pam's coming..

[benjl]

Look's like it's our turn to get pounded by a cyclone! And by the looks of it, Pam is going to hit our normally flat East Coast hard!
I've never seen Te Arai Point get sub 4m waves!

Even some of the normal 'non-surfing' beaches with 0.2m waves are going to be up around 3ft!
Even the west coast is looking to be around 5ft with clean conditions.

cyclone pam

cyclone pam

[drowningbitbybit]

Woo! Well, sort of woo!

Gonna be a huge swell!
I always like surfing the novelty spots when there's a huge swell - the places that don't usually see any swell and produce a "unique" wave . I never did get around to surfing inside Sydney harbour when I lived down that way, but did manage to surf a mile inland up a river once (thanks Jimi!)

[benjl]

It must be 'the calm before the storm' as today is a blue sky stunner!

Check out this big surfing event that apparently NZ was due to have next week- how good is the timing with the cyclone for their big wave surfing event!! The local media are frothing about it.
http://www.theultimatewaterman.com/about/

[oldmansurfer]

That's an interesting contest. I wonder how that will go. I bet Kai Lenny wins though I don't really know the skill sets of the other competitors just know Kai practices all of those skills and excels at them all.

[benjl]

Pam is here!
This beach is 99.9% of the year unsurfable and today there were the off head high sets.

Lots of carnage- never seen such bad etiquette and dropping in! As I took this photo it was only getting worse, more and more people arriving.

[surf patrol]

DBB would tell you that's like an empty lineup in his neck of the woods...

(ok, that isn't DBBs home but its (a) pretty close and (b) basically what it looks like all the way between Byron and the gold coast)

[drowningbitbybit]

DBB would tell you that's like an empty lineup in his neck of the woods...

Yup, I certainly would

To be fair to the Gold Coast, I have surfed four times in the last week more or less on my own

...although now I think about it, my definition of "on my own" doesn't actually mean "on my own"

[oldmansurfer]

OMG I wonder out of all those guys/girls out there, how many won't catch any waves during their time out there? I guess it's great that Ozzystrailia has so much coast line to pick from (so you can look for less crowded areas.)

[BaNZ]

Wow that is such a long paddle out! I think I might need to take 2 breaks before I can get all the way out.

[benjl]

Holy cr@p! All the surfers look like ants all packed up together. That just looked ridiculous!

This photo might give a better indication at what it was like with every bay all around Auckland the same, if not more crowded.
Every time a wave came like 6+ people all within a few meters of each other would paddle for it and I saw several people get cut off, dropped in on, literally run over, arguments, board damage.. it was carnage.

Apparently in some places the waves reached 5-6m high!

[oldmansurfer]

welll I bet at 5 to 6 meters the carnage was much less

[oldmansurfer]

It must be 'the calm before the storm' as today is a blue sky stunner!

Check out this big surfing event that apparently NZ was due to have next week- how good is the timing with the cyclone for their big wave surfing event!! The local media are frothing about it.
http://www.theultimatewaterman.com/about/

Kiwi guy beat Kai Lenny