The night before the conditions were set to kick off, I phoned our local man-on-the-ground, Ian Black, for his opinion. Well, what he said wasn’t quite what I wanted to hear! “You’re on drugs Carter! You aren’t even gonna make it out the back at the Bluff on that forecast.
It’s low tide in the middle of the day and that is just death on that sized swell. Eighteen feet at sixteen seconds, Jesus, the best you’re going to score is an onshore ‘Jump-me-up’ at Mazza! Stay at home Carter!” Talk about a spanner in the works at the last minute. Our ferry from the Isle of Wight was booked, our minds were set on Cornwall and now our local guru was calling onshore jumping conditions.
It was too late to try and snag a flight to Cape Verde, plus the price of the tickets at the last minute had skyrocketed (I did check)! But what if Blacky was wrong? Surely it would be even worse to stay at home and then hear that the Bluff was smoking! All we knew was that low tide was gnarly as hell and high tide was at 7 a.m.. We’d have to be on it early!
DEATHLY SILENCE
I’ll skip the 2 a.m. ferry, and 4-hour drive shenanigans and move straight on to our arrival at Hayle at 7 a.m. on a chilly December morning. In the darkness, we could just about make out white water from the breaking waves, but there was no sound of detonating barrels or avalanches of broken waves as we’d hoped.
The day was still early and with the swell forecast to build over the weekend there was no real panic aside from the issue of the low tide. Sure enough, by sunrise the water was already racing out of the river mouth, yet the swell was nothing massive, at best half-mast high. Determined to at least make it out on the water Ross rigged his 5.3m and prepared for a light wind wobble-out session.
Meanwhile, a text came through from Blacky smugly informing us that he was still in bed and he would see us at Mazza later on! As the day progressed the wind continued to play games and was hardly the 30-40 knots as-forecast, making for some very tricky conditions in the building swell.