The Santa Cruz surf scene in a word- crowded. The first good spot is Pleasure point which is a series of patchy reef breaks that make up a long point. Its sort of like the Pass in Byron but nowhere near as good. Its primarily a longboard wave but the sets are shortboardable IF you can get one. This made it super hard for Danielle to get a wave and even i struggled purely because of the numbers in the water. The best spot is Steamers Lane. Its a right hand reef that picks up the most swell in the bay but has a localism factor of 11. Everyone can surf good and are super aggressive about defending what is in reality only an average wave on world standards. Its no Kirra thats for sure. Nice take off to fat wall. Rippable but don't expect to get tubed or a decent wave for that matter. I averaged 3 waves per session. One day, i jumped off the rocks and waited for a while for a few sets to come through, didn't paddle for anything at all, let everyone around me get a few waves before i even looked at a wave. So a small insider comes through and i start to go for it, some aggro local sees me going for it, so he decides he wants it. I go, he drops in and then proceeds to abuse me. I ride down the line as his mates continue to abuse as i pass them. He then paddles up to me and blows up about waiting my turn and he was going kick his board at me etc, etc, blah, blah. It wouldn't have mattered how long i waited, they weren't going to give me a wave, ever.(Click on the thumbnail to see the wave, listen carefully.) We surfed a freezing cold back beach the next day that wasn't that good but at least no crowd. The long weekend saw even more crew rock in to Santa Cruz as well as a longboard comp that we watched from the cliff. We finished our stay with a night out which we payed for the next day.
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