Santa Barbara Area Surf Report

    
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Date/Time: Tuesday, August 15th, 1:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Location: Secos / Arroyo Sequit / Leo Carrillo
Weather: Gorgeous. Sunny and mild with just a touch of wind midafternoon before an early glass-off, crystal clear water (at least 30' visibility) with a temperature of 68F or so. Totally trunkable for a normal session.
Conditions: Outstanding.
Swell: Building 2.6 ft at 17 s southern hemi swell midday, over 3 ft at 17 s by the evening.
Surf: Inconsistent sets pushing overhead, some much larger.
Comments: Had to smile as I paddled out through the warm water. Felt like I was stroking out through sets in a swimming pool, could see the bait fish swimming around and even a few starfish and garibaldi among the rocks out by the boneyard. Announced my presence to the lineup by surfing a wave right over the big rock, something I'd never done before.

Today the surf was even better than Saturday, which at the time was the best-shaped surf I'd seen all summer. Not too big and peeling through very nicely, rides to the stairs were very common, and the crowd was mellow enough that I got a lot of them. So many that they've all just smudged together in my mind, a blurred, stoked memory now.

I'm pretty sure the best waves of the session came late in the day, after a bunch of people went in and the tide just started to turn around. It seemed like the swell was starting to fill in, and we had a few sets with 10'+ faces rumble across the far outside. Made some pretty late drops on a couple of those, and the increase in size gave good hopes for Wednesday and the swell's forecasted peak.



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Created by Tim Maddux, courtesy of UCSB, CoE, ME, and CS. Last updated 8/17/2000.