LEFT, isn’t she lovely? The Queen of the Coast reigns the camera from any angle, even fish-eye ones. This portrait is taken from Rincon Mountain.
BELOW LEFT, an unidentified surfer waits between sets to paddle out in December 2007. The local surfing community claims that month had some of the biggest swells at Rincon in recent history.
BOTTOM, let ’er rip. The Queen bats an eye at the coast, flexes her power, and the boards come a paddling.
afternoon. Steve Johnson, who has ridden Rincon since the 1960s, fought his way past the breaking waves and remembers, “I was just paddling for my life.” He watched as one of Carpinteria’s finest young surfers, Blake Howard, tore across a wave with a solid 18-foot face. By sunset, Johnson says, no one was making it out to the lineup. Rincon’s biggest swell is a matter of debate.
According to Yater, the “biggest surf we ever saw here” hit Rincon during the 1982-1983 El Niño cycle. “It was bigger and totally un-rideable.” Again, only a handful of surfers accessed the pounding waves. Whether or not surfers make the cut during a big swell, the Queen always welcomes their attempt.
40 carPinteriaMaGaZINE
She has held many a surfer underwater too long, tossed them against rocks, snapped their boards in half or sent them through the spin cycle, but her record is clear of fatalities and her allure continues to draw larger and larger crowds. She holds a special spot in many surfers’ lives and regardless of how long they have been surfing, the kid in them still gets excited when word of a swell drifts along. “If it’s one of the those great swells when all the conditions come together, tides, intervals, swell direction, I don’t sleep much,” says Graham. Rincon. “I don’t see how you can say anything is better,” says Yater.¢
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