I was on the Gold Coast when I got the call – a dark lump of swell energy was drifting towards Stewart Island from deep in the Southern Ocean and the winds were forecast to be about as good as it gets. If the forecasts were to be believed, then it would be a short intense punch of energy making landfall on a remote reefbreak about an hour before first light. From there it would drop off sharply with just a few scraps of swell left by midday.
In the Southern Ocean near Stewart Island the swell pushed a wave to the 23.8m mark on a buoy – a new record. That was about the same time my plane landed in Dunedin – at midnight. A few hours sleep and I was on my way to the reef with the usual dose of fear and anxiety invoked by what might greet us.
For Brad Roberts, the drive to the reef was hampered when he came around a corner in the dark and collected a roaming deer with his car. It almost wrote off the front left of his vehicle and the poor animal somehow survived the impact, but was in bad shape. He put it out of its misery, loaded it on his ski and headed for a dawn reunion with the crew.
First light revealed a very big swell that was about as clean as it gets. But nobody was racing out there. The mood was casual as a couple of surfers hung the deer up, gutted it and wrapped it for keeping before venturing out into the ocean.
The route out is never an easy one here, but eventually we get there with Dave Wild driving his ski for me. Davy Wooffinden and Nick Smart are already chasing the peak as the channel fills with jet skis. Leroy Rust and Joe van der Geest have their paddle boards ready in the hope they might be able to stroke into a giant. The swell doesn't appear to be as big as we'd hoped when Brad Roberts lets go of the rope and into the first real bomb of the day. He survives the wide-swinging bowl and emerges with the biggest grin you have ever seen.
The arena is suddenly a little larger than we expected and the chances of paddling into one safely is looking less likely. Every 20 minutes a big set pours through and on the next one is Jamie Civil who is on debut at the reef. He draws a great line on a wave face that has an incomprehensible scale. It eventually catches up with him and runs him down at full speed. A full rinse for the birthday boy.
Joe van der Geest, also on debut here, is next and he fades longer than he should on the biggest one yet. It looks perfect, but the impossible scale leaves him in direct impact and the type of initiation that most hope to avoid out here. He comes up gasping, but stoked.
The session is short but a lot of waves are ridden and some terrifying moments when it all goes wrong. Again the scale of these walls and the top-to-bottom peak dwarfs the survivability odds, but these aren't ordinary people. They're fit, strong and have enough mongrel to take the beatings. They've trained for them – that is a pre-requisite here. But still, it seems impossible with some of the hold downs they're enduring. The safety net is a fleet of jet-skis and eyeballs scanning the boiling whitewater for bodies and on this day, in this sunshine, that's a great asset.
By midday we put our feet on the shoreline and breathe a collective sigh of relief that we all made it back. The sun is shining, Leroy is handing out lumps of freshly butchered venison and the circle of life seems to be complete. We're all 10 feet tall.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS We have our latest exhibition Pro-Creation: New Photographic Works – a collaboration with me, Alan Dove, Graham Warman and Clive Copeman, on at the Dunedin Community Gallery at 20 Princes St from Thursday May 17 until Wednesday May 23. Come and check it out.
Proudly supported by:
