Santa Barbara Area Surf Reports

Location:	Rincon
Weather:	Sunny and Warm
Conditions:	Thick and Meaty
Swell:	7.7ft @ 11s @ 305°
Surf:	Head High+
Rip Curl Bomb Wetsuit Life:	26 Sessions in Replacement Suit.

Comments:

Heading down the stairs from the upper lot there were only a few heads bobbing in the water at the Indicator. The paddle out the back looked do-able so I went for it. On that paddle out there were very thick lipped closeouts churning down the coast. White, foamy lips thicker than my legs were churning the water into a frothy mess. I made it out, but not without raising my adrenaline levels. At the indicator I was suprised that there wasn't a huge crowd around the corner, perhaps a dozen surfers from here to the start of the cove. Sets would come in pretty hefty and shifty. The best sets lined up nicely to the left, and connected well past the Rivermouth. Twice I ended up surfing almost to the glass house, where the lineup for the cove surfers started.

Level of surfing out there was excellent. The waves were so consitent it was like a non-stop line of surfing, not a whole lot of waiting around. You'd catch one as far as it would take you, and then paddle out along the set line, and perhaps pick off one before you made it back out. Shape wasn't the best, but the frequent burps meant the scrapy could pick up on some elses bummer. Saw a sucky accident, a kid was way deep trying to make it around a foam ball. As soon as he did, he made a big carve to go vertical and hit the lip and get some speed. Sadly, at that time another kid was dropping in, not realizing someone was on that other side of the foamball. So you got one kid cranking a sick turn off the bottom to go vert, and another with a lot of speed from a drop in and you have a lot of pain. They both paddled away from the incident, a bit dazed but apparently ok. I've seen a lot of near misses like this at Rincon and it was bound to happen. I stayed accident free, there were a lot guys coming up to questionable sections I could of dropped in on, and 90% of the time the guy never made it out, but that 10% is what makes it not worth it.