Certainly not terrible
After the non-surfing USA trip, the idea of a quick Eastside strike was/is a no-brainer right! The froth levels were at full capacity, and as we all know, that's a dodgey place to be. It inevitably results in disappointment from over frothed expectations. [That's a sentence only a surfer could grasp] And last week was that. The east swell peaked on Monday night, some lucky souls scored prime river-bar conditions. Tuesday dawn... not so much.
Good, like actually really fun, but just not the hype
Former WSL surfers Ace Buchan and Micro Hall were in town for the launch of the Auckland Surf Park venture, well, one of many media days really, last week's one was them announcing that they'd got resource content for the Silverdale property. Billy Stairmand was hosting them and I'm not going to pretend I played it cool, I fanboyed out. Always been a fan of Ace's clinical backhand and Micro's savvy heat intelligence, combined with excellent surfing of course.
Da boyz... slightly freaking out at how cold last week was
Ace... and that backhand clinic
Micro, on a loaner from Billy and probably winning the heat straight off the bat with this one
Bill, just maybe surfing the best I've seen him
Ace
Micro
Bill /\ \/
Ace
the bank that served us well all day
Zeke Wyper defrosted from his dawnie
and his old boy Mark... can't use a cliche like finding shade on a day like this!
Perfection ... at 2 foot, maybe 3...probably 3
The swell seemed to fade with the dropping tide. I was reading it as the Low would drop past the East Cape and the swell window would close. Seemed logical, and that seemed to be what was happening. So I called it and bailed home, how wrong I was. The Low moved out off the Cape and stayed put. The Coro picked up the next day and continued to have good waves for the rest of the week. There's a funny as feature up on Surfline now about it HERE
And Ace, Mirco and Billy??? Well they went on to do their media obligations...actually Bill went on a tear, he did the Surf Park thing, then switched into Olympian mode, doing multiple radio and TV appearances based around getting the team uniform. It's of note how much mainstream media the surfer is receiving because of the Olympic push. It's also of note how comfortable Bill is getting in that setting.
FROM THE GALLERIES
This photo is my first ever commercially used image from 1991, it was used in Tracks Mag and later became a best selling T-shirt print for Hot Buttered. It's old, it's classic, that's quite a weird status for the guy that took the photo. I still remember the day and the consideration I put into the composition- mainly I remember how pumping the waves were. This guy just got commissioned for a 1200mm wide canvas. The OG, still valid, it's pretty cool. You can check it out HERE