“We are all the idiots,” my friend writes in a text. “We just don’t know it until our luck runs out.”
There’s a sound the big waves make. Sometimes it seems like something we feel as much as we hear.
If you live in Hawaii or an exposed coastline, you hear it so often, it must become so much aural wallpaper.
But here in Santa Barbara tucked under the curve of Point Conception, it’s more of a rarity to hear that deep pounding of waves slamming into sand or the sharp crack of a reef exploding.
Big is relative, of course.
And here, the big swells are often more interesting for the unique places they light up than for the sheer size of the waves.
But this time, the forecasts look completely unhinged. We watch as an outer buoy hits 41 feet, the biggest we’ve ever seen it. Something wicked this way comes.
Thursday, I ride out around lunchtime to have a look around.
The Sprinter vans are few and far between. Instead an armada of pickup trucks, shells over the bed, two guys in the cab, swarm the nearby streets.
Out on the pier, the parking lot is full. I overhear a guy on the phone through an open window.
“We’ve been driving around all day like idiots looking for a place to surf. We’re in Santa Barbara now.”
Like everyone else on the pier, they’re watching the spot with the breakwater and the flags, the one that’s in every video. Like everyone else, they’ve seen the forecasts and felt the hype. They’re dreaming of perfect barrels.
They’ve come to the wrong place.
Disordered swell funnels into the harbor and brushes the pier. I watch as a surfer drops into a peak at the harbor mouth near the green buoy that marks the starboard side of the channel. It doesn’t barrel. Instead, he wrangles the open face, scarred by the storm’s violence and twisted by the winds.
The biggest sets pass by the harbor altogether and continue down the coast. I remember a long-timer once told me a story about catching a wave on the east side of the pier and riding it a mile or so down the coast. It sounded improbable at the time, the kind of trick memory might play on a man.
Now I can see how that ride might have been possible.
I cruise down the beach and pass through a parking lot littered with sand and kelp, the sure signs of a high tide and a big swell. Normally, there aren’t really even waves on this part of the beach. I look out to overhead sets, brown with churned up sand. Even from the beach, I can see how the long period swell is moving water deep beneath the surface.
It’s anything but playful.
A pair of guys walk down the beach carrying Wavestorms under their arms.
I laugh.
Where there’s a wave, there’s a Wavestorm.
They look excited and optimistic. The Harvest buoy off Point Conception reads 23.3ft, 18 seconds, 283 degrees. The ocean laughs at your optimism.
“We are all the idiots,” my friend writes in a text. “We just don’t know it until our luck runs out.”
Late afternoon, I ride out into the golden light of California in winter. The low tide has done nothing to slow the swell. In fact, it’s bigger now and the angle has shifted more to the west: 25.9ft, 18 seconds, 276 degrees.
I join the crowd on the breakwater.
A surfer pulls into a barrel, easily double-overhead. It slams shut. It’s a brief moment of glory with a tumultuous ending. Another gets rocketed over the falls.
Out on the horizon I can see the waves feather on a reef I didn’t know was there. The light catches the spray, fragile and ethereal, as the wind blows it to the sky. Closer to shore, the waves slam into the sand, dark and heavy.
Across the way, emergency vehicles gather on the cliff, lights flashing. A red search-and-rescue helicopter hovers overhead as a pair of jetskis trace ever-widening circles. A surfer is missing. I think about the Wavestorms from earlier in the day. I think about how we’re all the idiots when our luck runs out.
A crew of local groms gather on the sand to paddle out. A few ride old boards they clearly expect to break. They make it during a lull and the current easily pushes them down the length of the breakwater. The biggest waves are out in front of the yacht club, rather than in the usual spot. The long period swell behaves in surprising ways.
Two friends compare notes.
Did you check anywhere else? They list off the spots between here and Ventura. Too big. Yah, that was too big, too. One is holding a narrow gun-shape, roughly 7’0.” He understood the assignment.
Not everyone did.
I see a keel-fin fish with a beautiful gloss coat. No leash. Perfect for a clean day at Rincon, the board looks spectacularly out of place here. A finless 88 walks by, followed by a round-nose midlength. Idly, I wonder how that worked out for them. Probably not super well.
I run into a long-time local. Get any good ones, he asks. Oh sure, I say. I rode one all the way from here to Casino. We watch as someone gets smashed in a close-out. Looks fun, he says, rolling his eyes. More friends, more laughter. It’s a small town, and everyone is here.
A well-known surf photographer saunters by with a camera casually in tow. He stops to chat with a friend who packed a massive closeout earlier in the afternoon. It was like a house fell in on you, the photographer says. His friend is the kind of guy who can take whatever the ocean hands to him and go back for more. He has the instincts that only come with years in the water, and later he scores a good one.
The sun sinks lower.
Falling below the palm trees, a perfect circle, it spins a dream of California. There it is, the image screened on endless t-shirts and postcards. Having a wonderful time, wish you were here.
A nearby radio crackles.
One of the boat owners from the harbor has his radio tuned to the emergency comms channel.
“Surfer found.”
It’s the first time he’s heard that message, he says.
On the cliff, the lights continue to flash.
You can travel the world and see big, beautiful swell just about any time you like, it’s true. The internet makes it all so easy now.
But, there’s still something magical about seeing your local, everyday ocean shapeshift into something entirely unexpected. What a surprise to see deep, cavernous barrels in a place that rarely has swell at all.
Someone slides into a barrel, and miraculously makes it out. The crowd erupts in cheers.
At every wipeout — and there are so, so many — comes a chorus of groans. The crowd on the breakwater is fully engaged.
Beers crack open.
Did you see that?
Holy shit.
One more set! Let’s see just one more set.
All the forecast hype and the nerves, all the fears of missing out and the driving around, it’s easy to get carried away by those things and forget the whole point of it all.
Standing on the breakwater, laughing with friends, watching the swell march through, hooting the good rides, it feels like there’s no better place to be.
The ocean has a way of reminding us what’s real.
