February 14th 2023: V Day

Happy Valentine's Day to all the other ocean lovers out there. May you find some time for you and the sea this week.

Here in the south we've had a pretty amazing week of small, fun waves and nice offshore winds. The water is still hovering around that 16°C mark, down from the balmy 18°C of last week, but pleasant and certainly still feels like summer. We even had the Royal New Zealand Air Force's aerobatics team do a fly by over St Kilda on Saturday. I tried to line up a surfer in a barrel with the talented pilots overhead but it just didn't quite work out.

While the rest of the country has been battening down the hatches in anticipation of Cyclone Gabrielle (stay safe everyone in the North Island), we've been spared any of her effects so far. But we are in for a huge north east and then east swell in the coming days and that has surfers around Otago wondering where the best spots will be. We haven't seen a swell like this in my time living here and some say more than 30 years. If the forecast holds true then we could be in for a spectacular swell event.

Already footage is trickling in of surfers heading out to novelty waves around Auckland and Mount Maunganui. These are waves that seldom get the right conditions to break and often need a huge swell to reach inner harbour locations and beaches. We have a heap of them in Otago, too. The big question will be whether you chase a novelty wave or head for some of our renowned big wave spots. Either way play it safe out there and look after each other.

See you at the beach ... Derek

PS This edition of Box of Light is number 600. It's hard to believe we've been doing this now for 12 years, every Tuesday at 10:30am. Grab a coffee and enjoy this week's images ...