Santa Barbara

With the hulking Vandenberg Air Force Base to the immediate north and untouched Point Conception coastline to the south, the basic truth is, if you motor all the way out to Jalama and the surf sucks, you're barred. Frequent, heavy NW winds plague the north coast, so it's wise to hit it early or not at all. Early-morning offshores can be freezing. Considerably bigger and much more exposed than the county's relatively tame south coast, Jalama packs a mean punch, summer or winter, so you can expect truckloads of juice out here if the swell's pumping.A primo SW swell area and the northernmost portal for surfing in Santa Barbara County, Jalama Beach County Park has three recognized surf spots: the Beachbreak, Cracks and Tarantulas (or T's for short).The Beachbreak extends from the campground area down to Cracks, which is distinguished by a large indentation in the bluffs. It's all shifty, semi-hollow sandbars, best on a high tide with clean, peaky swells. Cracks holds size, but getting out becomes a problem (or outright impossibility). The currents can be bad, too. Cracks is a good place to go if the swell's too small for Tarantulas. Primarily a left, the rights at Tarantulas can also get quite good, peeling fast for a ways into the boulder-strewn inside. The lefts are perfect for lip-smacking and roundhousing, with a comfy channel for easy paddles and time-outs. The shape is much more consistent than that of the Beachbreak area, so the jog down to T's is usually well worth the effort. The takeoff zone is pretty small, so 10 surfers can make Tarantulas seem overly crowded.

The surf usually isn't the best here, but it does have its epic days and is considerably more consistent than the county's more southerly or easterly beachbreaks. Campus Point requires a pretty big swell to reach its potential, and those kinds of swells usually coincide with foul S winds and overall crummy conditions. Nevertheless, Campus Point is a long wave with several sections, including a zippy inside wall during low tide.

Created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the breakwater finger sticking into picturesque Santa Barbara Harbor works magic with the local sand flow, arranging those precious grains in such a fashion that they transform ordinary lines of swell into insanely hollow rights that can either peel on and on, or dump squarely onto your back, depositing you straight into the oh-so-shallow bottom. Most surfers think that Sandspit only breaks on the biggest of winter swells with that crazy backwash, chocolate water and frightening double-ups, but you'd be surprised at how many days it's surfable.Here's how Sandspit works: a set will approach the breakwater, hit the backwash, jack up right in front of some craggy jetty boulders and spin off down the line. The takeoffs are ridiculously steep and are often outright airdrops, so paddle into them like mad, hop up as soon as you can and look to pull-in from ground zero. When conditions are ideal, the wave is a straight tube, nothing else. No room for carves, reentries or floaters. Visualize Kirra, but on a smaller, colder scale. But it's also a dangerous place to surf. Not only is the bottom extremely shallow and the lips are like jackhammers, surfers have been known to get washed over the breakwater and deposited in fetus position on the other side. Watch that backwash.

Known as the "Queen of the Coast", Rincon is one of the best waves on the planet. A classic California pointbreak, Rincon is actually the product of a rivermouth that has groomed the point over millions of years. If you can luck into a set off the Indicator, race through the section that runs across the Rivermouth, connect it to the Cove and carve to the freeway (a total distance of about 300 yards), you've completed the iditarod of pointbreak surfing. As its location is right off the highway, Rincon is notoriously crowded with more than 150 people out on nearly every good swell. Furthest out the point, the Indicator is where the marathon women and men pull out their longer boards, sit out at the top of the point and try to go the distance. The Rivermouth is an unpredictable, sometimes polluted, sometimes ultra-hollow section that links the Indicator to the Cove. The Cove is the last flawless section that starts halfway up the point and funnels onto the rocks lining Highway 101. The wave usually sections in various areas offering a number of takeoff spots depending on the swell. Many long-period WNW swells are sucked into Pt. Conception, and even though Ventura to the south may be pumping, Rincon will be smaller until the swell period drops below 16 seconds or the swell shifts more from the west-southwest.