I didn't have that big southeast swell on my radar and I don't think many others did either. Most of the big wave guys are in Indonesia right now and so I decided to go searching to see what I could find instead of hitting the usual spots. Out front at St Clair we were looking at 8-12 foot sets taking excavator-sized bites out of the dunes. And that was at low-tide.
Further up the Otago Peninsula and some usually reliable spots were churned up into football fields of seething whitewater. The amount of water moving around the coast was insane. It was even wrapping into the north coast, but still had more south in it to focus its energy on the southern beaches.
After a few hours searching I was drawn to a spot on the coast that attracted me with a plume of spray like a geyser going off every second minute. With this size and direction of swell the coast was virtually unrecognisable. Where a playful peak usually plied its trade, a giant diagonal of whitewater told the story of a super-sized left that broke across the mouth of an entire bay. Every few minutes with remarkable consistency. It wasn't paddleable – the arena was so vast that it would be impossible to surf it without a jetski tow. And the end section collected the cliff face, which would make it one of the most dangerous big waves on the peninsula. Without a surfer dropping down the faces it is hard to gauge size, but certainly it was in the realm of some of our 15-20-foot plus Papas' sessions.
A little further south and the swell picked up a reef off the end of a low-lying point, making a slabbing take-off before a wally left rifled off – maybe even a bit fast – even at 10-15 foot. I'm pretty sure there are a group who have ridden these waves, some of the underground bodyboarders and maybe the odd adventurous surfer, but certainly, on this day at least, a bird's eye view was enough for me.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS One of our editorial clients is Australia's pre-eminent surf business magazine, Australian Surf Business. We were asked recently to spend some time with the Hughes family, who are the founders of Raglan Surf Co and Hughes Surfboards. It was a privilege to write their story of how the baton passed from their legendary shaper, artist, visionary father, Craig Hughes. It bought a tear to my eye writing this one ... you can read it right here on Australian Surf Business Magazine. If you want to stay up to date with the latest news and stories from the Australasian surf industry then sign up for their professional edition right here.
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