Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments: Heading back up from Santa Monica, where only bagels were delivered on Saturday, I had some hope we'd have some lefts marching up the beach in Ventura County. This was true, and the entire population of bakersfield was there to enjoy it. Never in my 16 years of surfing along this stretch of coast have I ever seen so much chaos on the roads. There honestly was not an open parking spot to be found. It was nuts.

Good for me, because so many out of towners were taking up spots that the water was truly un-crowded although fast, spitting, barrelling lefts were marching up the beach on a regular basis. I trunked it for a few hours, trying allthewhile to get into one of these barrells. I was semi-successfull at one point when I dropped into an abyss that came over my head and vacuumed me out the back. I popped up hooting to no one in particular. Only a surfer knows the feeling.

The current was un-relenting and I had to pull out the walk-down-the-beach card a few times to stay in the spot I had nominated as numero uno in terms of shape. I soon gave up on trying to stay in this spot and would simply surf up the coast until I got into this one particular rip currenty spot full of foamy choppy water which would signal my time to head down beach again.

These were the biggest and best waves I've surfed all summer. My surfing improved more in these 2 hours then it has all summer.