Surfing Waves

Hey guys,

I have been surfing for 1.5 years now (very on and off) as I live a ways a way from the ocean. I want to start going regularly but have found major difficulty in interpreting the weather forecast. I nearly always find that the surf is dumping, or that the conditions are choppy or the waves are too small. I surf in Australia, Queensland, at Currumbin Alley or Burleigh Heads. I have talked to the surf shops there but am still a little confused as to how to read surf reports for my local breaks and how to tell what works well for my local break. My surf level is intermediate (I think) as I can surf waves every time and can go down the line but am yet to do any big turns. Any help would be great

Cheers in advance,

Lachy

Hi Lachy,

Welcome to Surfing Waves. You've probably seen me about as my local is the alley too

What surf forecast are you using?

The basics... (these are general rules with a bit of Gold Coast thrown in)...
The best swell direction for the GC is from the east, but anything NE to SE will do. SE swell will slide right past a lot of the breaks, including Currumbin, so it will be smaller there than at, for example, D'bah, which is exposed to the southerly swell (vice versa for a NE swell).
A period of less than 8 seconds is just windchop, 9 - 11 seconds is good quality groundswell, 12s+ is very powerful groundswell. So as well as the size of the swell, you need to look at the period - for example, 1m at 5s is basically flat, but 1m at 10s is perfectly surfable. 2m at 12s will be too big for anyone but the very experienced.

Next up is the wind. Currumbin and Burleigh both work best when the wind is from the SW, but can tolerate wind from the S or W (even NW if its not too strong).
The strong westerlies we've been having recently will knock the small swell flat (like a week ago) or hold it up into big grinding barrels (like yesterday).

The tides have some effect too - if it's small, it won't break at high tide, and mid-tide will be better. Low tide usually works better on very small days, but you're probably better off on the beachies than the points.

So looking at this week...
http://www.windguru.cz/int/index.php?sc ... sty=m_spot

Tomorrow is 1m at 10s with 19km/h SW winds... looking pretty good for a small fun session on smallish waves
Wednesday getting a bit windy and smaller, and then very small by the end of the week (0.5m @ 4s = flat).