There is nothing like a fresh autumn swell alongside perfect conditions & a bunch of great surf spots to choose from. I was about to experience just this on the South Coast of NSW. However the danger, believe it or not, can also be having too many options…On this occasion I had a handful of options and a window of a couple of hours before the current perfect offshore wind would swing ruin my chances.
The dangers you come up against on a surf check are many but the classic has to be starting at one beach where the waves appear ok but you decide you just want a little more so move on. Before you know it your at the last option on the coast, after a lot of driving, when it’s decided the best break was back where you started from. What often makes this worse is that the time you get back to that break the wind has turned onshore and the surf is a blown out mess. Or you’ve stuffed around so much that your miss’s is already wanting you home. That’s always a winner.
On this particular day my enemy was the wind so I moved quickly. The first break was quite good but a big effort to get out so I decided to check a little bay about 20 mins away I saw on the map which looked like a perfect set up with the wind and swell direction. On arriving it only took one wave to come through before deciding this was the chosen one. A beautiful clean head high left with a nice long workable wall with the morning sun rising thru the back of the wave. Oh and to top it off, with only 4 guys out. I had scored! So I paddled out to a break I had never surfed before, never knew existed, with 4 dudes out and surfed perfect waves for a couple of hours before my arms & legs turned jelly. As it turned out when I got in and stood on the beach to watch a set, the wind turned onshore and before my eyes the perfect waves disappeared.
It’s ON when it’s ON!
“Only a surfer knows the feeling”
