Postcard from Cali: little in Santa Barbara too

Hello Friends,

After looking at the MHL data for Sydney this morning (1 metre of 5 sec period south wind chop) and the BoM’s wind report (15-20 kts of SSE), I was unsurprised to see it looking pretty paltry on the cams. Looks like an excellent day to get some work done.

You might want to actually, because later in the week is looking pretty interesting wave wise for Sydney. Could be some big east swell filling in from about Weds onward. Looks like it’ll be strongly onshore at first, but by Friday the north corners could be coming into play … ya lucky pups!

Over on this side of the planet, well, in Santa Barbara anyway, the weather was mild, sunny and windless. It was also, but not quite, waveless. About a metre of WNW wind swell was coming in at a spot called Sands beach (imaginative name eh?) and myself, Roberto (old hands will remember our erstwhile Puerto Rico reporter) and childhood pal PQ went in for a paddle about on mals. Actually jagged a few in the waist high range too. But is the water cold. I reckon it was at best 12-13.

I’m currently without a water camera so no pictures of our amazing triumphs of wave riding skill to share, but I did take a snap to remember the day by…

Postcard from Cali: fading west wind swell

Hello Friends,

Your jet-lagged correspondent had the opportunity to see beaches from Malibu to north of Rincon this morning and can report that it was mostly waist high to smaller along much of the coast as a little west wind swell ebbs away. Water was brown most places thanks to 50mm of rain a couple of days ago and waves generally looked on the slow side for shortboarding. The honourable exception was Rincon, where it looked as though there might be a shoulder high set with a little push every now and then.

Which, judging from the latest MHL data, is more than could be said for Sydney just a the moment!

On the other hand, the water temperature here is around 12-14, so, tiny as it may be in Sydney, at least you don’t have to rubber up like a deep sea diver if you feel like messing around with a high displacement water toy.

Go well!

Postcard from Sawtell

Barry, aka The Beach Defender of HPFM was in Sawtell this morning. He tells me he grabbed the shot in a rare sunny break between the showers…. looks pretty tasty…

He said there were about half a dozen in the water and that sets were into the shoulder high range. Lucky pups!

Postcard from Tim

Surf film shooter Tim Bonython sent us this from yesterday at Kirra. Cyclone Vania may have been pretty tame down this way, but look at those lines… and just imagine if they were makeable when they hit the point… there’d be a zillion keen surfers all over ‘em!

Postcard: Eukai Beach yesterday

Tim Bonython’s on the North Shore for the start of the season and he sent us a little postcard…

Postcard from Redhead

Hello Friends,

Had an opportunity to tag along on a run to lovely Newcastle this morning. Didn’t take the board because I figured it would be pretty tiny. And it was along the steel city’s beaches as it turned out.

On the way back, we went out to Redhead for a look. I’ve never checked this particular beach before. It’s a nice set up too. There were a few folks in the water chasing some waist high little crunchers. Definitely bigger than anything we saw in Newcastle and a few of them looked positively fun it has to be said.

Here’s a snap of a snap…

Postcard from Boomerang

To be filed under really annoying messages from friends who could go on surfari when you couldn’t…

Mid North Coast tally ho!:

The ENE swell continues to hang in there. We just surfed a left for a
couple of hours in the Boomerang Beach area (near an iconic headland and
an easy paddle out). Very fun 3-4′waves in perfect conditions:
uncrowded, offshores, sunny, warm water, dolphins, bikini girls on the
beach – you know the story.
Probably gone tomorrow – so its a case of ‘carpe diem’.
Wish you were here.
Cheers
P

Yeah, well… well we had a really productive work meeting, so there! Grumble.

Postcard from Rincon

This attractive, rather painterly snap was taken by my good mate Paul with his phone while standing at Rincon a few hours ago. Too bad he’s off to Hawaii now because Southern California is just about to light up big time thanks to some very serious winter swell. Mind you, it’s not exactly going to be puny out there!

Postcard from Clovelly

Was over in the eastern suburbs to do an interview for my mag. Got their early and went for a quick snorkle at Clovelly (where I’ve never been before). What a nice setup – even if there’s no chance of a wave.

La Conchita sesh

Hello Friends,
Swell perked a little over on this side of the pond. Got into the chest high range at some spots in northern Ventura county, but the tide was fighting it every step of the way. Water was exceptionally warm for this late in the year. I reckon it was pushing 19 at La Conchita where my pal Tim and I got a few waves on the dropping tide. La Conchita is yet another right point set up. It’s maybe 3 km south of Rincon and features an interesting top of the point take off zone under a long pier that runs out to an artificial island where they drill for oil (California is a major oil producing state still).

Anyway, we were messing about down the point from there. Waves were pretty soft and gutless despite the period getting up above the 10 sec mark. Really woulda been better on a mal than the 7S fishy I was using. Anyway, after we got outta the water, I went up to the top of the point and grabbed a few shots to share.

To round things off California style, my pal Guy and I went into Santa Barbara to the Soho cafe to watch a couple of amazing surf guitar players, Paul and Gil who gig under the name The Duotones. They have a funky little website where you can check out their stuff. They played all the biggies from the surf music era (Pipeline, Walk don’t run, Apache, Sleepwalk, Mr Moto, Baja, Perfidia, etc etc). Brilliant stuff.

Getting a little cover before being crunched in front of the rocks at La Conchita, CA.

One stands up on the inside near where your correspondent was surfin'

You can shoot the pier to get into this section at La Conchita.