Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Comments:

The windswell from yesterday appeared to be on the buoys still but I had neither car nor board at work so I rode home through Hope Ranch and checked out the Mesa to see if it was breaking. Coming out of sunshine and into a windblown foggy day, there were indeed waves so I raced home for the Bear (K-dog) and board. Didn't get down there till 7:00, the fog was bringing on a pre-mature darkness. Only 2 or 3 guys in the water, and it felt cold with the wind on the springsuit.

Waves were chest high at times and dumping into a menagrie of sand and kelp. Duckdiving in the inside was like duckdiving into a bowl of pasta, you could not puncture through how much kelp was strewn on the inside, and when you popped up you had kelp tangled on every body part exposed. Waves gave almost nowhere to go, top to bottom closeouts that allowed for a fun drop, turn and explosion into a brown mess. My watch still smells like expelled kelp two days later.

Needless to say there wasn't a whole lot of hot surfing going on out there. It was a rare end of summer cold, cloudy, windy surf session with confused size. It was as if the beach did not no what to do with waves that big, so the sand and kelp was in a dis-array and the beach was not accepting waves that big. "Sorry, no deliveries of waves over waist high from June 1st-August 31st" it seemed to tell the windswell as it screeched to a halt and dumped in thigh high "water". Burro's at that new mexican place on Mission and De La Vina made up for a bizaro session.