The water temperatures have plummeted with these relentless south swells – seemingly in sync with the air temps – how was that frost this morning? Good news for the ski fields (time to start planning those ski trips), but quite a bite for anyone keen on a wave. We're officially in ice cream headache territory, which has one very positive element – it has obliterated the crowds. The punchy 3-6 foot of long-period swell may have something to do with it as well. Even on a smaller 3-4 foot day I was surprised by the walloping I got by some of the waves that didn't even look particularly nasty. Certainly had a few moments as I got thrashed around by all that energy.
The days are a bit too pinchy right now – with sunset at 4:59pm and sunrise at 8:20am that's just 8 hours and 39 minutes of surf window here in the deep south. But we've just gone past the winter solstice so it can only get better from here. We even saw a few after work surfers squeezing in an hour's surf yesterday in the clean, calm but still quite challenging swell conditions. They're those surfs where one or two waves is about all you might get ... but they'd be worth it. They always are.
On the horizon is a rapid fire series of even more swell with a few north coast days scattered in between the southerly bombs. It's gritty stuff from here on in until spring, but if you're into the adventure of it all, you'll also have some pretty memorable moments. This is the depths of winter. Embrace it.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS We had a heap of feedback about our Weddell seal story from last week. Sorry if it made you cry. The good news is our visitor swam away by Wednesday morning and hopefully headed south – back to where he belongs in Antarctica. In learning about the Weddell seal I managed to contact scientist Colin Miskelly who is the vertebrates curator at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He researched and wrote a paper about vagrant Antarctic seal species that was published in 2015. It showed that there had been five visits by Weddell seals to New Zealand shores recorded between 1926 and 2007. Since his paper published there have been two other reports, making our visitor the eighth to be recorded here. That's pretty special. Interestingly, they usually visit around the June-August months. With three visits recorded since 2017 there is a chance we could be seeing a rise in visitations. Let's hope we give them a better experience next time.
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