October Opener
by Paul Costales

Santa Barbara County surfers got their first taste of fall these past few weeks as October brought the season opener officially upon us. The wave machine that is the North Pacific had been waking up recently, sending us bits and pieces of swells. However, things started to step up on September 30th when a gale formed in the Gulf of Alaska re-energized itself about 1000 miles off the coast of San Francisco. Winds at 40 knots blew for nearly a day pointed towards us creating a medium period west swell that all surfers were immediately made aware of by thousands of surf forecast sites. The swell was forecast to hit on Thursday and into Friday with waves from another gale in the Gulf of Alaska to follow towards the end of the weekend.

The froth factor was high. You knew you would probably see surfers with too much board in the lineup, in the predawn hours, at all of the big name spots on Thursday. On Wednesday October 1st, the buoys close to us were not reading anything. The Harvest Buoy was reading 2 feet at 10 seconds from a very steep NW angle and didn't update from 7am until 8pm. We took a chance and headed down to Campus Point around 2pm for a quick little session on the long board in the trunks. It became a magical session that out-fun-factored the following 5 days that had much bigger waves.

Only two other surfers were out that day. They were learners from the dorms. The air temperature was in the 80's, and the water was still warm enough to wear trunks. The waves were clean and consistent, an assembly line of waist high waves from up top all the way to the sand past the pump house. The warm weather had brought out a horde of dorm students to the beach. No doubt they thought their entire freshmen year would be filled with days at the beach at Campus Point. Unbeknown to them the fine sand would be replaced in a matter of weeks by cobblestones once the waves did their work.

It was surreal, actually surfing Campus Point with decent waves in warm water and weather with people swimming and wadding through the lineup as if it was the middle of summer with no waves to speak of. The quick little get wet session turned into a full-length session worthy of working extra hours in the evening.

The swells early arrival wasn't only startling people in Goleta. Word was Rincon went from non-existent to head high in a matter of hours that afternoon. Many surfers who got it during that short window of no crowds and good waves were calling it opening day at Rincon. Those that hadn't gotten it, and planned to surf Rincon on Thursday when the swell was predicted, were calling Thursday opening day. Whichever day it was, the season is open. Thursday we bypassed the chance to surf with 200 others at Rincon. Instead we hit up Deveraux for family surf that featured the misses, father in law, and brother in law. We set up a bivouac on a little waist high peak in front of the Jailhouse, which was about half the size as the point was, and perhaps 1/3 the size of Sands. Weather was in the high 70's and the water was still warm enough to wear trunks. Glorious.

Friday the swell continued, but with mixed results. The siren call of Rincon finally needed heading, and I attempted a dawn patrol there. It was not to be. A nasty SE wind had come from down channel and giving the "at times" head high waves an ugly 3-second period cross chop. In the surfing world this is known as 'morning sickness' and is the dawn-patroller's worst nightmare. Probably a few hours later the chop would clean up and surfers would be scoring perfect waves at the Queen of the Coast. Not for this surfer.

That swell played itself out, and by Saturday even some of the more exposed spots were pretty flat. Groveling for thigh waves at a local beach break is the M.O. of summer, but after a few days of good waves it doesn't fire one up. The next swell was due on Sunday, and we headed-out for an early morning surf. The new swell wasn't as large as advertised, checking in around waist to chest high in my location. It was still a great session in warm water with clean conditions. All photos in this column from that session, and a few more can be seen over here. It was a fun bunch of days to open up the surf season, and there should be plenty more of them over the coming months.

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