“The Adventures of a Ranch Addict,” by Ron Stoner, ran in the November 1968 issue of SURFER. This version has been slightly edited.

This is a story about one of those places that always looks better on the other side of the hill. I’ve been there, and believe me, it is. After one trip and seeing those perfect waves, I was hooked. I couldn’t stay away. I only wish my trips had been as flawless as the surf.

It all started one evening when Bill Fury, Mark Hammond, Jeff Kruthers, and Bill Andrews came over and we were sitting around talking about the Ranch. Things are pretty tight up there, and the only way to get in is to either walk or go by boat. And since Andrews had a boat, it seemed logical that we should go in and sample some of those perfect waves. In fact, the more we talked, the more logical it seemed that we should sample some of those waves the next morning. We were in Dana Point, so we had to drive to La Jolla to get Bill’s boat, and then headed on up to Santa Barbara where we stopped at an all-night deli and bought enough food and junk to last us a week.

We pulled the boat up to Gaviota Pier and launched it. The boat was pretty old, a real narrow fifteen-footer with a low back—and with five of us and five surfboards and all of our supplies, it was only floating about two inches above the water. But we were stoked, so we started motoring up the coast, and it took about two hours to make it to Cojo. The weather was great, and the place looked fantastic from the water, even though there wasn’t any surf. By the time we got to Cojo it was getting windy— offshore and cold. We beached the boat and sat around eating a lot of food until about two o’clock in the afternoon. By this time the wind had blown up a few one-footers, and Mark Hammond and myself went out and tried to surf them. But the offshores were so strong you couldn’t stay in the waves. We figured we should head back.

On the way up it had been calm, and we found trails through the kelp; but now the wind was so strong the whole ocean started whitecapping except where the thick kelp beds kept it smooth. It was either the whitecaps or the kelp beds, so Bill just cranked up his old rusty twenty-horsepower job and tried to carve a trail right through the middle of all that kelp. After a few minutes, we looked back and the motor was on fire. And then it just konked out. We scooped up a lot of saltwater and put the fire ou, but when we took the cowling off the motor was all black and seized up from the heat, and things looked pretty hopeless. The wind was blowing even harder, and we were drifting outside, so we reached overboard and grabbed armfuls of kelp and tied our boat up. Our first mistake was tying it up stern first. And with this real low back to it, the water started splashing in faster than we could bail it out. The wind kept getting stronger and stronger, and the boat was filling up with water. About every half hour or so we’d break loose from the kelp and we’d have to tie up again. Finally, we were about a mile outside, right on the edge of the kelp, and from then on it was just open sea and the sun was starting to go down. Once, when a train was going by, Mark Hammond tied a red towel to an oar and waved it, but it was getting too late in the afternoon for anyone to see us. I look down at all the camera equipment in the bottom of the boat, now covered with water. But by this time, I was starting to worry about more than just the camera equipment.

We were bailing water with Dixie cups and losing ground fast. The water was now up to our waist, and the wind was still getting stronger, so we put wetsuits on over our clothes. We figured the wind was probably fifty to seventy-five miles per hour, and all of a sudden it seemed to get a little stronger and the boat kind of jerked, and just went out from underneath us. As it sank, we grabbed our boards and started paddling into the wind. When I stopped to look over my shoulder and thought of hundreds of dollars worth of camera equipment going to the bottom, I lost about ten yards headway, and I figured it was all over and we were doomed. But I just kept on paddling and paddling, and about a half-hour later I could feel sand in the wind and I knew we were getting close.

Finally, we all made it to shore. About a half-hour later, as we huddled freezing in a gulley, a helicopter landed to rescue us. The pilot said the winds were hurricane force, about eighty miles an hour, and the train that went by earlier in the afternoon had reported us in trouble. The chopper flew Kruthers, Andrews, and myself down to Gaviota, and a rescue boat found our swamped boat and towed it back to the Gaviota Pier. From there I drove up and asked the Ranch guard if he would let us drive in and get our friends who were stranded on the beach between Cojo and San Augustine. He said okay, and I parked at San Augustine and then ran up the beach to find Fury and Hammond. It was like trying to run with steel shoes into the wind. We finally found them, drove back and got the boat out of the water. By the time we hit Santa Barbara, we were completely exhausted. Jeff had a friend there, so we just crashed on his floor. The next day we drove home.

After that, I didn't think I’d ever go back to the Ranch. Then one day Corky Carroll and I drove up to Santa Barbara and stayed at Kruthers’ house. We thought that maybe if we drove in around three in the morning and snuck past the guard, we could get some of those waves. And we did. We slept up on the cliff at San Augustine, woke up the next morning, and the surf was really good. We surfed Rights and Lefts all day, waited for the sun to go down, then snuck out again without any problem.

After that, I figured I could handle the Ranch. I waited for a good north swell, then lined up Skip Frye, Mike Hynson, Chris Beechum (from Australia), Ken Joesting and Denny Tompkins. We surfed Rincon about eight feet that day, and everyone just knew the next day was going to be even better. At three in the morning, we snuck past the guard and spent the night at San Augustine, just like I'd done earlier with Corky. Five of us sleeping in that little car. We didn't know what the surf was going to be like, but when we woke up in the morning, it was giant. The whole ocean was full of lines. It was glassy with just a touch of offshore wind. The tide was high, but we managed to drive up the beach to Cojo, and when we got there, it was some of the best surf I’d ever seen in my whole life. Perfect waves. There wasn’t another person on the Ranch. The light was good, the surf was good, and I had some of the best surfers. A surf photographer couldn’t ask for anything more. I got a shot of Skip Frye paddling out that morning with a wave in the background, and this has always been one of my favorites. It really says “the Ranch.”

We surfed all morning. When the tide started to go out, we drove down to Lefts and Rights. It was unbelievable. The surf was getting even better. Hynson and Frye were riding full guns that they had made to take to Hawaii the following week. The waves were so fast at Lefts and Rights that day that they were in full trim on their guns and still having trouble making the waves. Later, it was getting glassier and even hotter, so we drove down to surf San Augustine. This was the glassiest surf I’d ever seen. Perfect lines breaking top to bottom. We surfed till sundown and then snuck back out, again with no problems.

The next trip I planned to the Ranch, Rick Griffin wanted to go along, so we decided we’d kind of have a Griffin-Stoner adventure and really get some great waves. We knew the guard was locking the gates all night, so Rick came up with a genius plan of making stationery that looked like it was printed with the name of one of the Ranch suppliers. Then we typed a letter that said "Please let Ron Stoner, Rick Griffin and guests surf the Ranch" on such-and-such a day. We didn’t know whose name to sign, so we just put I M Sure, and elected him vice president. We didn’t really think the letter would work, but it looked kind of good, so we decided to give it a try.

When I handed the note to Joe, the Ranch guard, he just looked it over, and I knew he was going to kick us out right then. But he looked at us and said, “Oh yeah, I know Mr. Sure. Go on in fellas, and have a good time.” That really blew our minds. We got about twenty feet up the road before we all cracked up, and we didn’t stop laughing until we got to San Augustine. We figured we really pulled the wool over his eyes.

Since we arrived just before sundown, we had time for a few waves and then built a campfire on the beach. The surf was good, and we were really ready. As I was about to turn in, I saw lights coming up the beach. We couldn’t figure out who would be driving in because it was high tide and you can’t drive on the beach at high tide unless you’ve got a jeep.

It was a jeep all right—the sheriff’s jeep. The sheriff of Santa Barbara County was there with two deputies, and he ambled over real casual like and asked for Mr. Stoner and Mr. Griffin. My heart sank. He had charges against us for trespassing and forgery and told us to gather up our stuff and follow him to jail. We told him we couldn’t drive out because of the high tide, so he said if we weren’t in the county jail by 6:30 the next morning, he was going to take out warrants for our arrest. They finally left, and we didn’t sleep too well that night.

The next morning we got up and the surf was really good. We drove past San Augustine and it was like a pool of mercury it was so glassy. Then, as we drove past Joe the guard, we kind of smiled. Somebody was really looking after us, though, as we didn’t get in too much trouble over that trip. There was some sort of legal hangup because the guard let us through the gate with a fictitious name on the letter. But I wasn’t going to try that again. I figured now the only way to surf the Ranch was to use a boat.

Right after I got my new boat, I asked Billy Hamilton, Juan Shelton, and Jeff Kruthers to go up to the Ranch with me. Everything worked perfectly. We went up and surfed Government Point all day, motored back—no problems. Before I went up the next time, this boat dealer told me I was foolish to try to launch my boat with this old cotton rope I had, and I should buy the super-strength nylon rope that was guaranteed not to break. So I bought it, and Bob Stay and another guy drove up with me one night. We had all the camping gear, sleeping bags, food, enough to spend three or four days. The surf was going to be fantastic. And I had my new heavy-duty, super-strength nylon rope to launch my boat with. But as we were launching from Gaviota Pier, the rope snapped, the boat fell into the water and wrecked the motor, and everything in the boat sank. We spent all morning getting the boat back out of the water.

I drove home and bought a new motor, and this time I wasn’t taking any chances. I bought a chain to launch with. The next launching went perfectly, but we had hardly started for the Ranch when the motor caught fire, so we had to turn around and come back. The motor was shot.

I bought another new motor. The next trip was going to be flawless. Nothing could go wrong. I lined up Phil Edwards to go with me and we waited for really good surf. Finally, it was about a ten-foot swell, hot and glassy, and we planned to spend a couple of days up there. We drove all afternoon and surfed Rincon before dark. But when we showed up at Gaviota Pier the next morning, it was closed for repairs and the shorebreak was too big to launch through. We turned around and drove home.

The next trip was going to be perfect. The pier was open, I had a chain to launch the boat with, a new motor—there just couldn’t be any hangups this time. I lined up Denny Tompkins, Jock Sutherland, and Mark Hammond, and we launched the boat and headed for beautiful weather and good surf. Our first stop was Rights and Lefts, and we never left. We surfed unbelievable four-to-six-foot waves all day. We watched the sunset by campfire.

The next day Jeff Kruthers and some friends of his came up in a car, so we left my boat at Rights and Lefts and drove up with Jeff to Government Point. It wasn’t good but Perko’s was really great, so we surfed there all day and took more pictures. It had been two days now, and we were having the best times of our lives. But when we got back to Rights and Lefts that evening, one of the Ranch members had poured the gasoline out of my boat, so I couldn’t get it out of there. I hopped a ride with a friend and asked the guard if he would let me drive in and tow my boat out of there. He said no; I had to walk the gas in, which meant walking about seventy-five pounds of gas ten miles after surfing all day.

I still had this crazy idea of having a perfect trip to the Ranch without any problems. This time I asked Denny Tompkins to go up with me. We waited for another good surf, got all the supplies, and drove up there one evening. We got up early the next morning, and went to launch the boat at the Gaviota Pier. It was a beautiful sunny day. The surf was up, I had a new motor, a chain hoist, the pier was open—nothing could go wrong.

I pushed the button and lifted the boat up off the trailer and swung it out over the water. Then I pushed the down button, and the hoist collapsed. The boat fell on top of Denny’s surfboard and crushed it. It cracked up my boat, wrecked the motor, and we spent the whole day getting the boat out of the water and back on the trailer.

After that I sold my boat and went to Maui.

“THE ADVENTURES OF A RANCH ADDICT,” BY RON STONER (1968)

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