Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments:

Needed a quick after work session so I headed to a beachbreak thinking it was going to be flat and no one out and I would end up putting the trunks on and swimming around instead. Not so, there was a dozen kids out and knee high waves breaking in knee high water. I was saved, suited up as quick and giddy as if it was overhead and offshore, and paddled out. A lot of really young groms clumped together in a chatty pack at the East Peak that has been the best this summer, I headed straight out where a couple others were picking up waves from another peak. Hadn't been out in over a week and the going was tough for a couple of waves. One of the local surf shop guys was out there, chatted with him a bit, and did some great floundering in front of him. I'm sure next time I go in there and tell him what I'm working on in my surfing style and how it's tough he'll probably say, "yeah, because you suck!" Actually my surfing got better as the session wore on. I found a groove on a left that was mostly my own. A screaming take-off and bottom turn into the curl where it would either close out or offer a few turns. My biggest wave was a right that was waist high or so, a stacked up screamer that I planed down until a failed off the lip closeout dump leaving me floating upside down in shallow water. Super good vibe out there, as is usual on lazy summer days where Goleta families meet up with their surf rat kids who've been dominating the beach all day. A few longboarding fathers hanging out with thier sons who were surfing boards half the length of their fathers, the kids abuzz with energy while the men mostly quiet, staring to sea, waiting to catch an outside wave to run over their kids and their grom friends for a good hoot. good times.