I missed sailing on Saturday 15 because I had to go into work (Grrrr) sounds like Micheal, Jeff and Jason had a good session at Greens in the Northerly.

On Sunday it was blowing solid westerly and with the tide to high for East we headed to Bell Buoy. Jason and I were the first to arrive and by the time we had rigged Jeff had turned up and offered to do a little filming for us. Conditions were pretty harsh, gusty with regular hail. The wind would build up to well over 30 knots (Bom registered gusts over 40 kts during the afternoon) then it would hail and the air temp would drop to near freezing and the wind would also drop. Within 30 minutes it would be 20 kts and building again.


Nick and Max arrived in the middle of the afternoon and slowly conditions seemed to improve a little with the last 45 minutes being the best of the day.

Big thanks to Jeff for sitting on the beach filming in harsh conditions.

It was one of the messier wind swells I have seen at Bell Buoy. I think if it had been a bigger swell it might have been a little more organized but the pattern this spring has been for fast moving fronts that produce a small messy swell which is gone within 24 hours allowing no time for the swell to space out and become more organized. Roll on November.

Nice one al, i will be looking at having a wave sail with you guys once i get my licence soon.

Good one guys, we always reckon you get better sessions in the north........that looks pretty typical of Sandpits in a souwesterly, pretty rough but heaps of fun.....like the jump at the end of the sequence

Great Vid...can't wait to get out on the wave gear again

'Shooting' was my pleasure Al - especially given the "difficulty" of the conditions - up, down, cold, rain, hail - what a day.

For all those interested - STONE AGE STEADY-CAM. A lightweight video camera gets blown around on these sorts of days, especially on long zoom. I eventually worked out that holding the camera on a big rock stopped the wind from producing quite so much camera shake - too much panning prevented me from resting the camera on a fixed object...

Not exactly the sort of conditions conducive to showing off sailing skills - but that is why it is so much fun, isn't it?

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izaak said...

Nice one al, i will be looking at having a wave sail with you guys once i get my licence soon.

When do you get your licence and are you going to get a Vito to carry all the gear?



Loved the stone age steady cam Geoff, though you have to be careful to check that the rock isnt already being used by the "locals" (locals in this case refers to angry Inchment Ants that are only a little smaller than lobsters).

An earlier version of the video had all the crashes included at the end but I couldn't justify leaving them in the final cut because they reflected badly on my abilities and they weren't even very spectacular. Maybe I will save them all up till the end of the summer and produce a video that is just crashes.

I didn't know you knew how to crash al

I'll be happy to contribute to that compilation of crashes though

Let's do it! We should have a HUGE prize too... because I reckon I crash more often, and better than ANYONE!

Great idea Geoff a competition for the best crash.....has to be caught on camera and posted on seabreeze
I'm definitely be in this and reckon I would be in for a podium finish
Bring it on

I can do that one, just so long as we don't get shots of houstons Forward attempts