California Waning

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 was not a beach day.
Weather wise it was nice, and there was some fun surf, but there was no beach.

That didn’t stop folks from going. There were plenty of surfers and lookieloos at
every popular beach area. The tide was 6.4 feet at around 10 AM.

Goleta Surfing was one of those Lookieloos.
We started at the Goleta Slough, which looked more like a bay.

The East Goleta Beach parking lot was basically a peninsula, with water on
three sides of it.

The Sunday brunch crowd had one eye on the ocean.

The parking lot was at the mercy of a thin line of boulders.

I hope this guy was catching something good, because a couple of mackerel
ain’t worth this kind of gamble.

The Campus Point stairs made a convenient exit for surfers after a long ride.

In fact, it was the only exit.

And oh, yeah, there were nice waves and perfect conditions. But the water quality was a
little suspect. Some spots just smelled like mud.

This would be the backside of Campus Point.

And up towards Isla Vista, the real estate prices were dropping rapidly.

With every set went a little more valuable beach front property.

You gotta love the guys on the stairs….

The ground was saturated from a substantial amount of rain.
Not a good day to be walking on bluff tops, and most of them were
designated to keep people back.

“Ocean front apartments available with white water views.”

We did manage to get a surf in at Devereux, which handles a hight tide pretty well.
Very fun and the water seemed fairly clean.

Sands was empty. Big, macking closeouts for the most part.
Check out the height of the banks where the creek came out; a lot of sand went out to sea.
Also notice the old oil pier debris in the break zone.