The water is finally starting to warm up properly, with the majority of snow melted the water has jumped about 3 degrees in the last week and is sitting at about 15 -16 c now. Time to ditch the booties and hang up the 4/3 for the summer. Wave wise we’ve had lots of small little east and nor east swells plus Taylors came to life a few weekends ago with a massive north swell funnelling into the bay one Sunday afternoon. As usually when it gets over four foot it was pretty bumpy but it was great to take a few big drops and enjoy a bit of power in a wave for once.
Sumner surfers cleaned up at the first event of the South Island Circuit for the season. Local surfers claimed five titles at the 20th annual Wekastitch Cape Classic in Westport. Tom Entwisle (Sumner) won the Seniors event with the highest scoring wave of the competition an 8.7 point ride (out of 10). Alethea Lock (Sumner) was on top form winning both Open and Junior Womens. Troy Scott (Sumner) surfed powerfully to take the Longboarding title and Neil Robb (Sumner) caught the winning wave in the final minute to win the Grand Masters, also placing second in the Masters.
Micro Christensen (New Brighton) won the Masters event.
The competition was held at the infamous Tauranga Bay, known for its huge challenging surf. This year was no exception with a massive swell on the first day of competition making it a real struggle just to catch a wave, but on the finals day the surf cleaned up to a pumping three to four foot allowing all finalists to carve up the big walls of ‘T Bay’.
In the Longboarding scene, Nick Sargent placed third against a top field at the Del Festival of Longboarding in Taranaki over Labour weekend. This event has a focus on traditional Longboarding styles and the final was held in perfect logging waves at Fitzroy on the Sunday.
The Canterbury Scholastic Surf team surfed to there best result in years at the National Scholastic Surf Champs in Gisborne. Luke O’Neil won the Longboarding title, Alethea Lock took silver in the U16 girls, and Cody McCusker bronze in the U18 Boys.
Internationally the world tour is in Puerto Rico for the Rip Curl Search event. There are still several events left on the tour but we may see both Mens and Womens World champions crowned this week, as Kelly Slater and Stephanie Gilmore only need a certain number of points from this contest to take the crown.
New Zealands Paige Hareb is competing too, continuing her great success from Peru where she won the Silver medal at the ISA World Surfing Games narrowly missing out on the gold medal.
It looks like we should have a bit of East swell this week hopefully with out too many horrible north east winds. See you out there.
Blog for Learn to Surf School, 0800 80 SURF, based in Sumner, Christchurch, New Zealand.
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