Watch: Snapper From The Air And Sea
The stars aligned at Snapper Rocks yesterday when a strong easterly trade-swell combined with a fresh slug of hard-packed sand resulted in heaving barrels from behind the rock.
An overperformer in terms of quality, put down to the kick in period, along with the recent littoral sand drift from the south-east.
Surf Today and Craig Halstead captured all the action including the heavy crowds from both the sand and air
Comments
So hectic. Surfing would never be a fun and/or relaxing experience on the Goldie. Shitshow.
Spot on @ walkar
The Superwank.
The shinning example of how to completely fuck aloha in the rear end.
The title of the second video is a dead set lie? Pumping implies you can catch waves doesn't it? Not just sit and watch. 3-4 waves per set with 200+ people... Do the math, if you feel like being depressed.
I can assure you it's even more depressing/stressful than it looks. I live 10 mins drive from it but won't touch it. Check out some of the hectic near-misses on social media. Plenty of dark on the flip-side of those shinny vids
Geez so many point break whingers in the forecast notes this week. I'm loving this run of waves.
It is literally one of the best waves in the world set on the 6th largest city in the country, what do you expect?
Yeah some sessions can be madness and frustrating, but all it takes is one good one and its all worth it. Also swell period means your chances of a decent one are often way superior to many quality indo breaks with a fraction of the crowd, but with only 1 set every 15 minutes and nothing in between.
Yeah the videos don't tell the full story and yes there's not a whole lot of order, but there's a reason so many punters take it on, if you're in the right place at the right time you can score waves that people living in the majority of surf zones around the world could only dream of, whilst wearing boardies!
Bring on the next 5 days!
Exactly.
I can’t deal with a crowd like behind the rock, so I don’t, but I understand the appeal and aren’t gonna complain about it.
There’s a few patches of sand down the point that I can still luck into a screamer though.
Completely agree, I'll often start up there (well not behind the rock but at Snapper) but can tell within 5min what my chances are and if they are extremely low I'll float down the line and hopefully luck a screamer somewhere between Rainbow and Cooly.
You're' dreaming to think you'll get a wave of this quality to yourself, so no use complaining.
I would'nt agree on the quality being superior to Indo breaks, nor the crowd being a fraction. Not to mention a hectic sweep which is rarely a factor in Indo. Snapper is undoubtedly a shitshow and one looses patience/hope with it as one ages especially. Leave it for young fools.
Amen Smorto. Funny, the local crew still get their share. The sooks can not come, I'm fine with that!
Mate I get such a satisfying number of stress free, hollow shacks down my way, it’s just a head fuck TBH. It’s an incredible wave and I love watching the highlights of swells up that way, but the spectacular survival of the fittest//agro scenario is hard to wrap my head around. I grew up in Sydney so it’s not an unknown. It’s certainly entertaining.
It isn’t like other waves it is one of the few places that can handle that many people. The short period swells and the definition of the bank making every wave that hits it ridable, combined with ideal conditions aligning for sometimes weeks at a time from dawn to dusk means there are way more opportunities for surfers than other places. Snapper and Kirra get all the air time but the reality is the wave is so long and you can always find sections, even on the busiest days where gaps form in the crowd and there is opportunity to get a premium quality wave. The longer the swell continues everyone is often wrecked and more and bigger gaps tend to appear. The waves in Goldy are obviously superior quality to alot of the rest of the country, I find the people that sook abouy Goldy are usually just feeling insecure about the shittyness of their local spot in comparison… 10 people at a tide affected reef in Vicco can imo be pound for pound be more crowded than 200 at Superbank
Exactly Bren your point about Vicco is what I was trying to say about Indo as 300 guys spread across the superbank with a short period swell is often better than 15 guys huddled around a tiny takeoff spot on an Indo reefbreak.
Also the sweep is a good (and bad) thing, stops guys paddling straight back to the top of the lineup, requires run-arounds, means you've got to be fit and means most guys can't do multiple 3 hour sessions day after day like what you can do in Indo.
Incredible how much sand transport there has been in this last swell event.
The drone angle kinda accentuates how absurdly round Snapper really is at the moment.
More drone angles please
PS: Hows the throng ??
Excuse my ignorance and perhaps this is for another thread, but looking at the footage and it shows so many boards covered in the big surf company's logos with surfers of good ability, not great QS ability, let alone CT ability. More so i see this in the big surfing centres, Vicco Surfcoast included. Which leads me to this question, why do the likes of Callum ROBSON and a few other pros not have the backing of a recognised major surfing brand when an average surfer (i'm talking Vicco) seems to have sponsors plastered over their respective boards?
There's a dozen possible threads we could go down, but the simple version is that the surf industry ain't like it was twenty years ago.
Most recently: https://www.swellnet.com/news/surfpolitik/2023/04/01/quiksilver-and-bill...
BTW, a sticker on a board doesn't signify anything these days.
Tell me about it.
When I was a grom I was simultaneously sponsored by Ripcurl, Billabong, Quiksilver, Repco, Just Jeans and Silvios Dial-a-pizza.
All covering my dings.
Groms of average ability that get through a few heats at the local boardriders all put the stickers on there boards. Might get 20% off deal. If they start to show some more promise and get through the odd QS heats they might get abit more offered. Companies building relationships early in case they turn into a star.
Never surfed snapper…looks stressful
That fat doucebag dropping and trying to fade the guy at 2:18. Thought it was Occy on first glance as he loves doing the same thing
Great videos thanks for the camera, editing and posting work. Im so glad I was elsewhere...
If half the crowd start a local Surf Gamblers Anon (SGA) group, we could sponsor polite surfers.
Alternately;
Apply SS Drift theory; apparently can be effective in rip currents or
consult your local Kahuna 'masters' (eg. Doctors, craftsmen, artists, massage therapist, etc)
& try a surfboard called "Escape" when the crowds & rip are huge ie be somewhere else .
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kahuna
Wtf
I gotta put some code in to watch the vid?????????????
On with the body count , the wave is world class when on but these days I complain if there’s 6 blokes on my bank, its not for old grumpy fks
This clip is quite entertaining.
Don't be that guy who goes for a cutback without looking over his shoulder first (2:12)