What's the largest wave you've ridden?

[marcus]

How do boogers measure waves?Surely a different knee/waist/shoulder/double overhead(two foot) than real surfers!

we ring up surf dive n ski, and ask them what the real surfers call it.

(i miss the days when the internet was just for uni students, scientists and smart people)

next time its big ill come in call you up from the payphone and ask you to come out and explain the size and real surfing to me

[puurri]

Phone Surfection Mosman and ask Jason

[black duck]

Couldn't say exactly how big it was. Hazard a guess at 10ft with bigger bombs. Tamarama, late 70's. I was young and immortal. Early morning, out of control ground swell, glassy conditions but shifty peaks. Got one that didn't swat me so the confidence built up (fractionally). Next one developed ledges on takeoff as it was moving through a rip and starting to feel the sandbank. Made it down the first ledge, built up speed and got launched on the second ledge. Hit the front edge of the 3rd ledge and free fell the rest of the wave. Hit the water on my side and it split my wetsuit open from seam to seam. Engulfed in water, weighted down like the Michellin man, rag-dolled good and proper. Fortunately the rag dolling pushed me close to shore. Salvaged my partially savaged board from the rocks near the storm water outlet. Generally unpleasant.

Another time, also late 70's, still immortal. Christmas cyclone swell at Foster Tuncurry. It was breaking about 300 metres past the end of the Tuncurry breakwall, no boats could get in or out, general mayhem and hundreds of people lined up along the breakwall watching the surf. I climbed down the giant boulders and jumped off near the end of the wall with my 6ft 0" McCoy double flyer rounded pin single fin. My mum was on the breakwall crying, she thought i was going to drown. I was 16. Managed to paddle out into what was definitley some of the biggest, cleanest waves i have ever surfed in. There were 3 or 4 "old-guys" out. I'm not certain but I think one of them may have been Bruce Raymond. At least it looked like him from what I'd seen in the mags. All of them were tearing it up. I got a couple of "in between" mid sized waves.

One thing I like about when it gets big is needing to take a number of full paddle strokes up the face of the swell as you're paddling out. Love that feeling of really having to paddle up the face of a big wave (provided it's not about to swat you).

[oldman]

Ok Olds, you've put it out there-now post it up so we can nail this wave height thing to the wall
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=GFn ... q=&f=false
and get it enshrined here-
http://www.bipm.org/en/convention/

Ah, I was a young man when I wrote that paper on the history and philosophy of metrology!

[Jimi]

One thing I like about when it gets big is needing to take a number of full paddle strokes up the face of the swell as you're paddling out. Love that feeling of really having to paddle up the face of a big wave (provided it's not about to swat you).

That is an awesome feeling. Only really felt it a few times. That feeling of dragging yourself straight up a hill, getting to the top just as the lip starts to form, turn around, look down on a drop that looks 4 storeys high.
Reminds me of a surf at Hole-in-the-wall. was fuc@king huge. Only wave I caught was the one I got in, a 4-6 footer (yes I agree with the Australian scale described correctly by Iggy), a mate and me just scraped under a set that we were claiming to be 10-12ft. mind you we only saw it from directly under it when it was touch and go as to whether we would get under, so maybe it was 8ft!?

[marcus]

Rusty:
Ive towed XXXXXXXXX 15 foot hawaiian size. Towed me mate Juzza Armstrong into a solid 15 footer going left that he only just outran going about 50k's/hour.
Ive also towed Jezza Hrbac into a couple of 15 footers at Vooee that ended up closing out the bay. On our scale they would all be 30 foot faces.
So yeah We get 12 to 15 foot waves in Cronulla a couple of times a year.
(edited by marcus to remove spot name)

[Butts]

How do boogers measure waves?Surely a different knee/waist/shoulder/double overhead(two foot) than real surfers!

When I was a hardcore gutslider,
Back in the day,
When the Black Swan Flew freely,
We measured our waves by WIDTH.

Booma, is that REALLY you :?

[BOOMA]

How do boogers measure waves?Surely a different knee/waist/shoulder/double overhead(two foot) than real surfers!

When I was a hardcore gutslider,
Back in the day,
When the Black Swan Flew freely,
We measured our waves by WIDTH.

Booma, is that REALLY you :?

Booma is my father,
So too am I Booma,
So too my brother,
My mother not so Booma.

[Kunji]

Booma! You've discovered the internet. Welcome to 1996. haha.

Whats crackin?

You're oldman would have a few tales for this thread out German Bank.

[BOOMA]

Booma! You've discovered the internet. Welcome to 1996. haha.

Whats crackin?

You're oldman would have a few tales for this thread out German Bank.

yeah I should have joined Real Surf back then.

Not cracking Ribs as much.

Oh hell yeah!!! And Cape Naturaleist (sic), Margaret River Bommie and second Reef Queensie Bommie

[Kunji]

Scan and post the pics! And throw that one in with the tiger shark as well.

[BOOMA]

Scan and post the pics! And throw that one in with the tiger shark as well.

I don't have the scanner working.
It's actually a Mako shark.
Dad didn't spear it, he only brought it to the surface.
Theres other photo's and Newspaper clippings (e.g. being stuck on the deck of an oil tanker explosion in Sydney Harbour in 1973 at Gore Cove and almost being crushed to death by 20 tonnes of his Gym equipment at Manly in 1989)
He's had a crazy life I tell ya

[BOOMA]

I've just asked Dad, What's the biggest wave you've ever ridden?
HIs answer was 60 foot, a little bigger on the face

roflmao.gif (4.49 KiB) Viewed 3432 times

Then he said something about a 15 metre swell in W.A.
So I asked him about Eastern Seaboard!!!
He said he was 4 kilometres off Curl Curl and caught a wave stood up for half a km, got closed out on and came to the surface and caught a massive ball of white water about 2km's off Butter Box.
He reckons he was stuck in the avalanch for 4 minutes but it felt like an hour, he couldn't go up, he couldn't go down. It was the second closest he came to drowning. He only caught the whitewash to help him get ashore. The plan backfired on him. Any how, the terror of foam released him about a kay off Makaha and he paddled ashore at Fishermans Beach

[Kunji]

Christ! I guess on that 60ft wave he was measuring literally?

What about the times when the chopper came out to rescue him?

[BOOMA]

Christ! I guess on that 60ft wave he was measuring literally?

What about the times when the chopper came out to rescue him?

He never needed rescuing,
He always waved them away.

[Kunji]

Yeah, i remember. He had "Booma" written on the bottom of his board so the guys knew he was deliberately out there.

[BOOMA]

UPDATE
Dad just told me a story about Margaret River.
It was about twenty years ago, give or take.
He rocked up to the car park, there was no one parked there, no one was surfing.
The swell was 15 metres.
He decided to go for a surf.
He paddled out the main left, way,way,way out the back.
He caught a massive left hander. He said it took ages to get to the bottom of it. he really meant it.
It took ages to get to the bottom of the Beast.
He finished the wave and was startled to find the Carpark full of people.
He stayed out for a little longer paddled around a bit.
When he came ashore all of the people were gone but one car.
The owner of that car also owned a wetsuit company, his name was Roger.
Roger said it was the biggest wave he'd ever seen ridden at Margaret River.
A while later my cousin Bert attended the Funeral for his friend Brad who was killed by a Shark.
At the funeral Roger told Bert about the biggest wave he ever saw ridden at Margaret River was by Booma.
Bert replied "What a coincidence, You're mate told me the same story two weeks ago."

[Damage]

Can he type?

Sign the man up!