... or, what Will did for his winter vacation. I missed Will this year due to a nasty intestinal flu bug, but that didn't stop him from getting some good waves.We did manage to meet up the year before.
The family and I made our annual holiday trek from N. to S. Cal over the past week. We arrived at Carpinteria to the sound of crunchy shorebreak cracking on the sand.The next day, Sunday, I surfed the cove on an 8'6" Robert August singlefin, in fact this board served me well over the whole week. Sunday turned out to be the best day of the week for the cove: waist to head high, juicy, hollow on the dropping tide in the afternoon; sunny, glassy with a slight NW ripple.
Highlight: accidentally snaked a shortboarder on an outside set wave, but it soon set up so hollow that I couldn't kick out; didn't want to straighten out across the guy's path either, so just had to hang in there. Got royally barrelled and made it out almost to the freeway. For a couple seconds we were both in the tube, but the lip, and/or my wake, must have got him because next time I looked he was gone. Wanted to apologize, but couldn't figure out who it was!The next couple of days were smaller, but still fun. I've always pretty much stayed in the cove, but over those days, in part due to some of Tim's comments, I started to get to know the Indicator pretty well. My impression is that it is less tide-sensitive than the cove, which becomes largely unmakeable on minus tides, especially with a lot of sand in there as is now the case. The Indicator however had killer shape on lower tides, and more size, with less crowd, and, surprisingly, a mellower vibe. It does some interesting bowling kinds of things as the wave wraps around the point. You have to do these little redirections to stay on track, but not too many cutbacks or you get too far behind. If all goes well, an open barrel awaits you in the area of the creek. On some of the settiest set waves, it was possible to get a screaming ride from the very top, all the way through the creek sandbar.There were fun waves every day I was there, but Thursday, New Years Eve day was the most epic, especially on the Indicator. There were some chunky outside sets that were well overhead, even after the bottom turn. I remember real clearly one larger, very walled-up wave, trimmed up near the nose and flying, making these subtle adjustments to slalom thru the hooting pack, climaxing with a "made" creek barrel, YES! The day ended with a truly kozmic orange, magenta and chartreuse sunset, reflected fluidly in the sets rollin thru. New Years Day was also good, a little smaller and less consistent, but still a gas, hot & glassy. Finally, as we drove away on Friday morning, the wind had changed to south and it started raining.
Thank you Rincon for yet another great visit! Happy New Year and good waves to all,
Will