Re surf reports
Ludwig Omachen
>From: m...@trlamct.trl.oz.au (Michael Flower)
>
>Brian sounds like a Cretin.
>Ludwig sounds like he is constantly wearing magnifying, rose colored glasses.
>
>
>Michael Flower
>Artificial Intelligence Systems Email: m.fl...@trl.oz.au
>Telecom Research Laboratories Voice: +61 3 541 6179
>Melbourne, AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 3 543 8863
>
It's great too see some input at last from some of the other
locals (Australian) that must be out there, keep up the good work,
this newsgroup needs a little more traffic, but how about some topics
that are of more interest to this world wide network.
Here are a few facts regarding the Bells surf reports which may
clarify a few things, and hopefully put out the flames.
The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
the conditions in the area, first thing in the morning, so that
together with their local knowledge of the breaks they surf, and the
tide and weather conditions, they can make a decision as to whether
it's worth the trip or not.
In years gone by, when we had to drive down from Melbourne for a surf
we would have given our right arms, well almost, for any sort of half
accurate report, would have saved a few thousand gallons of petrol,
not to mention the frustration of wasted surf trips.
(for those not familiar with Melbourne/Torquay, it's about a one
to one and a half hour trip each way)
As I check out Bells/Winkie each day for my own benefit anyway,
passing this info on each morning is not much of a hassle, if someone
makes use of it, great, if not, it's no skin of my nose.
(At least it's stirred a few of our unknown locals into contributing
to this quiet newsgroup :-) )
I have no interest in making glorified claims for the surf or
conditions, or on the other hand playing things down to keep the
crowds away.
The surf report gives the conditions at the time indicated, usually
between 7:30 and 8:00 am., don't extrapolate and assume conditions
will be the same all day unless you have some local knowledge.
Anyone with a little local knowledge will know that conditions here
can alter rapidly as the day progresses, and that during most of our good
surf season, ie autumn & winter, the weather conditions during early
morning (the first hour or two after sunrise) are such that more
often than not the wind is a light offshore west to northwesterly,
regardless of what the forecast is for the rest of the day.
ie, the early bird gets the worm !!!. There are heaps of days
when you can get an hour or two of great conditions very early,
and then the rest of the day is useless , unless you have enough local
knowledge to find the few breaks that work in not so ideal
conditions.
It's no good coming down for a surf at lunctime and expecting the
conditions to be the same as the early report indicates, unless the
weather conditions are still the same, that's for you to work out from
the weather report's and your own local knowledge.
The tides obviously, also play an important factor, there's no point in
complicating the report, if you surf in the area you will be able to
make your own assesment of which breaks will be working or not
under the different tides.
For those that dont surf the area it's not relavent.
As for the size of the waves, the relative to body size seems to be
the only one most people can relate to without local knowledge of the
waves, it's easy enough to translate that to whatever system you are
comfortable with. The thread on measuring wave sizes that occured in
this newsgroup some time ago seemed to lead to that conclusion.
I don't think anyone that has a serious interest in surfing will be
naive enough to think that a specific report, for a particular break,
at a particular time of day is going to apply for the whole day, for
every break in the area, at all tide conditions.
(The "rose colored magnifying glasses" may apply to the reader
if the report is not tempered with some of what I thought would be
the more obvious factors to take into consideration)
I dont like crowds any more than the next person, but
as Scott Thomas pointed out, they are a
fact of life and are not worth going to war over.
STOP READING HERE, LIFE HISTORY FOLLOWS.
Here are a few personal fact's for what they are worth.
My brother's, friends and I have been surfing this stretch of coastline
since 1964, starting off with balsa planks, and going through
all the various designs that have come and gone.
I have a twenty year old son, and he has no respect for his
old man, insist's on surfing better and pulling off all these
rad moves in front of me :-).
We've lived here at Bells (about 3 KM away) for the last 10 years,
and check out the surf most days, morning and late afternoon if it's a
work day. If there's any swell we'll get a wave either morning or
evening during weekdays, and if it's good we sometimes get 3 two hour
sessions in on a saturday and/or sunday.
I design, (on computer), shape, glass and finish all the boards our
group rides, and do custom boards for others.(A legit. very small business
with no delusions about expanding or advertising, this being an
exception)
The boards I'm riding at present are all thrusters, from 6'4"
, 6'8", 7'0" to a 7'6" gun.
I'm no hellman in big waves, around double overhead is my limit these
days, except for a few spots where the waves are a bit softer.
After 27 years of surfing I still get the kick out of it that I did
when I started, hope it's the same for all the rest of you out there.
Cheers all, keep surfing and don't get too uptight.
Lud.
Colas Nahaboo
writes:
> The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
Then restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
Can you imagine what this group would become if everybody just posted surf
reports daily for his spots worldwide!!! (especially mine would be quite
distressing... flat, flat, flat :-))
And don't bother for the crowd... Bells is not on my way to work in the
morning!
John Gillespie
> > The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
>
> Then restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
No way! I enjoy reading about what could be were I there. Keep the
reports coming. Is there a N. Calif. surfer out there who can post
regularly?
Dan B. Kasha
surf reports form .au, california, wherever. Especially the interesting
one that comes around once in a while. Could I suggest a flag if it
is a great or interesting report, like
********************************************************
Hurricane bringing biggest waves seen since 1987
********************************************************
Dan K.
(begineer surfer with not many waves near by, but the windsurf season
is but one month away!)
Colas Nahaboo
Kasha) writes:
> If I lived in a land locked state, I would still love to read the
> surf reports form .au, california, wherever.
I ***LOVE*** to hear people speak of their sessions here too!!!
But reports as:
> Surf: Small inconsistent waves, knee to waist high, one
> shoulder high set in 25 mins.
are not worth sending worldwide, no?
Robert Kieffer
A couple of things...
Point 1:
Personally, I get a modicum of vicarious pleasure out of hearing the various
surf reports. I live in Los Angeles, but still read the reports from
Australian, "East Coast", San Francisco, and other parts unknown, even if it
just a glance at the wave height and water temp... There is also the occasional
commentary that makes each report interesting (I find it hard to believe you
haven't been hanging on Nigel's every word as he tries to fix his van! :^) )
Point 2:
This news group barely gets enough traffic as it is (I average around 5
postings a day at my site) so I don't think we have to worry about being
inundated with reports from around the world. The argument that the reports
waste network bandwidth won't hold water either... these reports are a couple
hundred bytes at most... insignificant in comparison with news groups such as
"alt.binaries.pictures", "alt.sex.pictures", or cummulative traffic of the
"comp.sys.xxx" groups.
Point 3:
If the reports get in the way of your perusing this group, just drop "eport" in
your kill file.
Just my $.02 worth...
Bob Kieffer
TRW, Redondo Beach, CA
Bentley Roberts
In article <18...@sol.deakin.OZ.AU>, lud...@cm.deakin.oz.au (Ludwig Omachen)
writes:
> The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
In reply to Lud, Colas Nahaboo writes,
>Then restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
>Can you imagine what this group would become if everybody just posted surf
>reports daily for his spots worldwide!!! (especially mine would be quite
>distressing... flat, flat, flat :-))
>And don't bother for the crowd... Bells is not on my way to work in the
>morning!
Personally Colas I enjor reading about other surf spots around the world, hearing if there going off there face or not. I think its good to hear what different countries are like for surf and how often they have surf. You never know when you might want to break out of your little shell and venture off into the big wide world on a surf safari spectacular. Reading what the surf is like in other countries (especially ones you might plan to visit) helps you to gain some local knowledge (limited as it may be
) before you even get there.
If there are people out there posting reports locally only, then how about sending them to the world. With the volume of traffic in this news group I don't think we will be flooded with news items, however if we were then we could start up a group alt.surfing.reports. Come on everyone I got some epic surf adventures to plan and need some knowledge of comditions around the world. On that note, how about some of you guys that have been on some good surf trips tell us about them.
Does anyone else out there have an optinion on this, if so let us know.
Keep on Surfin doods
Bentley
/--\
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/ /
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(Well it sort of looks like a wave)
Colas Nahaboo
Roberts) writes:
> Personally Colas I enjor reading about other surf spots around the world,
> hearing if there going off there face or not. I think its good to hear what
> different countries are like for surf and how often they have surf.
I didn't say I wasn't travelling around and wanting information. Just that
looking at day-to-day reports do not bring you any info for this, you have
better ask a local for a general appreciations.
For instance, on my favorite break, Hossegor in France, I can tell you that June
is fickle but can be good with NO CROWDS (This year I had dream sessions with
some guy "Tom Curren" in the water...), July can have good days, but can be
flat, August is too windy, but generally have a swell towards the 15th, and
september-october being prime months, september crowded and october with bigger
waves but risk of storms.
This kind of info is what you need for your trip, not a day-to-day report that
you won't pay attention to. For instance, I like June because you can be in the
water at 6am, making you surf alone for 3 hours in glassy tubes!!!, but be
warned that some years I didn't surf for a whole week due to rain & storms.
This year I was lucky, the locals didn't have any day for months before I
arrived, and the swell came in the first day I was there!
This kind of info is NOT given by day-to-day reports!
Keep the surf stories and dream sessions rolling! Forget the "rainy, no waves,
50 guys out" surf reports!
Thomas David Mills
>> ... restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
and Bob Kieffer replied:
>Personally, I get a modicum of vicarious pleasure out of hearing the various
>surf reports. I live in Los Angeles, but still read the reports from
>Australian, "East Coast", San Francisco, and other parts unknown, even if it
>just a glance at the wave height and water temp.. There is also the occasional
>commentary that makes each report interesting...
>Bob Kieffer
>TRW, Redondo Beach, CA
Hear, hear Bob.
I, too, enjoy hearing about other peoples surfing conditions around the world,
and sit and daydream about visiting Bells one day to experience their
double-overhead and glassy perfection they so often seem to have.
Keep it coming, I say.
Someone else wrote in and mentioned the usefulness of the reports to those
who do not live near the coast. I think we can all relate to that; I know
my biggest phone bill in 2 years was when I first learned of a 1-900-surf-report
that covered North Carolina beaches. I live 2 hours away from the closest beach,
and spend a lot of effort trying to get an accurate report from a multitude of
sources, and at the same time try to decipher the patterns on the Weather
Channel.
Incidentally, to U.S. readers, did anyone catch the letter sent in to
Surfer and Surfing magazine saying everyone should write to the Weather
Channel and request they do a swell report? (right after the tropical update,
perhaps, ;-) ). Not a bad idea.
Good waves to all
-Tom
S. Loring Thomas
>In article <18...@sol.deakin.OZ.AU>, lud...@cm.deakin.oz.au (Ludwig Omachen)
>writes:
>> The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
>Then restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
This rather defeats the reports objective of providing some type of global
knowledge of surf conditions. You aren't being forced to read these reports
if you don't choose to. Personally, I enjoy hearing how the surf is in Ludwig's
neck of the woods (even though it is a bit out of the way of work). I have
trouble believing that the surf can be so bad where you are, Colas, that hearing
of others' great days of surfing can be that depressing. I find a smallamount
of consolation knowing that, somewhere, someone is actually having a good surf,
despite the rather meager summertime conditions here in Santa Barbara. I urge
all of you to keep up the report postings for better or worse. I'll take
vicarious pleasure over depression anytime.
Scott Thomas
Santa Barbara
Bill Dubeau
Does anyone on the OR coast have access to this conference? What I have in n
mind is an informal network of surfers willing to post surf reports and other
beach news for our favorite beaches. My friends and I are hoping that perhaps
some of the shops on the coast might get an acct. here and provide surfing news surf reports, coming events, SALES, etc... Just think of the PR and good karma you'll receive! Anyway, I'm hoping I'm not the only surfer in the state that reads this conference and that other inland surfers are interested in this kind of information. So come on, waddaya say? T
Thanks, nks
Bill l
-
Robert J. Stratton
>writes:
>> The report's intention is to give any "local" surfers a snapshot of
>
>Then restrict the distribution of your messages to ".au"!!!
>Can you imagine what this group would become if everybody just posted surf
>reports daily for his spots worldwide!!! (especially mine would be quite
>distressing... flat, flat, flat :-))
I think reports from various locales are *great*. I've already learned
a lot about condition in Australia from Ludwig's reports, and have
even used them in planning potential trips.
If everyone posted reports for their spots worldwide, I, for one,
would consider the Net a better place. Besides, I'd bet that my
dailies would be flatter than yours! :-)
--
Bob Stratton |
Stratton Systems Design| SMTP: st...@ai.mit.edu, bstr...@hns.com
Alexandria, Virginia | PSTN: +1 301 409 2703
"Personally, I think the DNS administrative interface was designed by the IRS."
Colas Nahaboo
writes:
> I have
> trouble believing that the surf can be so bad where you are, Colas, that
> hearing
> of others' great days of surfing can be that depressing.
I meant the opposite. Starting the day with reading in alt.surfing about a great
session IS great, wandering through mediocre reports is not.