Santa Barbara Area Surf Report

April Overview | 1996 Overview


Date/Time:
Wednesday, April 17th, 8:00 am - 11:00 am
Location:
Rincon Point
Weather:
Sun shimmering through a mosaic of high puffball clouds. Slowly, gradually, some light SE winds starting to come on.
Conditions:
Excellent early, very slowly degrading with the wind.
Swell:
WNW swell, short period (11 s.), sets up to overhead.
Comments:
Ahhh, morning glass is back finally. A fun session, lots of waves coming in, and a light crowd.

Sets mostly swung wide into the rivermouth, eclipsing the indicator, as they've been doing for the past 3 days. Bowly late takeoffs with a fast shoulder, not always makeable on the drop or down the line. When the bottom turns did connect through, it was a blast.

Towards the end of the session got totally worked by an outside set, overhead and a half, possibly larger, feathering over right in front of me. Successive duckdives got more and more difficult as the water aerated, board sinking like a rock but not really having much buoyancy to come up, then...

whump
... as the lip of the fourth wave reached down and caught me between the shoulder blades, frozen in the midst of a duckdive. Suddenly I was a blob of dough being rolled out from mid-back to foot by a heavy pin, that ran down the length of my body, snapping me out like a wet towel being flicked at someone's hindquarters. Nothing like the sound of your own vertebrae popping and crunching to make you think about going home for lunch.

So I did, but got my redemption on the way out with a clean head-high peeler from the top of the cove to the freeway... hit the lip and threw as much spray as I could to show I wasn't beaten. Yeah, sure.


Santa Barbara Surfing -- Last updated 6/17/96.