granada
2:00 Big Wednesday @ the Granada
6:00 Siestas & Olas @ Victoria Theatre
The outlook for waves this weekend is pretty poor.
link to this
Thursday, March 06, 2003
A few weeks ago Bob Campi sent in some pictures he took of surfing near Tel Aviv in Israel. 
Now Bob comes back to us with pictures of his surf adventures in Gaza in a story he wrote for SBS, "Occupied Territories: Surfing the War Zone".
It was early morning May 13th 2002. I had just crossed the military boundary from Israel into Palestine - The Gaza Strip...
Seems like Bob has been busy over there but luckily still getting some waves. Surfers Journal this month has an article on surfing the med and were supposed to include a photo of Camp's, but from a brief shuffle through of this months issue I didn't see it.
link to this
It was early morning May 13th 2002. I had just crossed the military boundary from Israel into Palestine - The Gaza Strip...
Wednesday, March 05, 2003
<---- New report for Wednesday.
The 24 minute movie by George Greenough "Dolphin Glide" was spectacular. Having never seen a Greenough production before I didn't know what to expect, but his intro pretty much sums it up:
"Imagine gliding through water with the resistance of air. Imagine you are a dolphin, That's all you really need to know."
I was continually oohing and ahhing at the range of angles and perspectives that George was able to get. The images, shapes, and motions he brought out on film were surreal, like some sort of lava lamp under the sea gone mad. There were times I thought someone had slipped something into the drink I had before the show, only to be grounded when the camera came above water for a brief glimpse of land. Most of the shots were taken at the speed of a dolphin, far faster than a human could travel, skimming just below the surface of the water. I was perplexed at how George could have gotten these shots. I was imagining some sort of dolphin-mounted camera system. Wrong, I was to find out, as Jack Johnson explained that George has a couple of contraptions to get those shots. One being a camera mounted on a pole that is put under the bow of a boat. That explains a lot. Another contraption apparently is some sort of self propelled sled. I'm a little fuzzy on the details.
Regardless of how the footage was shot it will absolutely mesmerize you with the images and soundtrack (Although the sounds system at the Granada stunk...The video sound kept crackling). At times it felt a bit too much like some new age video you'd find for sale at Spirit's Path, but more often than not it was far deeper and amazing than something like that. The crowd was pretty receptive. I had expected it would be mostly Film Fest people, but the majority were surfers. A few of the standouts were the Malloy Brothers, Jack Johnson, and Wayne Rich. There was some guy a few rows in front of me filming the movie with his VidCam, and I'm wondering if it was being pirated or documented.
In other FilmFest news, check below for the 3 surf movies tonight. As far as non surf movies....We ran into a "residentally challenged" man outside of the Sportsman who is in the movie "Streets of Paradise" which shows at 9:00 tonight. Thursday at the FilmFest sees An Evening with Bruce Brown at 7:00 at the Granada followed by a screening of The Endless Summer.
link to this
Tuesday, March 04, 2003
<---- New Report for Tuesday and February's wrapup.
Tonight's Greenough movie is only 24 minutes long. Not sure if it's full price. Wednesday sees 3 movies:
Scracthing the Surface is Seth's movie that opened to a sold out crowd just a few weeks ago and features much local talent. The Far Shore also played in IV back in October.
The Daily Nexus had an aritcle on Rincon and the Septic Tank issue today. If you are planning on heading to Ventura for surf this weekend keep in mind the contest at C-Street that is going on.
link to this
