From tbmaddux@abalone.ucsb.edu Thu Jan 16 22:40:51 1997
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Surf Report for Santa Barbara, 1/16
From: tbmaddux@abalone.ucsb.edu (Timothy B. Maddux)
Date: 16 Jan 1997 14:40:51 -0800

Date/Time:	Thursday, January 16th, 8:30 am - 11:00 am
Location:	Rincon Point
Weather:	Cool morning, getting warmer with the sunrise.
		Light northerly offshores chilling the parking
		lot and fanning the lines back.
Conditions:	Pristine glassy perfection, as good as it gets.
Swell:		West groundswell.  Consistent sets early, becoming more
		fickle into the morning.  Waist to shoulder high sets with
		some pushing to head high.
Comments:

Consistent, relatively uncrowded, clean, totally fun waves
and a gorgeous day to be in the ocean.  Tim' and I paddled
out with dry heads and both immediately stroked into a
couple of head high set waves atop the indicator.

There was a bit of a WNW character to the swells, which
were lining up very well and rideable from atop the indicator
to inside the rivermouth.  Took a bit of a beating each
time coming back outside as the rivermouth was grinding
and not letting up.

Spent the entire session without getting snaked until my
very last wave in the cove.  Tim' got snaked a bunch.  Perhaps
I have adjusted to the crowd here.  He would paddle just to the
inside of someone, sometimes even after that surfer began
paddling for the wave.  That, coupled with the fact that people
won't look over to see if they're snaking someone unless you
attract their attention, and the fact that yeah, he snaked a
few people too, led to a bit of frustration for him.

Me, I typically won't even take off on a wave that already has
a few people paddling for it, even if I have position.  Not
here.  Not unless I'm sure I'll be up and riding before them and
be able to keep moving down the line even if they do drop in.
Sometimes it helps (after one stands up and is in control) to
give a little hoot.  Hooting prematurely can lead to embarassment
as one wipes out, with the potential for the crowd to shut down
your arrogant ass for the rest of the sesh :)

Drifted down to the cove late in the session and saw people just
getting great little barrels through the little closeout section
from the bottom of the rivermouth to the top of the cove.  Finished
off the session with a good cove wave, rippable and perfectly lined
up, not too steep and not too mushy, wagon-spoking machine-groomed
line.

Five days in a row of good surf... hope it keeps coming...

-- 
       .-``'.      Timothy B. Maddux, Ocean Engineering Lab, UCSB
     .`   .`~        http://www.engineering.ucsb.edu/~tbmaddux/
 _.-'     '._  "From the essence of pure stoke springs all creation."