Central California

One of California's best beachbreaks. During the winter, when a W swell is filling the bay and the offshores are howling out of the Salinas Valley, Moss Landing will take your breath away, in more ways than one. Just offshore, hidden under all that water, the Monterey Canyon drops down to a maximum depth of over a mile, and the Canyon has an effect on what happens along the beach. The swell that hits Moss Landing has come out of very, very deep water and hasn't been slowed down by the continental shelf. The result is a very powerful, often frustrating, beachbreak. It can be almost impossible to get out at Moss Landing, and there is always the possibility of getting hammered by a triple-overhead wave.In the winter, Moss Landing is a very serious surf spot -- big, powerful and challenging. The surf mellows the closer you go to the jetty to the south, and it gets gnarlier as you go north, toward the dunes. There also is surf on the other side of the harbor, in front of the Moss Landing Marine Lab and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

One of the prettiest beaches in the world. The sand at Carmel Beach is fine and white and squeaky clean, and sometimes the surf is, too. There are peaks all along this half-mile beach, which change constantly and are best from October to July. The spots are 4th Street, 8th Street and 11th Street. The water is electric blue. Carmel Beach is hit or miss. The kelp and cove protect it from winds, so it can be offshore when everywhere else is blown out. Every now and then, there are serious tubes to be had. It's all just a matter of looking.

A glistening crescent of pure, white sand yawning into a horseshoe cove of shifty sandbars, sheltered from N and S wind and rather user-friendly, Sand Dollar is a delightful pocket for just about anybody, thanks to the gently undulating beach and forgiving whitewater rollers on the inside. The south end of the beach is usually a long, mushy left which dissolves into the channel in the middle of the cove. The rights are speedier, shallower, shorter, bowlier and much more walled. The cove's north end is predominantly a right that also fades into the channel, but it's usually larger and not as shapely as the south peak. The waves here are not as thick and beefy as those found down at Willow Creek.

Cayucos, a quaint seaside hamlet plopped down along Highway 1 between the relative metropolis of Morro Bay and the glistening greens of Harmony (population 18), was rated last year by Men's Journal magazine as one of its 25 favorite "hideouts and secret spots." Cayucos (an Aleutian word for "kayak" or "canoe," pronounced ky-YOO-cuss) was first settled as Cass Landing, after New Englander Captain James Cass stuck down his roots in 1867. He and his bros built the 953-foot-long pier, which has since provided countless days of rideable waves for the community's ever-increasing number of surfers.The Cayucos Pier was first brought to life for the surfing world through a 1982 surf magazine article. While the article explained the overall adversity of the area, the accompanying photographs portrayed the pier's wave to be a crispy, clean, green and predominantly right-hand barrel polished by icy offshores. Newsflash! The photos lie.Cayucos Pier is essentially a hollow closeout, but that's certainly not to say you won't/can't stumble upon some peelers off the pilings. A long-standing affiliate of the Central Coast's exclusive Fickle Spot Club (FSC), the Cayucos Pier is definitely lousy more often than not, but one noteworthy aspect is that the place is sheltered from the prevailing northerly winds, deeming Cayucos a bit warmer than surrounding area.This means, of course, that it's more conducive to tourists and fair-weather surfers, most of whom still wax the bottom of their boards. There are some young rippers, so don't be shocked if you see some kid boosting fat air off the end sections. All said, Cayucos Pier is a decent spot to ride some waves along the Central Coast, but don't go in expecting Huntington Beach or even Pismo.

The northernmost of the volcanic peaks spanning from the city of San Luis Obispo to Morro Bay, 576-foot-tall Morro Rock (also called the Gibraltar of the Pacific) exists in a state preserve for the nesting of the endangered peregrine falcon - so surfing on the rock's north side is the closest you'll ever come to this intriguing monolith. Because the beach faces due west, any and every kind of swell hits the sandbars of Morro Rock, occasionally converting an ordinary California beachbreak into a magical mile or two of feathering A-frames and vomiting tubes. But on a daily basis, this is simply another generic beachbreak with customary closeouts, rip currents and the failure to handle anything over six-feet. The farther up the beach you go, the bigger and beefier the waves become. There's a mushy left off the rock itself, but if you crave power and consistency, you'll scarcely be disappointed with the beach's north end. If the sandbars are formed just right, they'll manage big swells. The problem then becomes making it out.

One of the more consistent and shapely of all Central Coast beachbreaks, the Pismo Beach Pier is the hub of South County surfing. At 1,250 feet long, the pier itself is lit at night, meaning full-moon sessions are a possibility. Cradled in the lee of Point San Luis and San Luis Obispo Bay, the Pier is in a slight northwest swell shadow, so it's usually smaller and less windy than the more exposed sandbars down around Oceano, but bigger than the Avila Beach area to the north.Pismo's south side is usually better than the north. Surfers are liberated to snuff out several miles' worth of white-sand beachbreak guaranteed to be devoid of others, but the pier vicinity is the hotbed. Juicy rights sometimes form off the south side, but it can be more walled. Bigger, solid groundswells are especially shapeless, so it's best to show up during a peaky windswell or a small groundswell in times of light wind and high tide. Since the beach faces southwest, playful summertime swells are desired. The beach slopes gently out from the water's edge, which also means the waves are much softer than, say, Jalama Beach or Morro Rock.