Santa Barbara Area Surf Report
    
  October Overview 1999 Overview  
    
Date/Time: Tuesday, October 12th, 1:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Location: Secos / Arroyo Sequit / Leo Carrillo
Weather: Mostly cloudy with westerlies blowing again.
Conditions: Good to fair, thanks to the kelp.
Swell: New southern hemi unexpectedly filling in, 3+ ft at 17 s.
Surf: Head high with overhead sets.
Comments: The 7th session in a row in the past 5 days! That's a lot of surf for me! After the sixth I figured the swell was over and it wasn't until mid-morning that I checked the buoys while doing some work in the lab and found... swell! A new one! It only took a little effort and the offer to ride my freshly dinged 6'6" to get Toby out of his office. We were at Leo Carrillo within an hour, looking at solid overhead sets and fewer people than on Monday.

Started the session by kooking on two consecutive drops inside the first reef, one of which resulted in a little star crack to my brand new 6'6" roundtail. Bummed, I held off a bit afterwards and it wasn't until a couple good waves later that I started to get into a good groove again. Toby was on it from the beginning, and even got a little head-dip that could have been a barrel over the body rock if the tide had been a little higher, the wind a little more offshore, and the wave a little hollower.

Some of the guys were complaining about the kelp early on, but it didn't become a factor for me until well on to the end of my session. One late drop got unhinged about halfway down by a strand of kelp and sent me tumbling. Otherwise the tide was making the sections fun, not ruining them, and the kelp was keeping things clean. We both got enough good waves including several to the stairs that having to leave the water early to return to work wasn't such a problem.


Santa Barbara Surfing -- Last updated 10/17/1999.