Dont Listen!

The day didn’t start great, we set off early and Andy was optimistic (he’d see the magic seaweed forecast and as he wasn’t used to them  I think he actually thought it might be 7ft ) but the words “no waves again today” were  ringing through my head (I’d heard the Bournemouth surfing centre message) , as we drove through the pouring rain and a gale. I of course didn’t tell Andy about this particular ‘eyeball’ (hah) surf report, as I didn’t want to dishearten him. It was raining heavily and really overcast the whole way. But then, as we drew closer to Bournemouth, we saw something we hadn’t seen all day, sky. To say it was blue would be an exaggeration, but it wasn’t covered by clouds. As we passed the welcome to Bournemouth road sign we were suddenly underneath it. This put us in very happy moods, so I hoped that these would not be shattered (if the ‘eyeball’ surf reports were true then they would) when we got to the pier. Now I am very used to driving along the road on the bridge running parallel
to the pier and having to look very quickly at whether there are waves. The main thing that usually jumps out at you Is not the wave quality but how many people are in. Today the answer was … A lot, in fact it was the 2nd most I’ve ever seen (after 1st December 07). So we were pumped. After about 10 minutes of Andy getting suited up  and me having  a small incident with the parking meter in which a very nice Indian family had to help me get my change out as I’d jammed it, Perhaps with excitement who knows! We were ready and headed down to the beach . I believe my exact words were “0-1 foot my right bollock”. It was pumping, 2-3 ft and 4 or maybe even 5 in sets. I quickly decided the pier was the best place to be and after waiting in a queue to pay the man in the box (never happens in the winter) I was shooting to my hearts content. I soon realised that I had my work cut out if I wanted to shoot everyone, there were two main breaks and a lot of very good people at both. The one breaking out the back towards the end of the pier and the more shorey one. I had to keep Andy in my sights as I was after all there to shoot him and he was sitting deep , but there were also some particularly sick short boarders closer to the beach. The waves were dropping pretty quickly so a bit later on I decided to move off the pier and onto the beach, the waves were a lot smaller but the quality of surfing and sponging was really high. James, something on his long board pulling some lovely hang fives, some sick sponger pulling so barrels rolls and Terry Crump on his tiny little fish, pulling sick turns on the tiniest sections  and even grabbing a bit of air. Was all in all a really fun  session and I really feel like I learned something never trust the Eyeball surf reports!

Check out all the photos from this session here

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