Hello Friends,

Here’s the final installment for today… After getting out of the water, we headed to the Marlin for a pub lunch and a fortifying libation. I wrote my midday update and then we decided to have a poke around south of Ulladulla.

First stop was Dolphin Point. It was a brief visit because a) it was totally blown out from the SE wind, and b) the swell was big and horrid looking. Inspired we continued south to a secret spot known only to a select few.

There we found that, unlike Dolphin Point, it was not big. Worse, it was clearly the wrong swell direction. Appropriately enough, we had a long discussion about secret spots. Views were exchanged as we walked through a particularly lovely bit of NSW coastal forest. While no resolution was arrived at, we did see a couple very fine stretches of empty beach. I grabbed a picture of what looked like it might possibly be a surfable wave. I include it below for your contemplation.

Those more familiar with the vagaries of this coast may wonder at our next move; we decided to take a look at Bawley point and thereabouts for the simple reason that neither of us have surfed there yet.

It’s a most attractive stretch of coast, but neither the point nor such adjacent surf guide fodder as No Toes and Guillotines was offering an attractive prospect. We plugged another CD into the deck and made our way back to Ulladulla.

It was getting late but hoping for perhaps one more quick session, we revisted the scene of our earlier triumphs. The post school folks were on it and as nearly as we could tell, they were mostly near- or even actual – pros.. So discretion being the better part of valour and all that, I decided instead to take a few snaps

Playing with a one of Huey's offerings.

No drops out of place on this one.

absurdly airborne somewhere in Ulladulla.

as the boys took apart a juicy left (see pics below).

And now, I’m almost done with the day’s writing… a steak dinner at the bowlo and a house red have been most advantageous to my endeavours.

Who knows what tomorrow may bring (we are hopeful because the swell seems to be kicking along at much the same intensity of earlier today). I will try to bring you news of these doings in the fond hope

Betcha don't know where this is!

Little update for ya…

After a quick repast and a bit of report filing on my part, we decided to head back to the beach for a look at the dropping tide situation. This time we paddled out a well struck nine-iron shot from our first session. If anything it seemed to have come up a touch. There were definitely a few wave faces in the 10 ft range and because we were closer to the southern headland it was slightly less breezy.

We both jagged a few very fun and relatively longish righthanders. Water is maybe a degree cooler than Sydney, so for me anyway it was in that fuzzy zone between steamer and springy.

As the tide dropped, the waves began to divide into two distinct take off zones. That worked out rather well for us because we were the only two on our particular section.

As the session went along, the wind began to swing a little more to the SE and the surface kinda got chewed up. The situation was worse over at Golf Course reef where there was even less protection.

I managed to reboot my water camera, so here are a couple shots for your amusement.

I’ll try to do at least one more post today if I can!

Anyone would have fun with this.

Your basic good time play wave.

Waves on the south coast but wind too.

Hello Friends,

On an impulse – and because the prospects looked good – my
surfrider foundation mate Paul and I pointed the car in a southerly direction last night. Our plan was to drive down to Milton, stay the night in the fabulous Commercial Hotel and get up early to see if we could beat the high tide and southerlies at Golf Course reef.

The swell’s faded overnight according to the buoy data, but it wasn’t anything like flat. We were seeing sets with wave faces easily into the two plus metre range.

At first it was fairly setty, but after an hour or so, we were seeing the big ones pretty regularly. Now before those of you trapped behind a desk far from a beach dissolve into envy, you need to know that this was not what could be called all-time Golf Course. The tide was stupid high, and the wind was pushing lots of chop in. The takeoff zone was shifting around quite a bit and that meant quite a lot of paddling and duck diving.

Sadly my little water camera decided it didn’t want to cooperate, so I wasn’t able to get any shots for you with it.

After a couple of hours we concurred that breakfast time had arrived. I’d scored a couple sort of okay waves and one mildly exciting one and Paul had racked up a respectable count given the challenging conditions. By 0830 the wind was going pretty well, and as I sit here overlooking Ulladulla’s absurdly picturesque little harbour, with another flat white inbound, I can see that the ocean beyond the headland is a great expanse of white horses.

We’re going to chill for awhile and let that tide drop before reviewing our options.

more later…