Wind, waves and kaaaaak weather

Luke Bakker shot by dad, cranking through a JBay bottom turn on Wednesday

Easter delivered for a change. Good surf pulled through west of PE - with plenty of frothing PE transplants and even more blow-in's vying for the waves. Seals was pretty chaotic at times. Even St Francis suffered from the mayhem, with crowds of up to 35 ou's at Huletts, including 7 Spawns of Satan (otherwise known as SUP's!) 

Saw 3 of them ride into each other and get properly tangled, and take out a coupla ou's around them at the same time. These things are flipping dangerous and really shouldn't be ridden in amongst other surfers. Thankfully most of em were out of towners so will thankfully strap there over-sized floating supertankers back on their roof-racks and bugger off back to wherever they came from.

Still plenty ou's on holiday/leave this week - and they've been rewarded with some craaaaaanking waves at JBay. Tuesday and Wednesday were the berries. Big Dave paddled out with his even bigger board (all 10ft 3 inches) and managed to make the backline. Bloody good achievement considering there's no ways to duckdive that thing and you're facing 8ft lines of whitewater before you make it out. He got dragged proper a few times, washed back onto the rocks, but through sheer persistence made it out. Respect to the baalie. 

The wind made performance surfing a bit challenging, more like hang on, ride the chops, and just scream down the line. Still, makes for a good adrenalin rush. One of the lesser ridden beachies in St Francis delivered the good as well, huge one and half overhead A frames pulling through before the wind axed it. The Pipe locals were all over it.

The corner at Seals through up some heaving barrels yesterday, the ou's getting shacked off their pips. And whilst everywhere else cooked, PE got soundly skunked! It got some swell on Tuesday, but the wind totally creamed it. By Wednesday the swell had dropped off to 2-3ft, and still the wind continued it's cross-shore crusade. Wind chops almost as big as the waves themselves creased the faces into an unridable mess.

Frustrating how the bay always seems to draw the short straw when the winter swells come past. We get all the kak weather that accompanies the cold fronts, but don't get rewarded with the waves! Mind you, the charts showed we were gonna miss out on this on. Big swell, but with only a 12 sec period, and a funky swell direction, always knew PE was going to be lucky to get anything from it.

Still, at least a good sign that the swell machine is kicking into life. Who knows, maybe we get a solid winter for a change. The last few have been pretty average.