Forecast that…!

Waves are not so easy to understand.

The date was one easy to be remembered, I certainly will for a long time. The night before had not shown promising conditions after a thorough look at surf forecasting websites. Changing wind directions and even more erratic, apparently absurd, hourly swell direction changes. The forecasts did not know what to show, Mother Nature has been here a few billion years and you don’t just figure it out in the last half an hour.

The morning surf check at Baleal revealed a too low tide, slightly crossed shore winds but some decent lines coming in. The sets just seemed to lack that extra punch to avoid the too many inside closeouts. Looked like just a little bit of this or that would be enough, what exactly is the difficult part to forecast. Still it was enough to send me in and try and catch a good one in between a lot of mediocre other ones. The feeling during the morning session was of a sessions that could be good if the conditions would have been slightly different.

Later that day about 3 hours before the longest night of the year started, I checked the same spot. Again the conditions were not looking special, by then a too high tide seemed to be the problem. But the feeling of an underlying potential was obvious when a set rolled over, so I went in. First hour was annoying, too many surfers for too less waves. Lots of not big enough sets with an occasionally too big sweeping the lineup, again the feeling that something was missing to make it all come together. I nearly came out when a longer ride took me closer to the beach. Perhaps because most of the crowd was meanwhile leaving or because that particular ride made me think that classic surfer thought, “just one more wave…”I stayed and paddled out to enjoy that last hour of light.

By then the tide was nearly halfway and going down. The wind just aligned perfectly and what was too much side shore turned into the perfect light offshore breeze. The sun went down and somewhere the light of a nearly full moon was now obvious on the sky and the clouds all around. Maybe the alignment of the Sun, Moon, and Earth was now the best. The gravity influence over the development of a swell is known but perhaps a process too complex to put in a model. Maybe the right tide and wind together, wind and currents have great influence on the wave’s propagation, oceanic rogue waves are still a mystery oceanographers try to understand, seems that part if not most of it is just about large swells against incoming currents.

For the next hour each 15min delivered a solid set with some 4 or 5 waves with the later one just hitting the reef absolutely perfect; right size, period, direction. Right wind direction, right wind intensity. Each set better than the one before, with silky smooth rides from takeoff to kick out, perfect. No crowd. I just had one of the best sessions ever on that spot, totally out of…nothing. Meanwhile it was dark and time to leave but in my imagination I could not ignore that in the water a classic session was still on.

Will I ever understand what happened? No. But perhaps I will keep an eye on those not so special days when forecasts don’t tell you much. You never know what reward Neptune might have for dedication.

Text: Marcos Bairros Photo: Sandra Stubenvoll