Tag: Sessions

Indian winter

Dirk, Petra, Ruth, Qumaira, Stéphanie, Tini, Ulla, continuous flow of deep lows over the North Atlantic these days has finally set up a week of swell in the med. You can also score great waves here, like anywhere else, tracking the swell where it goes. There’s usually a lot of driving involved and a bit of luck as well. Nothing worthwhile ever comes easy.
Normally, we do trips to tropical places, this one was a surf trip at home: long road ahead, heat, sun and pumping waves, all this in the midst of the indian med winter.

Cleopatra

Hard to be excited about the last days of swell while many people are affected by the aftermath of “cyclone Cleopatra” which has severely hit the island of Sardinia last week. High water temperatures in the Mediterranean sea have created the conditions for a low pressure system to take up enough energy and organize itself into an extratropical storm. This combined with a slow moving center produced extreme rainfall over a localized area. The equivalent of six months of rain affected Sardinia in less than twenty four hours causing massive flooding, significant damage and the death of 16 people. Italy declared a state of emergency after what turns out to be one of the largest natural disasters over there.
However, this kind of storm is not unusual, even in the Mediterranean. Dramatic weather conditions happen each year especially in the fall/winter season. Meanwhile, a clean swell also pulsed a bit with fun uncrowded waves to enjoy somewhere.

The calm before the storm?

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season, which forecasters had predicted would be a very active season with six to nine hurricanes, turns out to be one of the calmest on record. Although the number of storms is above average, their intensity hasn’t matched the forecasts. September is generally the most active month of the hurricane season, with the average peak in activity occurring on September 10. The season to date has produced nine named storms of which two have become hurricanes. So far, there has been no major hurricanes of Category 3 or greater. Some experts assume this could be due to a lot of dust and dry air blowing off the Sahara, bringing unfavorable conditions for nascent storms to organize.
Late starts are not unusual. Last year, the season was an average one until when Sandy became a Category 3 hurricane that wrecked the U.S. shores around Halloween. So is it sort of the calm before the storm, or an objection to those theories on global warming causing extreme weather?
What is sure is that we’re still far from confident knowledge in climate physics and prediction. Meanwhile there has been a few days of decent swell lately, but that’s a little below September standards of consistency.

Dead fish

Over-inflated people react, they don’t act. They have no firm hold on their emotions. I found this out years ago from a well known elite academy where I properly observed the ability of these places to be a spot for definitely a few bright minds, but also for a number of wealthy short-minded characters who haven’t got it all figured out. Taking oneself too seriously is probably a part of the problem, lack of life humbling experience is probably the other one. These conceited people deserved a post lately, because this viewpoint is proving to be relevant again. Stimulating environments with great minds are also places full of self-righteous over inflated clowns. They can’t separate, it’s like the other side of the coin. The trouble with them, apart from blowing hot hair and whining all the time, is they also tend to offer cheap lessons to blur their lack of perspective. If you are a folk somewhat a little outside the box, you will inevitably pull at their nerves at some point. You would be surprised how far their bad faith and frustration-directed extend. Not that I really care, I haven’t given a damn to outside opinions for some time now. However there should be an international “asshole” day to recall these specimen to relax a little bit and stop fucking around.

I am not devoting my time to my job. I feel sorry for those guys who do and become pretty frustrated with that. Life is short, there’s a lot more to experiment and following roads that do not lead to Rome is a great (though badly viewed) path forward. I love to waste big amounts of time, like for example to find my monthly share of real waves. Everything comes at a price but the payoff is worth it. Last time was a little bigger, the sun was out and it was nice. As I like to surf hollow waves with a 5’6 fish, I ended up eating a good amount of sand. That’s part of the fun. That’s how the game is out there.

Yes we Cannes

A promising frontal system with gusty SSE winds was expected earlier this month. It finally set up a large swell that rather hit Spain and the western breaks of the french mediterranean. Despite all maps showing 8ft+ on our shores days earlier, it ended up small wrecked by the wind. However here you know the best forecasts result in shitty waves all the time so you learn to appreciate what you have. You can’t really judge from the photo, but it’s 3 foot double-ups and closeouts. Good from afar, far from good, but it was the only game in town.

Declaration of dependence


I am by no means considering myself a core surfer. Surfing isn’t really in my blood, it’s hard to catch a big wave in the Mediterranean. However, there is a kind of addiction in it which is difficult to resist and even more to explain. “Only a surfer knows the feeling”, the usual expression, is a rather grotesque slogan over exploited by corporate advertising bulshit in the unique goal to sell clothes. I guess the reasons have better to do with some kind of perfect visions of nature and the connection that comes from playing with them. I have already spent a fair amount of energy in search of this over the years, sometimes until far remote places of the world. I turned 40 the other day and it seems that getting enough is not for tomorrow. Despite the colossal waste of time it is, like Dora used to say, I intend to keep on doing this for a while, probably as long as I can in fact.

Understand kids?