Dropping the Rock!
Yeeeessss...
Oh my goodness gracious - last night is, pants-down, the best surf I've had all year. We're getting smacked with some huge tides for Strandhill at the moment, around 5.5m. Now add that to a full moon the other night and a fresh new swell pushing in... gravy!
The beach was biggish, breaking way out but with a few closer in - a paddle-fest I certainly wasn't keen for after two surf-lessons already. I was changed and dry doing more Umm-ing & Ahh-ing the more I watched it coming in. I went to locate a screw-driver so I could replace my log's 10inch fin with the boss' borrow 12incher... huge it is, and blood red - a real widow-maker if ever there was one. Neil & Mark from the seaweed baths distracted me from the tool-search with an offer of a lift out to another break a good 20mins drive, 'bigger, better' was their call.
I raced home but missed the lift. Andy & Cally (housemates) had the truck packed up - they were heading to the rock. Thinking my lift had gone I changed plans, threw in all the gear and strapped in. Subsequently, the Seaweed boys had come back looking for me but I was gone... oh well - turned out that their call was a bad one and paddled out to the Rock after about an hour or so anyway...
The Rock, up the north end of Strandhill beach is a wide, right-hander that can peel for a good 70m or so if you're lucky. It ain't no secret either but there was only 10 of us out there initially. It was a little inconsistent but sets were heaving through with solid 6 foot faces, fun.
Over the next 3 hours, the offshore dropped to nothing, size dropped to about three to four feet, the crowds thinned down to just five of us and it got a lot more consistent. Sick. Set after set of clean right-handers reeling mechanical with more than enough for the few heads left.
Fark, and that new 12inch fin was making for some crazy drop-knee turns. I've been hacking at these for age with little success - it makes for a beautiful cutting arc when you swing one into a turn giving what feels like more speed and power - could just be that you're lower to the wave that make it feel so. I don't know what had changed - was it the fin? Was it that I was having such a fun session? The vibe was great in the water too, hooting and calling each other onto sets...
Then on one wave I set up for a big cut-back and stepped way further back, dropped way down low, grabbed the rail and gave it loads... Holy shit. One of the deepest carves I've ever done on a log. I swung round and tried again - same again.
After years of half attempts and little pokey, off-balanced wobbly ones, the drop-knee turn is now in the bag. So stoked. Haven't felt this good since I fluked my first re-entry back when I was 14! Ha... anyway, I'm sure there's more inportant things I should be doing but that was the most important thing I've done all year. All thanks to a perfect outer-Rock session, a huge fin and sharing the stoke with a bunch of mates.
Oh my goodness gracious - last night is, pants-down, the best surf I've had all year. We're getting smacked with some huge tides for Strandhill at the moment, around 5.5m. Now add that to a full moon the other night and a fresh new swell pushing in... gravy!
The beach was biggish, breaking way out but with a few closer in - a paddle-fest I certainly wasn't keen for after two surf-lessons already. I was changed and dry doing more Umm-ing & Ahh-ing the more I watched it coming in. I went to locate a screw-driver so I could replace my log's 10inch fin with the boss' borrow 12incher... huge it is, and blood red - a real widow-maker if ever there was one. Neil & Mark from the seaweed baths distracted me from the tool-search with an offer of a lift out to another break a good 20mins drive, 'bigger, better' was their call.
I raced home but missed the lift. Andy & Cally (housemates) had the truck packed up - they were heading to the rock. Thinking my lift had gone I changed plans, threw in all the gear and strapped in. Subsequently, the Seaweed boys had come back looking for me but I was gone... oh well - turned out that their call was a bad one and paddled out to the Rock after about an hour or so anyway...
The Rock, up the north end of Strandhill beach is a wide, right-hander that can peel for a good 70m or so if you're lucky. It ain't no secret either but there was only 10 of us out there initially. It was a little inconsistent but sets were heaving through with solid 6 foot faces, fun.
Over the next 3 hours, the offshore dropped to nothing, size dropped to about three to four feet, the crowds thinned down to just five of us and it got a lot more consistent. Sick. Set after set of clean right-handers reeling mechanical with more than enough for the few heads left.
Fark, and that new 12inch fin was making for some crazy drop-knee turns. I've been hacking at these for age with little success - it makes for a beautiful cutting arc when you swing one into a turn giving what feels like more speed and power - could just be that you're lower to the wave that make it feel so. I don't know what had changed - was it the fin? Was it that I was having such a fun session? The vibe was great in the water too, hooting and calling each other onto sets...
Then on one wave I set up for a big cut-back and stepped way further back, dropped way down low, grabbed the rail and gave it loads... Holy shit. One of the deepest carves I've ever done on a log. I swung round and tried again - same again.
After years of half attempts and little pokey, off-balanced wobbly ones, the drop-knee turn is now in the bag. So stoked. Haven't felt this good since I fluked my first re-entry back when I was 14! Ha... anyway, I'm sure there's more inportant things I should be doing but that was the most important thing I've done all year. All thanks to a perfect outer-Rock session, a huge fin and sharing the stoke with a bunch of mates.