Last Few Months - part 2

The day after I had returned from my 10 000km roadtrip to WA, the forecast for Sandy Point was promising with a 20-30 knot Easterly and 2-3ft of swell.


Sandy Point is primarily known as a speedsailing destination but it actually can offer seriously good wavesailing conditions. When the elements of tide, wind and a solid ground swell combine it can be be as good as anywhere I have sailed. It is a sectiony beach break presenting opportunity for mutiple smacks and aerials. A perfect training ground for learning new moves with no need to worry about consequence.


Seeing the forecast it was no surprise that most of the top guys in the Victorian crew had rocked up. It was good to see everyone going for decent aerials and smacks and few guys were practising gu screws and goiters. The atmosphere matched the conditions - it was fun!


My Dad was filming from the beach for the whole session, I wanted to try and get enough footage to finish the video I had been working on since WA. Unfortunately during the session I tweaked a past injury practising goiters. This cut my session short and by the time I had got home I could barely walk without a sharp pain shooting up my back. This had ruined the plan to finish the video so I made a decision to head back to Tasmania on the first decent forecast and hopefully score the last solid conditions of summer.

The first day in Tassie presented with 30 knots cross offshore and half mast high waves. Pretty good conditions! But my injury stopped me from sailing within half an hour. Devastated, I missed out on three more days of pumping wind and waves while I sat around the house barely able to walk. After a week of no wind but pumping surf (perfect for the O'Neill Cold Water Classic), the forecast shaped up for an epic day at Bluff Beach over Easter.
Bluff pumping

Bluff is a raw and powerful beach break, on a solid swell the wave breaks off a rocky point peeling into the bay before reforming on the inside sand banks. When the swell is over 5ft this part of the wave packs a serious punch. The lip really projects over the shallow bottom, you can punt huge aerials here if your timing is good. If not you will be smashed into the sand and probably end up picking up your broken pieces before a demoralising walk back up the beach.
Bluff pumping

When the day arrived I was stoked. Bluff was the best I had ever seen it. With a 15 second groundswell peaking at 5.5m coupled with a strong Southerly blowing cross offshore, the waves were big, glassy and powerful. Watching the Beach pumping and the nearby Bluff Reef explode from the sand dunes was an awesome sight. Unfortunately for me my back injury was still pretty bad but there was no way I was missing out on the conditions in front of me. When Bluff gets like this it is a world class windsurfing wave, so I downed some pain killers and hit the water!
Bluff Reef

It was an awesome session cut much to short by my injury. After catching a few waves and a few massive swims I had to call it a day... The forecast looked like there would be a few more days of wind but barely any swell. I just hoped it would deliver so I could finish my video to the standard I had wanted. Unfortunately the swell and wind virtually disappeared over the next two days leaving me to dog around in 5-10 knots and tiny swell at Nettley Bay to try and finish the video. Reluctantly I had no choice to finish it off with no more solid conditions on the horizon before leaving to Maui a week later.
Check out the final product here...