Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Location:		Sands
Weather:		Fog
Conditions:		Cleaner yet Closing Out
Swell:		8ft at 14s @ 305°
Surf:	Chest High, Some Head High Sets
Wetsuit Life:		16 Sessions in Rip Curl Bomb

Comments:

After a frustrating day trying to find the right place to surf yesterday today I headed to Sands with Kyle at lunch. The conditions were much better, plenty clean, some glass and people were getting tubed. I once saw the lip come over me but I snuck out the backdoor before the tunnel vision. Worst mistake of the day. Stu peak was filled with surfers so we surfed down in front of the Plovers and the shape was often too closed out there. The bigger sets, a touch overhead would just detonate and offer nowhere to go, whereas anything shoulder high and smaller would offer some shape. First half of the session I surfed like garbage. Missed a lot of waves, blew a lot of drops. After that I got a handful of waist high waves to restore confidence and then dropped in on more chest high or so waves but seldom made the 1st section. Best wave of the day for me was a right that offered down the line speed for pumping, a duck down and try to get covered section that was unsuccesfull and then a nice little hit on the lip at the end.

Kyle got some good ones, actually took off on some of the better sets and get rides faster and further than I. The crowd was killing me, they seemed to be on every wave I was going for. So this swell pretty much was a bust for me, either chunky cruddy conditions, bad surfing performance and crowds brought the fun factor down. Next time.