RealSurf Surfers' Forum

steve shearer wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 6:36 pm

POMO, I'm afraid to ask.

Poo On My Ono

jimmy wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:31 pm

Nick Carroll wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 8:06 pm

Wyre wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 18, 2021 7:04 pm

Pain of Missing Out?

Yeah that set looked so full on, I pictured myself caught on the inside looking at it coming down on me. I can’t really get a grasp of how heavy it would be, but I’m assuming you would need to hold your breath for a long time.

That's it

Really you would not ever want to be caught inside by a set like that. It wouldn't matter how fit you were or whatever. When people used to get caught inside by that stuff in the years before skis, they died. Ie Todd Chesser

Which makes the fact that Ken Bradshaw, Mark Foo etc used to paddle out there in the 90’s or did they have skis, Nick?

Foo and Bradshaw didn't paddle Himalayas. Bradshaw used to paddle Outside Rockpile and Backyards. There were small groups of people paddling those reefs as far back as the 1970s -- Jack Johnson's dad Jeff was one of them. They'd get a boat out of Haleiwa Harbour and drive up to outside Pipe with these huge fcuken boards. Then in the 80s people started paddling Phantom Reef outside V-Land, Phantom is a different story, more of a big deep water wedge, hard to position. A couple of guys died doing that, people you'll never have heard of.

That back reef at Himalayas was pioneered around the same time, again by a small tight crew including Russell Bierke's Dad Kirk. It's a lot of work, that joint. A long paddle out and you'll get cleaned up a couple of times on the way.

Everyone who did it kept it quiet, these spots were inaccessible to photographers unless they hired a helicopter and there was only one available, and it cost a bomb, so unless you knew where someone was surfing, you burned your money. I did quite a bit of this but didn't write about it at all, I wasn't going to burn that crew's generosity or their hideaway, plus it felt a bit surreal and not a good idea to encourage people to go there. I thought, it's not mine to tell, save it up for later. Skis really changed the game quickly, but again they took a while to catch on and not many people knew much about that outer reef chain. It hasn't really been till this past decade that Himalayas has been really targeted in that 40' range or that the other reefs have been kinda mapped.

This is a great Mark Healey anecdote about surfing an outer reef back in the day

https://beachgrit.com/2016/01/mark-heal ... -save-you/

So Nick how far is it out there and how long is the paddle?

foamy wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 19, 2021 8:03 am

This is a great Mark Healey anecdote about surfing an outer reef back in the day

https://beachgrit.com/2016/01/mark-heal ... -save-you/

Sheeeeeeit!!!

Beanpole wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 19, 2021 8:40 am

So Nick how far is it out there and how long is the paddle?

Outside Himalayas? maybe a k? It's got a kind of channel between its inside reef and Laniakea. The inside reef is a great wave on the right day. Then you gotta work your way kind of criss-cross through patches of surf and channels. You get into open water then it's maybe 300m out to the first ledge on the back reef. It's tricky surfing 'cause there's a chance any wave you catch will close out, if that happens it's a full washing machine cycle that can take you all the way back to the start. There's exposed reef near shore, some of it's sharp edged lava, kind of like the reef inside Laniakea.

The big ledge is further out again, if you saw the clip of the skis panicking, then you saw that ledge breaking and a few surfers having a look at it but deciding not to go, which seemed like a wise choice I reckon. I haven't really gone to that ledge, when I've surfed it it's been more in the 15-20' range a bit further in. I couldn't believe it when I first started seeing pics of Sion Milosky and others riding that back ledge. HUGE bluebird surf.

Most of those outer reefs are about that far out, maybe a bit less or a bit more depending. Getting back in is sometimes trickier than getting out, the surf zones in closer are so crazy when the outside's breaking, you really don't wanna go in through too much of that carnage.

The Hawaiian big wave surfers I've met in Bali, when asked to compare Indo and Hawaii, say it gets big in Indo, but nothing like as big as Hawaii, they reckon the size just keeps and going!

Those comments were made during and after the Bali mega-swell of a few years ago.

Yeah look it's not necessarily just the tallness, it's the seething fcuken energy and the amount of water moving around, and the sheer velocity of the swell as it strikes. like the storm that made the weekend swell in HI was only 1000nm away with sustained 40-50knot winds, there's an absolute shit load of energy in the 17 second interval bandwidth all arriving at once. This one was unusually clean and long but the ocean would have been vibrating and surging almost tsunami-style at times.

RIP Ben Apia. Some good footage of him doing the rounds.

The big Hawaii Outer Reef day.
There are better and much prettier clips elsewhere, but I found this clip pretty watchable.
Ben Gravy, who makes a video career largely out of frothing over small crappy waves in New Jersey, is out the back sharing a jetski with Jamie O’Brien and Kalani Chapman. He’s terrified.

https://youtu.be/3WLSA8CQR1c

That was a ripper foamy!

Foamy, don't you know this has been covered on other surf media platforms. How could you.
Might watch that one though. I kind of avoid Ben Gravys stuff because I watched a pile of it a couple of years ago.
He's pretty entertaining. Watched Young Rothmans one yesterday. I find him a bit annoying but that was interesting.

Long range looking TERRIFYING for trev! Keep your head down trev! And I don't mean head dipping!

also looking terrifying for Sunny Coast flood plain development plans!!

I really wouldnt put any stock in the long range at there moment.

Models are totally spazzing from one run to the next.

so much instability from the MJO and a countervailing Rossby wave they are having tremendous difficulty resolving this upcoming monsoonal surge.

I'm going to go with EC because they have spazzed out the least this summer.

Nick Carroll wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 24, 2021 11:21 am

Long range looking TERRIFYING for trev! Keep your head down trev! And I don't mean head dipping!

also looking terrifying for Sunny Coast flood plain development plans!!

Awesome.
Looking forward to it.

PS.
Bloody killjoy, Steve. <:

yeah but fcuk! I want to stir up trev!!

like even if EC is the closest, he is still probably going to drown.

Nick Carroll wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 24, 2021 1:18 pm

like even if EC is the closest, he is still probably going to drown.

That's the third or fourth time you've predicted that.

Are you sure you're not Sunstroke?