Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Virgin waves on the Great Barrier Reef

I have been in Cairns, North Queensland for the past week. The first few days I was here we spent most of the time out on Green Island which is a pretty awesome spot for general freeriding, freestyle and speedsailing. On one day there was some swell around which was enough for a little bit of jumping on some bombies out wide of the island but after that it was mostly flat water.

crusing off green island


For the last two days the wind had dropped down so we decided to go and check out some outer reefs about 50km offshore. I have been keen to do go exploring for some waves spots out here for over a year so had marked out a few locations that would have cross - cross off winds in the normal trade winds. We headed out with our windsurfing, surf and fishing gear for a recon mission.



The first day the weather was not great, with lots of cloud and gusty light wind. However it was cross off and there were waves! Pretty small, only around head high but I was not expecting much more as there is no real groundswell up here. The wind generates the swell so if it is light, it seemed logical the waves would be small. The potential was clear though, the wave is very fast with multiple sections so positioning was absolutely crucial - something that is difficult when it was so light. The wave breaks onto shallow reef between 2-3ft in depth and as there is no channel you have to work your way back over white water after most rides.



The next day we went out there was a bit more swell, mostly head high with occasional half mast high sets. With this increase in size the waves also got heavier with a few sections double sucking before the lip would throw in the space of a split second. One wave I was on bottomed out ridiculously fast and did a pretty good teahupoo impression! Even though it was only head high the lip projected forward as far as the wave was high and looked like it was nearly 2ft thick!



As before the wind was light again, mostly only 10-12 knots with slightly higher gusts so it was hard to position yourself to make most of the wave. At one point I got eaten by a very unanticipated wave that jacked up to nearly logo high and washed my gear all the way into the lagoon resulting in a large swim. I was pretty suprised by a wave that size generated by so little wind so it is probably going off out there today with 25knots cross off right now! Goes to show the potential of this place so hopefully I will score it with more wind and bigger swell in the next two weeks.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Winter is lame

So after being home for nearly a month there has been 4 times where promising conditions have developed. None have really delivered.

Yesterday was one of the best forecasts you are likely to see for this time of year - essentially it was 35-45 knots cross off swinging cross shore during the day. With those conditions on the cards I was expecting some crazy out of control waveriding session before some epic jumping. On a forecast like that you would expect at least 25 knots right??
Wrong.

Joel and I spent the day driving about 400km to score some epic 10 knot crosshore mush down at Sandy Point. To top it off it was absolutely freezing and started pissing down rain. We ended up flooring it back to the bay to try and get at least some kind of a sail - which we did - but it was still crap. Super underpowered and onshore it ended up with a 2km walk back upwind in the dark... It is amazing how a forecast like yesterdays can be so far off the mark.

Last week was a similar story - driving all the way to Torquay expecting a 30 knot front to hit ended with a frustratingly light session at Point Impossible spending most of the time balls deep in water. Apart from that there has been decent surf on a few days but again - even though this photo looks pretty sick. It really wasn't that good with 9/10 waves closing out.



So in conclusion: Victoria sucks pretty hard and I can't wait to get out of this cold and go on my next trip in a week or so to an unexplored wavesailing destination that I think has a lot of potential. More on that in a few days though...


Disclaimer: even though these photos look half decent they are the highlights of the last few weeks. Each photo has been taken from a different session usually in a freak gust above 15 knots where it is strong enough to actually do something. A lot of time and money has been spent to getting these three photos so when you put it into perspective they really aren't that great...