Weekend Wave Wrap: Festival of the Winds

The Festival of the Winds was on this weekend in Bondi. For those who don’t know – that ‘s the day when shite loads of families come to overtake Bondi to fly kites. The organisers could have not picked a better weekend. The wind was about 20-30 knots out of the WSW.

Albeit sunny, despite rain forecast for Saturday, it was freeeeeezing. The good news: with the cold and the freezing WSW winds, a south swell hit our beaches too. Bondi had about 4ft yesterday. I could not get myself to surf though. It was a case of talking myself into the idea that it was not as good as it looked just because I did not want to brave the cold.

Another surf check early this morning…surf was bigger than yesterday. A good  5ft with the occasional 6ft set coming in. On the high tide, it seemed that Bondi was holding up ok and above all I spotted a school of dolphins. 10 min later, I was out there on the middle bank with only 2 other guys out (which says a lot i.e. surf’s shit really). I only had a few waves.  Bondi simply can’t handle more than 3ft …So the rest of the time I spent dodging big sets coming out of nowhere and trying to find the dolphins. Eventually, they showed up again. There were so many of them.  And even though I did not catch many waves (understatement of the day), it was all worth it once more. Sitting out there with the dolphins and seeing hundreds of rainbows in the spray created by the offshore winds. Another day I was happy to be a surfer and it eased the pain when I was trying to ‘unfreeze’ my toes under a hot shower after my morning session.

It looks like it’s gonna be a good week wave wise … A new South swell is supposed to arrive tomorrow morning.  Probably too big again for Bondi to hold up but by Wednesday it should be surfable again. Yay.