AFTER a mixed surf forecast, last weekend (including the Friday) ended up providing some of the most fun waves in a long time.
A peaky three-foot north-east swell, mixed in with just the right amount from the south, made for some amazing A-frame peaks up and down the magic mile of Wainui Beach.
From Pines to Stockies were scores of surfers lapping up the goods, with countless barrels and much high-performance surfing going down.
There were smiles all round as the regular frothers got their fix. Even the Point got in on the action.
Then just as the east swell began to die out around Tuesday, a new swell from the south filled in, with spots further up the coast having their turns to shine.
It was a good week for the Gromlab 2017, a four-day surfing development camp put on by Gisborne Boardriders Club for young surfers, and held in the first week of the October school holidays.
The young frothers got some good waves during the week out at Wainui and even slotted in a trip down to Mahia.
The surf camp is held in the lead-up to the Surfing New Zealand primary school championships here this weekend, and the Surfing New Zealand national secondary school championships from Monday to Friday.
The Gisborne team will be hoping for some more success after Saffi Vette and Stella Smith took out the under-16 and u14 girls’ categories respectively last year.
The forecast is looking mixed, with a bit of swell from the south through to the east and variable winds.
Let us hope the good run of swell continues for the championships and gives the surfers arriving from all across the country a decent time in Gizzy.
With any luck, the men’s World Surf League Championship Tour (CT) stop No.9 will get under way in Hossegor, in the south-west of France, tomorrow evening (NZ time).
This event is one of my favourites on the tour. It will either be the perfect, A-frame barrels we all dream of, or something insanely wild, huge and death-defying.
Either way, it will make for great viewing and be heavy, courtesy of a deepwater canyon just off the coast, which means the waves retain all of their open-ocean power as they unload on French sand.
Championship Tour competitors surfing perfectly formed pointbreaks is one thing, but their ability to charge in big, unruly beachbreaks is what truly sets them apart.
Some days the infamously shifty stretch of beach turns into a thing of utter surf perfection, with long-period lines of swell peaking up on magical sandbars and unloading into the most perfect spitting barrels you have ever seen.
On other days there is no rule to where the waves are coming from, to tell the close-outs from the 10-point rides — this is where the true champions shine.
I was in Hossegor in 2010 and saw Mick Fanning defeat Kelly Slater in a close final.
In wild, eight-to-10 foot surf, the two arguably greatest surfers in the world still managed to get some truly epic barrels in among the board- and bone-breaking close-outs.
This weekend it looks like there will be enough swell to get the competition started, while a larger swell looks set to arrive late next week.
Fingers crossed for some French (im)perfection.
See you out the back.