Nosara, Costa Rica
One thing that came in after press were the results from last weekends Southwest Open contest where the big news of local interest was Lakey Peterson winning the Womens division. Look at the size of the trophy she got, its bigger then her (photo:NSSA). Some snidbits of local surf goings on:
out today on news racks and online. The Indy's Ethan Stewart sat down with the people behind some of the local surf sites and penned a piece "Santa Barbara, Surfers, and the Interweb". We are probably jaded because we had a nice chat over coffee with Ethan Stewart, but we think this is a great take on surf sites and the effect they have on our everyday surf experience, both good and bad. Ethan also featured Tom Modugno of Goleta Surfing, Jon Shafer of Rincon Surf Blog and Chuck Menzel of Wetsand.The 100,000 visitors a month would of course be crazy, the site runs something about 100,000 hits a month, and unique visitor stats aren't tracked but would chime in ten times lower or something like that.
“If one person writes about a spot - when it breaks, how to get there, or something like that - that information is online forever. All you have to do is Google it,” said Paul Costales. Better known as Pope, Costales has been the mastermind behind Santa Barbara’s longest running surf Web site, SantaBarbaraSurfing.com, since 2001. The site, which was started by former UCSB PhD student Tim Maddux in 1995 as a no-frills, underground surf report resource, has consciously evolved over the years into more of a local surfing community bulletin board.
Purposely avoiding the naming of surf spots save for the obvious such as Rincon, Campus Point, and Isla Vista’s Sands Beach, Pope provides recaps after swell events, pictures, and, perhaps most importantly, links to and short stories about the various goings-on in Santa Barbara’s wave-riding tribe. From coastal preservation issues and supposed shark attacks to the fate of the UCSB surf team and upcoming film premieres, SantaBarbaraSurfing.com keeps its visitors - about 100,000 of them a month - in the loop and better connected, but when it comes to the actual pursuit of finding and riding waves, you are still, at least as far as this site goes, on your own. With uncrowded waves about as easy to find around these parts as an uncrowded freeway in Los Angeles, the restraint, in the eyes of many longtime Santa Barbara surfers, is necessary.
One Track Mind
UC Santa Barbara owns a glittering resume with 11 National Championships and raised the bar in 2007-08 sweeping the Conference, State and National titles. The top ranked Gauchos opened up with a victory over Cal State San Marcos at Blacks last year and are hopeful for a repeat performance.
Coming off a tremendous year, UC Santa Barbara captain Joe Riggio is cautiously optimistic about his team’s prospects for the upcoming season. “Another title is what we are aiming for, however every year is different,” Riggio said. “Every team is going to be looking for a strong start. Graduation did take some of our top guys but we just picked up some fresh talent and are looking forward to competing.” Gaucho co-captain Matt Shulman added, “After winning three of four conference contests, the State Championship, and our 11th National Title, it will be hard to duplicate that level of success. Regardless, we are coming out with guns slinging.”
UC Santa Barbara’s recent successes at Blacks along with a strong Women’s lineup are another reason for high expectations. “We won the past two out of three events at Blacks,” Riggio said. “It is the best location on the conference schedule and we feel really comfortable competing there. We are also fortunate to have sophomores Lipoa (Kahaleuahi) and Lily (Howard), who were both Nationals’ finalists, returning to our squad.”
disagreement about what day it happened on. We scored very fun waves on Wednesday October 1st, although we considered the true opener on Thursday October 2nd. We've heard arguments for either day to be considered the opener. Either way, we had fun consistent waves from Wednesday to the following Tuesday. Tom over at Goleta Surfing does it again, covering Opening Weekend through his eyes. Callie Bowdish (who we saw while Dawn Patroling Sands Thursday October 9th ) has some photos from October 2nd at Coal Oil Point and October 5th at Deveraux (Photo credit to right: Bowdish). The next swell was due in Thursday the 9th into the early weekend, and this was not very impressive for our sessions on Thursday and Friday. Stormsurf didn't even consider any of these swells true Winter swells, placing them on their Summer Scale. Stormsurf is also predicting a below average Winter due to their analysis of ENSO conditions.
as well as other local land use groups are asking for your help with the controversial Naples development where a major decision will be made by the County on Monday, October 13th. Naples is a stretch of land West of Goleta that is beautifully pristine. If you are interested in stopping the proposed development, here is some info from the Surfrider Foundation. Read the stories from the Independent, Nexus, NewsPress, Daily Sound. Foundation. Please note we realize this is a controversial issue on many fronts and we do not pretend to understand all of the angles, but we do love us some Gaviota Coast. Below from the Surfrider:
have had a few consistent little pre-runner swells come. We covered the last few weeks plus all of the stus coming back to ucsb in our latest column over at Edhat.com. Things on the horizon are looking promising. The Gulf of Alaska has woken up and sending stuff our way. We could even possibly have Opening Day at Rincon over the next few weeks. What comes with the first real swell is a lot of hype. Besides places like Santa Barbara Surfing hyping waves, we even heard random DJ's on KJEE talking about swells. If past experience is any indication, the first forecast swells of the season will come in way less impressive than forecast and the lineups will be teeming. Onto the latest surf happenings around town:Santa Barbara Surfing
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