Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments: A glorious lunchtime session at sands. Only a few folks in the water at first, the tide was coming down after a 5.3 high tide. This made a lot of the waves back off bit and tough to get into and a bit mushy at first. As the water started to get sucked away by the magical action of gravity the waves started to get better and better. The waist high waves would be a fun drop but then take a lot of milking to stay on the wave. Good surfers were able to work with the wave to keep up speed and energy, wheres some of us were doing a poor job of it. Lots of rights and lefts, with the lefts pitching out a little more.

The water was so clean and glassy and warm, it was just glorious. I had the shortboard so as the lineup got more crowded with longer boards I had a hard time getting as many as before so I went a bit up coast which was actually more consistent and had the best part of the sets. There were some rogue wavest that would come in that had to be shoulder high but they never got ridden so it was tough to judge.

One of my best shortboarding days since 10 days ago with Hurricane Howard along the PCH. When I wasn't floundering trying to get more juice I was able to get some turns in and come up to the lip a bit, and tried to squeeze in some closeouts. With my new work location a mile or so further away from Sands I can no longer ride the bike there. Hustling I was able to be in the water for exactly one hour with an hour and a half lunch. We need to install a yellow bike program down there.