Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments: Yesterday was perhaps one of our windiest days of the year. An afterwork check at the beach had 20+ knt winds and an ocean in shreds. Today the winds were light and the ocean had some of the windswell benefits of yesterday's havoc. Walking down the path I saw Yellow Board Bobby and a photographer friend of his coming out of the water. There was a mix of shortboarders and longboaders, a half dozen or so all at the leftmost peak. The tide was high, and was digging into the the creek and making walls of sand as if there was a winter swell eating at the beach.

Waves were coming in with typical windswell style, lumpy and shifty, sometimes fast and peaky and sometimes rolling over the outside sand and spitting out on the inside bars. I took the fish, it's 3rd session out and I already noticed a small ding on the tail.

Did some major floundering, one time taking off on a quick left with a potential tuck in. Grabbed the outside rail and ducked in but then ended getting sucked over the falls in that position, still with my hand on the rail until the board got ripped out of my hands and suffering a cut on my thumb when my fin whizzed by it. The fish is super fun but is taking time to get into the groove of it. Turns are more drawn out and I have to come back to the source more often than I thought. Rails are so thick it doesn't dig into the wave on big turns and stays on top more than I'm used to. Wave catching ability is rad as are the turns.

Changing on the grass afterwards I got bit by a million mosquitoes. Those things are everywhere this spring when I get out of the water at dusk. These guys must have been on patrol from their breedding grounds over at the creek. They were relentless, I had to change as quick as possible allthewhile swatting myself in a scene that to bystanders must have seemed like mild schizonphrenia.