Latest Report | Surf Reports | January Reports

Santa Barbara Area Surf Report

 
    
Date/Time:   Thursday, 23 January 2003, 3:45-5:00  
    
Location:   Gaviota Coast  
    
Weather:   Partly Cloudy  
    
Conditions:   Good size and clean, a bit lumpy  
    
Swell(Harvest):   6.1ft @ 14s @ 280°  
    
Tide:   3.0 and falling  
    
Surf:   Head High Sets  
    
Board:   Progressive  
    
Comments:   Finally a big day again. Not huge or anything, but some head high sets would come through and provide much fun. I hadn't surfed this spot in a long time and I was by no means alone with myself out there. Swell or tide may have been a bit strange because some waves had great shape and pitched out a bit but others rolled along in big foams of whitewash. Outside they would peak and sometimes break, and other times back off and break inside. Caught a few real nice ones with some long rides. Waves were not very powerfull. I had a hard time adjusting to it and kept getting too far in front of the wave, and my cutbacks were way weak sauce.

A guy with dreadlocks was out there. A really good surfer. One time he hit the lip on a pretty good sized wave and pulled a floater on top of a wave that was kind of barrelling. It was cool. One rogue wave came in that must have been 2-3 feet overhead. It was much huger then anything else out there and broke further then anything else. No one got it, it was big and clean and pitching. A great site to behold before attempting to duck it. I kind of hung outside the pack and tried to pick of the ones that swung wide most of the time. Sometimes this worked, and sometimes this didn't. A nice sunset but then the wind just came up out of nowhere. It was like an anti glass-off. Clean and then blowing hard onshore around sunset. I don't understand.


 
    
   
Santa Barbara Surfing, an open content site.
Created by Tim Maddux, Continued by Pope