Box of Light is made possible thanks to these visionaries:
It often blows me away just how lucky we are to be surfers living here in Otago. We get such good swells and loads of favourable winds most of the time.
This past weekend was a classic for us. We'd chased a north swell around the coastline and found the waves either too raw or too big for the grommets at most of the main point breaks. The last roll of the dice for us was Karitane, but a devil wind had arrived before us and turned the swell into a crumbly fiasco.
We were chasing another spot when we noticed the north swell turning Back Beach into something resembling a reverse Porpoise Bay. One foot in the corner, three-foot rights out front and the odd four-footer way down the beach. We looked at it for a few minutes before we realised it was on – it even had a barreling right on the inside. The wind, onshore at the bar, was directly offshore here.
We surfed for about three hours completely lapping up the waves on offer. The sun was out, the mercury was hovering in the mid 20s and families played on the beach.
Then came the switch. Right on 5pm as forecast, a line of whitecaps surged in toward us until they rendered the beach onshore, hid the sun, dropped the temperatures and sent beachgoers scurrying for cover.
The smiles on the surfers' faces was priceless as they ran up the beach and five-minutes down the road to the bar that they knew was turning on with every degree of angle change in the wind.
For the next two hours we feasted on an unusually grunty high tide session at Karitane with very few out. I'd like to say we planned it that way, but it was complete happenstance.
We drove home with nearly six hours of surfing under our belts and a kind of contentment that can last for weeks.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Our gallery is back up and running on a "by appointment basis" or you can browse our gallery online from the comfort of your home. We'd also highly recommend the coffee subscriptions from our friends at Strictly Coffee. Coffee beans delivered right to your door ... so good.
Box of Light is made possible thanks to these visionaries: