Didn't know how those winds would be eddying around into Ventura, so we drove southward and kept a close eye on the water surface. By Carpinteria things were looking sideshore and bumpy, and the Indicator looked blown from the parking lot, but the Cove looked clean. We paddled out there.

For my first session ever at Rincon, I paddled out inside of the Cove. Things looked better up the point, so I paddled up, and up, and up, and when I was at the Indicator I stopped paddling. Ever since then I've always been a sucker for that section just a little further up the point. Something about making eye contact with that unblinking, winding thing as it moves towards me. Today, people were pulling into that, ducking out of sight behind the lashes, and reemerging in a burst of tears!

After watching three of those with nothing happening atop the cove, I was paddling up the point again. Didn't get any of those barrels myself, but I got chicken skin from looking back as I set up one cutback and seeing it spit. Tried my best to get into what I thought would be a hollow one, stalling for it, but it didn't even veranda.

At one point the wind moved to blow out the rivermouth, and I retreated back into the cove. The section in front of the whip lady's house seemed to be shutting people down, so I tried to sit on it and pick off a few good ones. Then the wind shifted back north. Crazy!

Now it was blowing hard offshore right up the point, and the longboarders (including Gioni) were struggling noticeably to keep their boards in the wave. Even I had a hard time with my 6'6" on the drops, and once got blown back over the whitewater after missing a section. Despite all that, these waves were now looking good and the sandbar section was opening up a little more and letting people ride from the outside to the freeway. Got one myself and while the sandbar didn't barrel me it did throw some fun sections. As I post this it's hard to even recall that last wave. I keep thinking back to the sight of that spitting tube behind me.