Bagged and Tagged

A double. Saturday 16th, up at dawn, perfect 3-4ft waves, great left handers with the odd right. And just trading these with Marcus until, dead on 7, the hordes descended. It was almost like they'd been sitting on the ocean floor and then released, en masse, like spawning coral to bob to the surface and clog up the line up. Got a full sessions worth of waves in 30mins. One after the other, long lefts, prior to the spawning event. And although the wave count dropped afterwards and grabbing the peaks was more work, caught plenty more post the event horizon.

Sunday; dribble by comparison but still caught a few. Onshore, much weaker but the occasional fun one. The biggest downer? A marauding pack of bluebottle jellyfish. Got tagged several times, including one that got wrapped around my hand. Those things look delicate but those bastards are strong. Like nylon. They won't snap or break. And so the only option was to try and untangle the beastie from my hand, getting stung on fingers and opposable thumb equipped appendage until such time as I got the angry blue bugger off me. Went in after that looking a bit like someone had taken a whip to me. For those who haven't had the displeasure of a bluebottle sting they hurt. Not unbearably, but it's definitely not something you want to experience by choice. A memorable session for all the wrong reasons.

Rinse Cycle #8

Absolutely no takers today. And not that surprising given the 6-8ft bombs and gale force onshore turning the ocean into a frothy mess of white water. Waves were breaking about 1/2km out to sea; huge slow motion rollers that it was difficult to put a size on but could only be described as monstrous.

Even novelty spots were out. Went to have a look at C and C. One taker but even they gave up after ten minutes of futile paddling and destruction in the shore break. Prospects look much better for tomorrow with one or two spots likely to be offering a worthy wave. It's going to be crowded though as the weekend crew are going to be hungry and homing in on the limited options.

The wind and surf combo managed to submerge the steps to the beach beneath a long sand drift. They usually standing 4ft proud of sea level so the weather had been hard at work over night. The sand banks are going to be interesting after this. Could go either way, dredged out some fine channels and peaks or destroyed it for weeks.