GAME PLAN
The Motley crew are normally known to hunt down the ‘biggest and baddest’ waves humanly possible (cough cough!) but today we were forced to run for cover. Now the smart move here would have been to look at the charts and find somewhere in Europe or beyond, catching the outfall of the centre of this storm with a location that could handle a huge long period swell. That’s exactly what Thomas Traversa was planning way down in the ‘Basque Country’ in Spain. The day of the storm he sailed huge mast and a half high waves in light winds but the following day he nailed it with double mast high perfection. But instead of the Basque Country, which I must admit sounds rather appealing, our plan was to kick off the day at Branksome, head down to Avon for the outgoing tide and then possibly look elsewhere for one last session.
Down at Branksome we were treated to solid lines of half-mast to logo high swell, not as big as I was anticipating but the conditions were looking pretty epic and definitely sailable on a 4m. With the cliffs sheltering the inside, it was gusty close to the shore but that just meant the waves were clean and walling up nicely and not too blown out. The boys geared up for battle and a battle it was! Hunty dropped into a chunky set wave straight off the bat, headed vertically into the lip and then, as a stark reminder that even a logo high beach break can pack a wallop, was slammed back down in an avalanche of white water. Timo was picking off most of the prime waves and looked to be having a ball. Though when he came back to the beach with a nasty bump on his head, it showed that this wave was packing a pretty strong punch!
