hi Dave , that could well be the swell that we got here on friday , saturday , and [peaking on] sunday . I thought that indo would cop it soon !!
Bocky [one of the city beach ] ex-pats woulda been ON it !
He's been living in bali for FIVE years , and NEVER misses a swell, so i figure i'll be getting an email from him soon , with shots of him , like your ones [that 'MAY' be him in the tubed photo !]
hopefully , when the swell drops , and IF you find somewhere uncrowded [?! good luck !] , you too will soon get waves .
[ waves like that are not why i surf , they are out of my league ! ....but like you , nice to PHOTOGRAPH ! so , thanks for the pics !]
It was double head high on the sets here , on sunday. And HEAVY as , for a beachie ! LOTS of snapped boards , bruised 'egos' , and bodies ! It was fun to watch and photograph , a bit of a nightmare with very few channels to paddle out in , backwash , and rips like you wouldn't believe . some great tubes were had by the best , though ! [paul 'antman' patterson among them ...]
Yep the title of the thread could just as well have been “Why we don’t surf”, more applicable to most of us.
I
bumped into Jim Banks, he was riding a 7’2 quad. Some huge sets came
through at Ulus just on sunset on Monday, way bigger than any of the
pics (quite a few were calling it the biggest swell all season)… Jim
and 2 others were still out. Jim told me later he saw the horizon go
black. He was furthest out and new the other guys were toast. So he
started paddling, then realised he wasn’t going to make it either. His
leash snapped on the first wave of the set, and he copped 5 monsters…
said his prayers, didn’t think he was going to survive. For the biggest
he swam down until it was black and still heard the wave detonate like a
bomb.
After
that he had to swim down to Padang to get in. There was more drama
there, one patch of deep foam so deep that he couldn’t breath through
it, he swam underwater for 15m before he could find somewhere
breathable. Then had to survive huge wedges of white water on an
unforgiving reef.
At
about 7:30 pm that Monday night I was having a beer on the lawn of
Sandit Mas at Ulus, a guy (John) came running past in surf attire with a
board, I commented that it was a bit late for surfing. He was another
survivor of that set. Caught well inside, he elected to paddle down to
Padang rather than face the Ulus reef. At Padang he caught another huge
set on the head, as did another guy who had lost his board and was was
freaking out, crying in fear, hyperventilating, near to drowning. In a
great act of kindness, John undid his leash and gave the guy his board.
Big load of karma there. John reckoned it was no big deal as he could
swim forever in those conditions.
Swell has dropped off enough for me to go out. I came to Ulus rather than anywhere else in Indo as the season was, I thought, winding down and I wanted somwhere with consistent waves into Nov and Dec.
Jim is just about to open a really good looking restaurant/cafe, the Mango Tree, in Padang, plus he’s still doing his boat trips for those who are interested,
wow 7'2 quad eh ? not that big a board for ? 4 ? 5? times head high waves dredging off sharp coral .... and jim is what , mid-50s now ?? [ as an aside ....by the way , margies had " 20 to 30 foot faces" on saturday , and into sunday ...'Camel' was running amok again , apparently !! ...no doubt there will be footage on swellnet or coastalwatch or jamie scott images , at SOME stage !]
back to jim banks ...is he still doing the hemp boards ? [ they looked reaaally nice , the ones i'd seen !]
good for jim , eh ? what a legend and a charger !
.... i've heard sooo many stories of him from visitors to ulus , padang , gnaraloo, bluff , etc etc etc ...
all the best to him !
was he still travelling with , and playing , his guitar ?
keep those photos coming , eh ? [ and see if the bali guys took any of YOU , perhaps ! to post up here ... i wanna see how that 'nugget' of yours performs , in these waves ]
Yeah, Jim’s starting to think quads may become the new standard. On the day after those pics were taken, I saw someone (I think it was Jim, hard to tell at that distance) doing really radical things that only a good quad would do.
Not sure about the hemp boards.
Yeah I bet Margs was huge. Some people have been calling this swell the biggest since '76. Don’t know about that. If so I’ll have to recategorise the pics from Surf Culture/Places to Surf History/Places.
I don’t think any surf photogs will be taking any pictures of me. Biggest I’ve surfed in the last few years is the day before this pic was taken (thats a surfer in lip the middle), it was about the same size.
[img_assist|nid=1062117|title=Outer Island Surf|desc=|link=none|align=middle|width=640|height=147]
But thats not quite Padang or Ulus.
I’ll post a few “contex” pics in the next few days.
Yeah they are great waves. Wished I had a better camera, they were all taken with a Canon G12 compact, max zoom 140mm(!) at only 6meg pixels and then heavily cropped. Should have shot at 12meg pixels.
Word was that most surfers had gone to West Sumbawa for this swell. There must have been several thousand pics taken ,I guess they will appear in the next issues of all the surf mags.