Santa Barbara Area Surf Report

June Overview 1998 Overview

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 2nd, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm
Location: Secos / Arroyo Sequit / Leo Carrillo
Weather: Early AM southerly piss winds, turning to westerly sea breezes by midday.
Conditions: Fair, lumpy and bumpy, cleaning up as the winds shifted until it started to get a bit blown.
Swell: SSW swell remmnants, 3 ft at 14 s from 200 degrees.
Surf: Smaller again, around waist high with chest to shoulder high sets.
Comments: Starting to get that surfed-out feeling, work's piling up, along with other commitments like a lunch date w/ my wife. Surfer Bob was laboring under similar constraints, but we managed to cajole each other into a morning session with longboards at C Street.

Unfortunately, the point wasn't so cooperative, looking really lumpy, ugly, and small. After some debate, a successful surch for a donut shop, and a quick call home, we were on to Secos.

Low tide awaited us, and the break wasn't working all that well, as was the case for the swell most of the time. Closeout sets and sectiony inside waves. I eventually tired of getting pounded by the closeouts while waiting for little knee high insiders and moved to the windsurfing rock to catch the shoulders of the wide ones.

An interesting takeoff zone, as the waves would heave over the windsurfing rock and push a wall of whitewater forward that'd hit deep water almost immediately and back off, reforming teh green and then breaking farther inside. Got a bunch of waves by ignoring my waterman's instinct and letting the whitewater hit me, hanging onto the rails and then popping out onto the reforming wave. Cut left until the curl began to set up and then bank a right turn and move down the line, well past the stairs and nearly to the canyon.

Surfer Bob caught on after watching me get one, and we spent the rest of the session waiting for the sets to at once mow over us and push us forward into the reforms. Then strangely, the tide bottomed out and the sets stopped altogether. We moved back over to the standard lineups and I got a last wave in. About a half hour later, a few more rolled through that I watched from the stairs, but the swell definitely had the feeling of being on its way out. Thanks, Huey, for 6 straight days of stoke!


Santa Barbara Surfing -- Last updated 6/2/98.