List Kicks Sand at County’s Beaches

As regularly as the grunion run and the waves bite off chunks of Ventura’s bike path, Stephen Leatherman appears on national TV to unveil his rankings of the nation’s best beaches.

Just as regularly, he overlooks the beaches along Ventura County’s unsung 42-mile coast.

Our beaches are ho-hum, middling, perhaps mildly amusing, not-bad-for-government-work beaches, Leatherman’s silence seems to say. If beaches were bread, ours might be Wonder; if they were wine, ours would come in a box.

This year, Leatherman, a professor of coastal geology at Florida International University, has gone a step further and rubbed saltwater in our wounds. Just beyond the county line, Carpinteria State Beach has cracked Leatherman’s Top 20. Every time we drive up the coast, we’ll be reminded of our inadequacy. Without medication, we might not even reach Santa (“Pretty Is as Pretty Does”) Barbara.

Leatherman feels our pain but says it can’t be helped.

“One of the things that’s a problem with my survey is that it’s heavily weighted toward swimming beaches,” he told me. “Your beaches in California tend to be a bit nippy by East Coast standards. And you’ve got rip currents and rough surf; places like Surfers Point might be great for surfers, but not so great for swimmers.”

Swimmers!

I’ve been to the beach on three continents, and the swimmers I’ve seen have been either whippet-thin triathletes or things with tentacles. The rest of us are standers; we stand there, we let the crabs nibble our toes, we get knocked down by big waves and then we go back to our blankets, shaking off water and seaweed like the happy animals we really are.

There are variations, of course. When the waves roll in, 7-year-old girls are genetically wired to stand in knee-deep water, link hands and scream their heads off. Reaching adolescence, they stand in knee-deep water, cross their arms, roll their eyes, and go, like: “What. Ever.”

For the most part, people at the beach just sit. By my observations, most beachgoers are moist for less than two minutes per hour. The rest of the time, they read magazines or stare off into the blue. Or, if they grew up in families like mine, they calculate the minutes since their last meal to figure out just how soon after entering the water they’ll be killed by a severe cramp.

But I’m not the nationally recognized beach authority here.

Leatherman has a doctorate in coastal science, heads Florida International’s Laboratory for Coastal Research and has written extensively on beach erosion for scholarly periodicals like “Shore and Beach” and the “Journal of Sedimentary Petrology.” His beach rankings have been touted since 1991 by the likes of Oprah Winfrey, and his book, “America’s Best Beaches,” is slowly dog-paddling to a bookstore near you.

So what are the best beaches?

With 50 criteria, Leatherman evaluates factors as diverse as wind speed, sand hue and the amount of floating scum. The bottom line is that many of the Top 20 offer white sands, nearby hotels, crystal-clear water, warm breezes and plenty of vowels: Hawaii’s Wailea is at the top, with Kaunaoa, Hanalei, Kaanapali and Hamoa not far behind. Leatherman said he was impressed with Carpinteria’s safety, which earned it the Top 20’s bottom slot.

“But I’m so impressed with the spectacular scenery at California’s beaches, the topography that jumps right out at you,” Leatherman said. “And Southern California has a Mediterranean climate shared by just 1% of the world. That’s pretty special . . . “

Such conciliatory words don’t quell the wrath of a tourist agency scorned.

Leatherman’s job is no amble on the Strand. After the release of the rankings he has compiled annually since 1991, Leatherman fields pleading calls from chambers of commerce within a gull’s flight of any coast. Why not us? they plaintively ask. Is our water not wet? Do our corn dogs not satisfy?

“I think he doesn’t realize what California has to offer,” said Oxnard tourism director Carol Lavender, who vowed to invite Leatherman over for a few days to test the waters. “We have beaches we can swim from with very, very comfortable wetsuits.”

Leatherman said he might be through here next year on a family vacation.

He and his wife take the kids to the beach--a lot. In fact, they named their 8-year-old daughter Sandy. And 7-year-old Stephen’s middle name is--yes--Beach.

“I told my wife he’d get a kick out of it one day,” Leatherman said.

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com.