by intrepid » Sun Feb 03, 2013 5:18 am
The morning greeted us without a breaking wave, but the buoys reported a swell bump coming. Contest organizers opted to run the SUP exhibition first to allow the conditions to improve for the competition.
The first of four 45 minute preliminary heats began around 10:30, with a few set rolling through, and then it seemed to go flat again. The judges, as per the agreed upon format, made the decision to extend the time for heat one. Communication with spectators and surfers on the beach was somewhere between zero and nearly non-existent. I overheard one lady on the beach ask if there were whales out there, as if to explain the crowd of people watching the ocean.
I was able to follow what was going on through information passed along by surfers out in the water. (Peter Mel did a great job sending out live updates from the channel, and Will Skudin was pretty easily accessible by cell phone.) Heat one finally ended sometime before noon. Contest organizers were in the process of calling off the entire competition, following heat one, when a couple sets rolled through. From then on, the heats went nearly non-stop through the finals.
The reef held the swell through the rest of the competition, and good waves were rode by many. Although the waves were 15-20 feet, the guys I talked to seemed pretty stoked on what was out there. With nearly no spectators left on the beach, the finals heat concluded around 5. After all was said and done Jamie Sterling came in first, followed by Greg Long and Gabriel Villaran in second and third respectively. Rusty Long was voted by fellow competitors to have caught the biggest wave of the day.
Pictures will start to trickle out in the next few days.
Last edited by
intrepid on Sun Feb 03, 2013 7:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.