Santa Barbara Area Surf Report
    
  June Overview 1999 Overview  
    
Date/Time: Monday, June 14th, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm
Location: Rincon Point
Weather: Sunny and warm, no wind locally. NWerly gales on the channel.
Conditions: Good to fair, with the windswell a good influence.
Swell: 10 ft at 14 s NW groundswell with accompanying windswell.
Surf: Shoulder to head high with sets to overhead and a half.
Comments: A solid off-season north Pacific swell. Sets breaking wide into the rivermouth due to the windswell and a surfeit of sand. A large crew sitting well outside of my usually deep Indicator lineup and riding to the closeout section on the second peak made it difficult to get waves where I usually sit. Hit a good groove a half hour or more into the session by moving down the point.

The drops were the highlight, some pushing possibly to 10' or more on the face as the windswells peaked up the lines. Many waves didn't go far but some went well into the cove, got a couple of those. The first was early on, and I waited in the cove for some choice head high waves while the rest of the lineup sat far outside. Several freeway rides. The second came later, and I couldn't surf it very well.

Just the wave before I'd gotten run over by the board of someone doing the kook's drop-in-and-fall bit. Scratched my ankle and knocked me off-balance enough to send me tumbling, and the nose of my board whipped up into the side of my leg, resulting in a good golfball bruise, a worthless front leg for the rest of the session, and a nasty crack to the board. It took me a while to stop venting steam.

Found that I really needed that front leg fully functional to do a decent bottom turn, kept overweighting the back foot and nearly falling over backwards. Drives and pumps down the line were manageable, as were cutbacks, but forget a vertical drive at the lip. Eventually got bummed out at my technique and thought I was going in early, but actually I was out there over 3 hours anyway. At Rincon, in June. Okay, I wasn't that bummed after all!

Doubled up the session late in the afternoon at Campus Point after a fruitless search of the Gaviota Coast. Waist to shoulder high on the peaks of the drops. Anticlimactic.


Santa Barbara Surfing -- Last updated 6/14/1999.