RealSurf Surfers' Forum

What's with those Saffers, hey, mad as cut snakes. Bevan holding his breath walking to Foodland, for god's sake.

wanto that's north av, surely.

biggest. eeh.

well probly brown water, got some massive ones.

a set came maybe(faces) 10 pushing to 15,,,, ( even don said ) while he was takin photes, hit me i duck dived rip my board snapped the rope. massive current ripping into the shelf and had to swim in, over the shelf with big waves breaking on my head,

no im am scared of it and i will never surf it again uless its small becuase shiting my pants isnt fun........

i pulled off a few out deadies that were probably around 12ft. the drop was just to big there was no way of making it.

another woulda been 1 out at bombie that was around the same size. same senario

wanto wrote:

2nd Reef wrote:...and Wanto, that looks like No Toes to me

nope .. a few clues: in sydney, easy rock off into a beachy. could be any nth corner on it's day pretty much

and thanks for the story .. keep em coming, surfing wiamea (big) is one of my dreams which i'm hoping to turn to reality

Pretty sure I know where it is-but I'm not saying here-no need to add to those checking it in the right conditions.

And, I'm calling 8-10' max on that wave.

Biggest waves-either Queensie Bombie or Outside Corner-guess upto 12'-14'-hard to tell when you're scratching in and then screaming down the face to set up that first, defining, turn.......makes Nick and 2nd reef's monsters seem like a shorey......

Matt

Nick's guess of the location looks right to me Wanto. North Av or, as Larry would say, 2107.

The reformed right-hander in the foreground gives it away.

Don't worry - it's hardly a secret spot.

Up early trawling around in the dusty cupboards of realsurf this has caught my eye, I think I have surfed 12ft maybe a touch bigger. I liked Nick's take on this, the wave you've chickened out of, as that is probably something we can all relate to. One of the most memorable and challenging surfs I have had you probably could not call it a surf as I did not catch a wave.

I was staying on the North Shore in Haleiwa in 95 and there was a huge swell the day before thanksgiving, I was poking around the north Shore marvelling at the these huge swells lighting up the outer reefs, I was driving past Laniakea and I pulled over to see my mate Kirk, him and his mates were getting ready to go out to a break called Himalayas about a km out, only a handful of guys surfed it back then. I watched them paddle out into this 20ft plus swell only to be washed back in 20 minutes later, they were pretty disappointed as it was first time that they had not made it out.
Later on that day I was still driving around looking when there they are again, getting ready to give it another go, so I stopped to annoy them as I do, figuring this is the closest that I am going for surf today.

Anyway Kirk being the smartass that he is, say's well are you just standing round or paddling out with us and adds that there is a brand new board I can borrow which if I break I have to pay 700us , stupidly I said yes.

The paddle out was pretty much I think as if you were going to surf big Laniakea, you jump into a rip and get sucked out, though there are these huge random lumps of whitewater you need to get through, then the rip starts pulling you towards Lani's which can best be described as a 15ft rip bowl!

This was easily one of the most terrifying moments of my life, we were paddling as hard as possible for the horizon to get out of the clutches of this rip that was pulling us towards this frothy barrel. Then all of a sudden we break free of it and we are in another world, I'm sitting out in deep water looking at a perfectly clean wave, it looked like back home, a perfect bank at Johana, cept' it was 20 to 25ft and 5 of us out. I looked at it and thought I think I can do this, so we paddled out to the take off area and they showed me all the landmarks to line up and I sat off to the side to watch and get a feel for it. I'd surfed with Kirk a bit over the years and thought he was a good surfer but nothing flash, my opinion changed when I saw him stall a 10ft pintail to tuck into a 25ft barrel.

So anyway after watching these guys slip cleanly into a few and make it look easy i decided to give it a go, so I paddled over and thought I would catch one on the shoulder first up and ease into it, small one came probably 18ft and paddled like buggery, I was in but being on the shoulder as it started to lift me to my right the bottom was dropping out of it and the lip was starting to throw, it was at that stage I had to make the choice of stand up and go or chicken out and steer it to the shoulder.

Relieved that I now new my limits I sat wide again and the sets started to get bigger and we were dodging a few, after a while it was decided to go in before we got caught. How do you get in? I honestly had not thought about that. Easy they said, you go down to the end of the wave and wait for a set, as soon as the last wave passes by you paddle as fast as you can into the impact zone and when the next set comes catch the white water, I did just that and it was exhilarating.

Next day I was was at a thanksgiving lunch and a few younger guys that are legends nowdays came up and said they had heard I went out the day before and what a gutsy effort, I pointed out that I was waveless, but they thought that just paddling out was lengendary I still reckon it was more dumb. http://forum.realsurf.com/forum/downloa ... &mode=view

Fcuk that was a bit long winded wasn't it.

Good story, Rust.
I've surfed 8 and 10 foot waves at Forries, Bells and Winki. Pulled back on 6-8 footers that I was in the spot for at Lennox though.
Overgunning yourself makes it way less scary.

Yep, great story rustt.

My biggest was Gragagan in '84. Perfect 8' (15' face) on a custom 6'8 TF Drifta - best and most exhilarating ever for me. A huge set came through not long after and washed nearly everyone in. I paddled around with a couple of others for a while dodging the sets but called it a day soon after.

Got accolades for wave of the day over dinner that night from a bunch of people.

It's probably true that the older you get, the bigger the waves you once rode get.
As a teenager, double overhead at Kirra, pre any groynes was probably about my limit.
And in the Jan '67 cyclone I surfed triple overhead Crescent. But they weren't scary. Just massive long walls, peaking easily with long, gentle drops. Two plus a smaller one were more than enough though.
Even head high Kirra or The Alley (when Currumbin Rock was an island) were scarier.
These days, ANYTHING above head high is scary.

Russtt, I ain't going near that until you put some paragraphs in there.

There is paragraphs. Just not the spaced line. Newspaper style.

Russt is semi-retired he has time to space it out for the working man.

When I was starting to surf the only overhead wave I saw really was Kirra so that's what I imagined an overhead wave to be like.

I'm kind of the opposite, Trev. Old big waves don't really register that much in the memory banks. The biggest ones weren't that mean....probably weren't that big either. Big waves weren't what I was looking for and sure aren't these days.
Had a pretty big surf at Ti Tree one time with three of us out. Big Ti Tree though is like biggish Crescent...just a big walling face. Actually the last biggish wave I can remember was at Crescent about three years ago. They were surfing the breakwater at Port the same day so I guess that gives some indication of the size.

steve shearer wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 03, 2018 11:16 am

Russtt, I ain't going near that until you put some paragraphs in there.

A bit of flowery descriptive Dionysian prose wouldn't go astray either. Glad you incorporated rip bowls though.