... or, what Will did for his winter vacation. We met up at Rincon with some help from Surfer Bob and scored some pretty waves. This is Will's take on it.
Every year I spend the week between Xmas and New Years in the Santa Barbara area. This year's pattern was like last year's: decent surf thru the week, climaxing with excellent waves for New Years Day.Last time the magazines billed 1/1/96 as "The Best Day Ever" for California, as there was a freak south along with a clean, strong north, plus mellow winds and sunny skies.This year we didn't have the sun or south, but everything else came together, altho the typical wave might have been a foot smaller this year (5-7' faces compared to 6-8'). More on the quality in a sec.After hanging out in cyberspace off and on for a while, Tim Maddux and I have wanted to get together in the flesh for a netsurf, but it never quite worked out. He returned from his Hawaiian honeymoon very recently and gave me a call at my base in Carpinteria on New Years Eve.
We planned to meet at 7 a.m. in the Rincon parking lot. I partied, but not too hearty, and showed up pretty much on time. There was no sign of the car Tim said he'd be driving.Did not down my usual 2 mugs of EBT (English Breakfast Tea) before the session, and might have been a little foggy, as will become clear. As usual I walked up almost to the creek to paddle out. Waited for a lull, timed it just right, and as soon as I reached the lineup here's a choice set wave in my face, no one there but me.Oh well, since the surf was obviously excellent and more cars were pulling in every second or two, I wasn't about to hang around waiting.
I stroke in, and immediately sense the size and juice have really picked up over yesterday, bigtime.Walk or paddle back out, do it again, X 10 or so. One was what John Airey might call a $100 wave: solidly overhead, way lined up, barely makeable at times, totally carveable at other times, no "pylons" in the way, just this big hollow glassy pocket that wouldn't quit. Yessss.But the wave is perfectly clean, the tide is perfect, so each lippy section is just barely makeable. The speed is awesome. I finally reach the call box down the freeway along the rock seawall and pull a kinda flakey kickout that doesn't quite work, the lip grabs the board and takes it shoreward.
Big surprise: no leashtwang.The damn leash was still wrapped around the tail, oops, duh.Huh?
Longish swim to the board, which was just lapping near the riprap rock, amazingly no damage. Thanks Huey or whoever.
Then, out in the pack, this guy paddles over.
"Aren't you Will?"Turns out these two know each other well, in fact Robert drove Tim to the beach late because Tim had some car trouble. Small world! BTW Robert posts here as Surfer Bob. I didn't recognize him at first, lack of tea again maybe, but eventually remembered the fun times we had a dozen years ago, 500 miles north."Oh, are you Tim? Howdja recognize me?"
"No, I'm Robert, a friend of his, but you and I used to surf
together back in '84 when I was up north. This here is Tim." Anyway - it was a killer session. The locals were cordial. By the time I left at 11, the parking lot was full and the Bates lot was filling up also, with the tide now rising into the mushier realm.
Tim has only been surfing for 4 years, but handles overhead Rincon easily on a short board, nice clean style with the precision one would expect from a physicist.
I was paddling back out from a ride, and here comes Tim working the slot on a nice set wave, I just had the perfect Kodak Moment angle on it. No camera other than the internal one, so I'll file that image away with all the others, and wish everyone great surf in 1997!