John Mee – Some programmer in Sydney

Did you know that you can get sunburnt eyeballs? Maybe you do but its not the kind of thing I keep at the forefront of my memory. After three surfs on Sunday spanning 6am to 5pm – I was effectively in the water all day taking two breaks for food, water, and suncream – I now have sunburnt eyeballs. They’re red and sore and itchy.

It took an entire week – from New Years Eve to Today – but the surf is back to the normal sloppy hum-drum for this time of year. It was the longest period of sustained big swell I can recall and it was BIG. The camera (Nikon L3) is useless so sadly no photos (IXUS arrived today-yay) but there is this snapshot (below) of the reading from the Manly buoy showing a peak of over 7 meters.

The wind was a bit of an obstacle on friday/saturday, but on Saturday night, when the size was at its peak, it swung around the right way at 6:30pm and there were a few guys who scored an hour and a half of the bower rolling in at the biggest and cleanest I’ve ever seen it. I’m still regretting not getting down there. It was 7pm by time I decided how good it was and I talked myself out of it on the basis of by the time I got out there it would getting too close to dark to get more than two waves. I should’ve gone anyways because the fallback position – an early – was on everyone’s minds.

Between first light and sunrise over 30 guys (no gals) made their way out there. The swell had dropped to half the size overnight and was a bit lumpy… I wiped out twice and went in for breakfast. At 8:30 the crowd must’ve reached the same conclusion so I ventured back out to join the 10 out there, and stayed all day.

Still some swell around in truth, but you’ll have to go to the open beaches to get it.