| Santa Barbara Area Surf Report | |||
| February Overview | 1999 Overview | ||
| Date/Time: | Friday, February 26th, 9:00 am - 1:30 pm |
| Location: | Rincon |
| Weather: | Mostly sunny and warm, no wind locally. Strong winds overnight on the channel and the outer waters. |
| Conditions: | Fair in the morning, high-tide sick and post-wind lumpy. Improving vastly as the tide dropped and the wind waves moved on. |
| Swell: | New WNW ground swell with NW windswell atop it, 12-13 ft at 17 s combined seas on the outer buoys. 7-8 ft at 17 s readings on the inside. |
| Surf: | Head high to overhead with sets pushing to overhead and a half in the rivermouth. |
| Comments: |
A bit of a late start today, timing the tide as it
began to plummet from hovering around 6 feet in
the dawn hours. Things didn't look great atop the
Indicator, but definitely looked surfable in the Cove.
Shot some pictures, then, despite what I learned in
my last session, headed back up
to paddle out at the very top.
Again quickly realized that it was probably a mistake and moved as fast as I could down to the Cove. On the way got some solid drops in the Rivermouth, enough to get me paddling back out there a couple of times. Being back in the water again was a huge relief after pounding away at a proposal for four days straight. Even better was feeling really on top of my surfing. I probably wasn't really ripping but it sure felt like I was! Best waves in the Cove came early in the session. Lots of late-ish drops over the sandbar. While I didn't get any real barrels, I got more than a few verandas. This other guy on a 9'6" was making me look bad, pulling into every wave he got over the sandbar, even the little 2' ones, putting that big slab of foam right in the slot and performing a disappearing act. A few sets pulsed off the top of the Cove that were pushing 8 or 9 feet on the face, nothing I ever got into. Somewhere along the line I got pretty tired, 4 1/2 hours of water time will do that to ya, and eventually when I got that one last wave in I couldn't even stand on it. It took me up and over, holding my board, and put me down on the bottom on my back, then dragged me about three feet. Point taken. I went in and rushed to a meeting, and somehow managed to avoid having my nose drain on anything important for the rest of the day. |