Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Location:		Sands
Weather:		SSE Wind, Sprinkling Rain
Conditions:		Too much wind, Not enough waves
Swell:	Steep NW
Surf:	Waist High At Best
Wetsuit Life:		27 Sessions in Rip Curl Bomb

Comments:

Convinced Kyle yesterday was good and we should hit it today if weather didn't hit it first. When it was time to call the ball there were big black clouds to the North and a bit of a breeze from the East. We probably shouldn't have gone out, but the surf contest webcast got us pumped up. As soon as we started loading up the truck the first drops of rain started coming down. It was a sign.

It sucked out there. The SSE wind was strong and with a big enough fetch to bring in un-ignorable cross-chop in the 6-12" range. This piled on top of the smaller than yesterday NW swell and there wasn't much for us to do with the waves. The same guy I shared the peak with yesterday was out, obviously just as bummed, but he was still ripping. It was pretty miserable, not worth the suffering for such poor waves. The rain and wind was bad on the bike ride back, but in the afternoon the sprinkles stopped. Then during election evening we had strong winds from the SE until 2am the skies opened and we got our first real winter storm. Awesome.

UPDATE: A reader surfed a few hours before me and sent in this story on wave and animal conditions:

"I just wanted to notify (if you are interested) that Tuesday morning I got bit (or pinched) by some sea-animal while paddling out (in fairly shallow water) at Sands... Big blue crab? Stingray? Little shark? Who knows... The cut wasn't very big, just deep, and it caused my ankle to bleed for a while and then get very swollen later that day (and still is now). Anyway, moral of the story: be careful when you step around shallow water at sands."

Further prodding:

"I'm positive it wasn't a rock. I actually felt an animal hitting me and biting (or pinching) my ankle. I hit rocks all the time and although it can be a little annoying it never really hurts. I was surfing the main (Stu) peak (right in front of the small beach area) around 10 am and it was horrible, especially compared to the day before which had some chest and even shoulder high sets around the same time. But yeah, Tuesday was super-choppy, small and inconsistent, possibly even worse than what you said you surfed at noon."