Tuesday, July 27, 2004
Perhaps energy from Hurricane Celia is in the water out there somewhere. In other tropics news, Tropical Storm Darby is now strengthening off of Mexico. According the National Hurricane Center, "The chances of becoming a hurricane and then further strengthening are high." Since hurricanes names are recycled every 6 years, we've had Hurricane Darby's in 1998 and 1992. The Hurricane Darby of 1992 was my first and perhaps best Hurricane Surf. Down in Ventura, we had 2-3 days of super fast lefts, combed by offshores and barrelling. The weather was humid with tropical clouds. Back then, with only 4 years of surfing under my belt, my backside surfing was pathetic. It just took one day of 'make or break' screaming lefts to solidify my backside game. The first day of the swell I put a giant ding in my "Vector Vehicles" tri-fin. While that was in the shop for repairs I busted out the 6'6" Haut single fin pintail, which held in giant bottom turns and glided down the line ahead of the curl. Thus far no epic Hurricane name of day's past have ever re-produced the magic 6 or 12 years later, so don't expect much from the 2004 Darby.
link to this
Santa Barbara Surfing. Created by Tim Maddux. Continued by Pope.
