Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

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A rare afternoon session up in Pismo that wasn't entirely blown out from wind. Closeouts breaking down the beach and I hung out on the north side of the pier to try to find some peaks. In the 1 hour as I was out there I probably was standing on my board and riding waves for about 30 seconds total. The waves closed out so much it was standup, get going, and get crunched.

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Just another crossed up swell at Emma Wood. The south swell was showing up on the outside, but when it would break it would get the crud beaten out of it by the strong wind out of the west. A short hour long session on the shortboard with a few nice rides. A couple of kneeboarder guys out there were having a good time trying to get slotted. Surprisingly I got a few clean waves that somehow magically lined up in between blown out chunky ones. Long drive, short session.

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The weirdest day of my working and surfing life ever when my boss kidnapped me at near-gunpoint so I would go surfing with him. He took Kyle too. Loco.

We checked Goleta and it was blown out and flat so we headed south. Rincon looked rideable so we took at the longboards. There were some fun sets that may have been waist high, but there were a whole heck of a lot of knee to thigh high waves which, at Rincon, proved to be extremely entertaining. Leashless in the springsuit, clean and clear water on a sunny day. We got a lot of good waves, Kyle did some stylistic nose-riding, and were pretty dang hungry for some food at Tinkers.

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Today the waves were about 2x bigger than yesterday. Big head high bombs blowing up on the beach, leaving the water littered with boogie boards and people in over their heads. It was Bill and I once again and the water was nice and cool. I hung out closer to the pier than yesterday and found my own little void between the pier pack and the 2nd peak pack. I'd catch a few nice waves, make a turn or two, and decide to preserve my longboard and NOT try to tuck into the walls.

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A nice Pismo session with Bill. A day after trunking it in SB I was putting on the 3/2 and getting in the chilly fall waters north of Point Conception. We hung out a hundred yards or so north of the pier and found our own little niche. As usual there were lots of closeouts but we managed to find a few long rides, both right and left. Pismo is a crazy place. I've made up my own logo for the beach culture there, "Where Bakersfield Meets the Sea."

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Surfed every day of this work week and today was the smallest. After the long walk down to Sands and surfing for about 30 minutes I gave up figuring the law of diminishing returns was in full effect. I trunked it leashless which was real nice, but the waves were so small, I wasn't really bringing it with my shortboard.

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Surfed at nearly the same time as yesterday, about an hour later but during the indentical tide. Still a little too high and the waves were even smaller today. None of those rogue waves that came in yesterday showed up today. Waves were pretty consistent but most lacked much push, so there was a lot of hoping and weaving to get some speed going. One hour later in the day saw much more wind on water, not as glassy and nothing really pitching out.

K-dog was surfing around the corner at Deveraux. She had it all to herself and although it looked small she actually had some pretty fun longboarding waves. The tar over on that side of the point was apparently out of control. Tar was pretty sublime at Sands, perhaps enough wave action to get rid of it.

I discovered why I have about 10 little slices on my left foot. My shortboard has started to delam on one side of the stringer. All that foam is pushed in and so it creates this little edge where my front foot goes. It's been slowly slicing me up for the last few sessions. I hadn't noticed until I was walking home with bloody toes. Some H2O2 and bandaids on the foot and ducktape on the board solves that one. It is time for a new shortboard, hopefully we'll be getting a Christmas Bonus this year again.

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.

Comments: A pretty pathetic attempt at surfing today. The windswell that was bringing fun waves down further south yesterday just wasn't working tonight. The water was crowded and the waves were few and far between. The biggest sets would close out and the smaller sets didn't have enough juice to really shortboard that well on. A nice warm day to get wet on but pretty lackluster conditions.

Comments: Evening glass off down in Carpinteria. Amazingly it was fairly empty all weekend but this weekday afternoon the water was full of shredding groms. Instead of the longboard and trunks I had the shortboard and the springsuit. The board was the right choice but the springsuit was too hot. Waves would peak up on the outside to the right and the left, with a bumpy rip current in between the two peaks. Some sets would break on thru the rip. I caught a ton of waves while still trying to respect the local hierarchy structure put in place over generations of carpsters. The lips were smackable and pitchable, a couple of nice close out cover ups and some failed floaters. Water was cleaner, not as much tar out there. What a summer.

Comments: Identical session to yesterday only this time K-dog and I brought along jt who bodysurfed the rogues. Waves were better today, much more consistent and the "sets" were bigger. A few micro lips were throwing out but you'd have to be a magician to tuck in. A little wind chop, some sideshore stuff, but the air was still hot.

Comments: Over an hours worth of trunking it without a rashguard and I'm still warm. Warm air and warm water. So warm there was more oil and tar being released than usual. Longboarding with K-dog and were catching zillions of small short waves. I surf this place only a few times a year and I randomly ran into Amy out there. We tried not to run over any kids on the inside and the waves seemed to pick up towards the end. Some slow rights for walking and some fast lefts for crouching. The warmest trunking session I can ever remember in Santa Barbara County.

Comments: Labor Day dawn patrol with PeteII, which would be first session with the guy. We brought out the longboards and surfed for 2 hours with just a few other fellows. At first were catching any little thing we could, until we realized that the sets were pretty consistent in their timing and well worth waiting for. They would break much further out and scream down the coast until a nice little close out section on the inside. A couple of real nice and friendly guys out there, us all respecting each other, and working out a real nice system of sharing the set waves. This was until some grey hair guy came out, paddled past us all, and began to consistently try to backdoor us on the sets. You suck man.

What didn't suck was the sets, which had 4-6 waves each that were at times chest high. A lot of the waves were barrelling and I saw PeteII almost get into one, with grey haired reverse snaker guy behind him on the wave. A perfect combo. I did a lot of tucking and petting of the cat, but never could coax a lip over my head. Towards the end the lull between sets seemingly grew so we called it after 2 hours.

Later that day was 4 hours of beach time in Summerland, of which 3 of those hours must have been speant bodysurfing with a good crew to avoid the heat. Then it was to Kevin's house for some Cuban style Mojitos. Thanks man.

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.

Comments: I told myself I was NOT going to psyche myself up for Hurricane Howard, but I did. It appeared it would start showing on buoys on Friday night but did not. I woke up at 5am and still didn't see anything on the southern buoys but I have little experience with those southern buoys so I didn't know what to look for. I went anyway and was down looking at small offshore waves at Sequit and County Line at sunrise. I saw a guy get nice and barrelled at County Line so I went out.

Turned out that there were nice waves to be had outside, shoulder high or bigger sets that went both ways and threw out some lip. However these broke in water that was littered with surfers and there boards. At 6:30 it was not crowded but by the time I finished my session at 8:30 it was one big reason for me to never, ever re-locate too far south. The crowd there is funny, it's kind of a begginner spot so you have lots of floundering, ditching of boards, late take-offs, etc. I saw so many seens out of a Bruce Brown movie where two guys take off next to each other and then end up crashing into each other and eating it.

I drifted south, hoping to get some nice lefts. I did get some fast lefts, but most were waist high and smaller. They were short and broke in 2' of water and after awhile it just wasn't worth it. I headed in before I hurt myself or got hurt my some errant board.

Comments: In true weekend warrior fashion my body hadn't seen surf all week, but I saw some nice windswell on Thursday evening at the Mesa. Sure enough once at home the Harvest buoy was at 10' compared to 2' about 12 hours ago. Really short period stuff but I woke up at dawn on Friday to check it out. Why I would choose Rincon for windswell is beyond me, only a few cars in the parking lot, and a few guys took off after checking it out. Not to be turned away I headed out without checking it and was glad I did. It looked flat but every now and then a set would line up and you could get rides from whip ladies house to near the hut. Speaking of the hut, it is looking real good this summer. Someone has been doing some mad housekeeping, the sand all raked, the table all clean. They even got a boat down there, no doubt for dorry boat races.

Just a few folks out, sharing waves the old fashioned way. One guy had a 7' pink/red shortboard and he was making it work well out there. Some waves came in at waist high and held up, a woman I've seen out there often was was by far and away better then the 3 of us guys out there, and she had an uncanny ability at wrangling in the biggest and best waves. Womens intuition?

In other Rincon news there was some broken glass in the parking lot on Sunday that was not there on Saturday. It is still there and I wonder what the story is there. Looks like someone wanted a stereo real bad.