1. H2O Audio is featured in Wired as a Cool iPod accessory. Click to see
2. Shred Ready will release a new Water/Snow helmet, the Phly, in December. Read more...
3. New Design/R&D page here at Effort.tv with the new Charger Surf Kayak video. Check it out.
4. Plus, big surf yesterday...
Holy crap big surf at Wrightsville Beach yesterday. Joey Hall, Philip Aschliman and I surfed at Wrightsville Beach, NC yesterday. I have to say it was the biggest surf I've seen there. I may have seen it this big but not this big combined with this steep and dumpy. Though dumpy there were a lot of makeable waves out there. Getting to them was the hard part.
We were lucky to have gotten to surf this swell even though we got our asses kicked. Joey and I drove down thinking we might get into some waist to chest high surf but we were very suprised at what we woke up to on Monday morning. You'll have to bear with us on the quality of these images. These are all video grabs, but the video footage itself wasn't all that good, and some of it was close to dark.
As usual with ocean surf, you get to the beach and you say, oh, that doesn't look all that big. Then you get out in it and realize the error of your ways. Well, this day we looked at the waves and said, oh, it looks really big out there, but we should be fine. We paddled out at Johhny Mercer's pier and got our clocks cleaned before we could even catch a wave. We actually spent about an hour just trying to get out. We semi-successfully surfed a couple inside waves since we couldn't get to the outside break. The sets were relentless. One time I got washing machined so hard that all I could do was concentrate on holding on to my paddle and my lunch. The chicken dinner from Roberts Grocery didn't taste as good the second time. When we arrived to the beach Joey had gotten out in the water before us. As Philip and I got close to the outer break we see J-ho surfing in on this monster foam pile with his helmet on sideways and one of his ear flaps hanging out the side. He was waving bye to us and laughing. We assumed he had just bought it on that wave. Like I said, we tried to get out for an hour with no luck and ended up surfing some sloppy inside stuff. I ended that session landing on my head in the sand and cracking my boat while Philip laughed and hhheeehhhawwwed!!! at me.
We went back to the car and decided we'd check back later in the evening. At about 3pm we went down and looked at Crystal Pier. The wind had calmed and it actually looked like we could make it out here. The stand-uppers were getting some nice rides but it wasn't too crowded out there. The size seemed to weed out the novices. Joey and I decided to give her another try. We made it out okay this time. You can see that the size was still just as big or bigger. On the photo below it is dark but you can see Joey on his way out, just making it over the top of a huge king steamer.
We ended up getting a few rides but passing up way more than we took due to fear. We were psyched to have been able to catch this surf unexpectedly and wish we could have stayed a couple more days. Today's report was 4 ft, glassy and off shore winds. I hope someone got on it. Here are a few more photos of the evening. This is a takeoff I got on a pretty nice one. Though, I came off that wave and immedaitely got pummled on the way back out by this next one.
Despite the ass poundings received we put it down as a good day. Much better than if it had been small surf. It's nice to be humbled sometimes.
Here are a few more shots of some notables.
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