Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments:

It's tough to find new places to surf in a town you don't know. The best you can do is head to the beach and look for a lineup and go experiment. Today I did that, the most north I've surfed yet this fall at a beachbreak that funneled the combo swell in nice rifiling lefts. Surfing somewhere new is pretty awkward. Where do you park, where is the path through the dunes, will locals know you are some SB kook if you paddle out in the wrong spot? As it turns out you just need to go for it. The sets were head high, and coming in lovely lefts that were fast and sometimes spitting. I really only got one classic set wave that I could keep up with and it required trying to keep the energy as much as possible thru turns and pumping. No cover ups for me but I saw several hunched over barrells. My backside game continues to improve, I'm not just some lifeless stick on a board.

The rights were fun too but required a lot more work to keep up the flow. There was a campground nearby, you could smell the scent of campfires and it that kept me warm out there. Certainly my 3/2 was not keeping me warm enough. So far this was my favorite spot for central coast surfing in terms of crowds, shape, and acesss. The best part is I don't even know the name of it. Back at the ranch we got 1.25 inches of rain in the evening.