Tropical Cyclone Pam in New Zealand - video
Yesterday Tropical Cyclone Pam delivered a one day wonder swell to New Zealand's north-east coast. Spots along the scenic but inconsistent Coromandel Peninsula fired under the big north-west swell with some people reporting solid 8' waves at exposed spots. However, the nature of the coast, with many headlands and protected beaches, meant there was a wide range of sizes.
This clip was filmed over the course of the day at a range of waves, some shot by drone, some from land.
Comments
the beachy breaks like a coldwater mooloolabah....
Underwhelming.
There was surely better waves on offer somewhere.
Always appreciate the entertainment though , so chur bro.
cheers man, i am just an amateur filming my home break, lugging my shitty gear through the rain, watching pro film guys with 10k lenses, while i sit with a towel wrapped around my old canon dslr and crappy sigma lens. the struggle is real. ha. chur for watching.
good stuff, enjoyed it
Yeah cool stuff "Flying Kiwi"...:)
Only if they did fly eh........!
there were a few of the boys flying yesterday
thanks amb
We did an awesome trip to NZ about 10 years ago and scored a dropping swell on the west coast and then chased an increasing swell around the Coromandel. We scored so many waves over a 10 day period. Great trip. Nice waves, cool locals in and out of the water, good food, cheap beer and beautiful scenery. NZ has it all.
sounds like we did a very similar trip around 10 years ago as well and had the exact same experience. fucking awesome country, awesome people, all around probably best surf trip ive ever taken. only drawback is the freezing cold water. would recommend it highly to anyone.
We went early March and never surfed in anything more than a springy. Mostly boardies. And probably the best surf trip I've ever done too.
i went in june or july for a month. freezing but swathes of swell. explored some of the logging tracks in the forests of the northland region in a rental car, fucked the car but found some pure gold!
Nice work Geoffrey, love ya style;)
Campervan Zen ?
Yep, Britz 4 birth. We used the dunny to store the boards.
Nothing like parking up, surfing your nuts off and then walking back to the van opening the fridge and cracking a Steinlager. Very civilised way to travel.
hahaha I did that from Perth to Sydney, got a fair share of awkward looks rolling into cactus with the ol' Britz!
You've just done more to sway me towards a NZ surf trip in the last two posts than a decade of TV adds showing jet boats and bungee jumping.
'93 wasted waves till infinity?
souls of mischief....
the pharcyde...
enjoyed the video keep em coming flyingkiwi
The waterman guys had their short board comp there too yesterday. Manoa 1st and Mark Visser 2nd
I showed a bloke this photo from my phone today in the carpark! straight off the bat he recognised this guy surfing there yesterday;)
What a freaking awesome backhand bottom turn.
Love NZ, love the country love the people. Did 4 weeks on the South Island 2 years ago. Didn't see surf like that, west coast pretty much flat. East good.
Those waves were hitting some of those guys for sex ....
"Those waves were hitting some of those guys for sex ...."
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Left the F out loyd !do you mean all the pitching's in the video;)
Yep.
NZ is rad
would move there in a flash if the missus was into it...
Would emphatically tell any surfers from OZ land to travel to their East Island for a surfing journey. Feb - Easter , even winter with big S-SW swells and Westerlies that roll up the East Coast.
IMO the North Island (Pig Island) have awesome long rocky point breaks, lefts and rights.
River mouths that you would love to surf, depending where you are, sometimes no-one out and pumping.
Pretty much a cruiser of a time, with people, waves, food, driving etc.
Just respect the environment by shitting in the right places;)
Pretty sure these fisherman don't surf :)
That's a wicked shot Welly. Looks awesome.
Far out, what a wave welly.
hey wally, was way way down on the west coast on the south island on one of those tourist boats and what should motor pass ... a rubber duckie with a guy in a wettie and a couple of boards coming in from the open ocean .... motor out into the open ocean and then down the coast and beach the rubber duckie and surf the wilderness! No crowds there.
Yeah Floyd, I know a few fellas that do the journey, no crowds just middgies (Sand Flies) and plenty of....
Have helicoptered into a place down there for 3 days, during summer, NE winds and 6ft sw swell, right hand point, camping and no crowds. A great journey never forgotten eh HARRO;)
That trip sounds amazing .... by chopper, crazy shit welly ........... Yeah, those sand flies. My legs were wasted with bites. Gunna walk in there shortly on the track followed by a week mountain biking around Wanaka.
Check this out welly ........
Haha funny as and a great run as well Floyd
A good mate of mine sent me that photo above, his brother back home sent it to him just to rub it in and say look what I have to deal with. Don't worry no one would have a clue where it is, cause many of these river mouths look the same and there's plenty of them;)
Sort of figure that's the sort of woman Hendrix had in mind when he penned Foxy Lady ........
How sharky is that spot with the salmon running Welly?
Not sure 50Y, You can't see them let alone ya feet sitting on ya board;)
This is the Sth Ilse East coast, further down in the Catlins, 25ft plus GWS are lurking around... :-(
I reckon the cold will get you before the GW's down that way anyway Welly that beach looks real West coast gravel
I reckon the cold will get you before the GW's down that way, anyway Welly that beach looks real West coast gravel. Bit of fire on the beach with a bottle port left warming for after the session problem solved
Heading over for a week on the 30th. Hopefully there's a bit of this going on!
You mean another one-in-ten-year swell event? Statistics would suggest otherwise.
Haha, nah definitely not that optimistic. Anything above rideable I'll be stoked with.
Nice wave wellymon lake ferry? Love NZ.
No but like many of them UN, Downsouth;)
I liked it, it looked like a day with normal surfers, taking on some tricky waves at the back end of the vid. Sure it's great to see Parko and Co surfing pumping Kirra or pro surfers at good snapper but this stuff is no doubt closer to most of our hearts. Awesome.
Nailed it. Normal surfers doing well on tricky waves. So much stoke from that video.
Did a solo trip last april, spaceship camper van, inconspicuous(bright orange with a rocket on the side)Awesome country and people, only did parts of the North Island, scored a certain bar on the east coast 4-6ft probably the highlight. Freedom camping is allowed many places, however in the Coro its not allowed and I got pinged $200 for staying overnight at a beach carpark in what was a basically deserted town, apart from that I'd go back again for sure, its not far away you know.
Really? $200? Must have changed since we went. We stayed pretty much in beach carparks or down bush tracks the whole time except midway through we stayed in a caravan park to re-fill the water tank and charge up the batteries to full. No worries at all, the rangers were all cool. We even had bonfires on the beach and other likeminded people would join us and have a few beers. The rangers just said no worries, clean up after ourselves as they'd be back in the morning to check. We did and all good.
We scored that special bar too (if it's the same one I'm thinking of) and got some really nice waves on the beachies just to the south of it. We also scored this sand bottomed point, have no idea the name but it wasn't really barrelling but heaps long rides from this tree lined point into a creek mouth where there was a caravan park. Big walls, open faced carves, 8 foot faces like a blank canvas. Never forget that place.
I'd go back there in a minute. Would love to snowboard there too. NZ rocks!
sweet clip, love ya work
I understand that Websites such as Swellnet,Coastalwatch etc need some content to viewers entertained between the forecasts,keep the advertisers happy & the like to keep the machine rolling along,but surely there can be some discretion from the editors when it comes to posting these kind of clips straight after a event or even at all.
Good on this the video guy for catching some memories for him & his buddies.I would assume he is a Kiwi & probably innocently sent the footage off to Swellnet out of genuine stoke....But Swellnet should take a hard look at themselves for using his clip straight away while the maps & forecasts are still fresh,telling the viewers the swell direction that struck & pretty much pinpointing the area these waves were filmed in (and even if that info was a decoy to throw people off the scent,Headlands and landmarks don't lie) These local based productions & such should stay just that..Within the locals eyes,something to gander at the local boardriders presso night,the local surf shop or their personal facebook page's at the very most...
Whatever happened to doing your own groundwork on the road,learning from the locals,paying your dues with them to earn a few waves & most of all keeping your mouth shut about places...One innocent clip might not seem like a lot,but in this age of cheap airfares & accurate forecasting,Strike missions are filling up spots with more crew of varied ability in the water & more filmers to document them and the crowding cycle just grows & repeats with each swell.Almost all the Australian websites are responsible for this "Fly in/Fly out then blow out the spot" mentality...Then bang the localism cycle starts or gets elevated...Websites such as Swellnet have a responsibility here when it comes to these sort of clips hitting their inboxes.These sites have a lot of reach that have major potential to crowd out spots that would of otherwise been off the radar....Lowkey & Fickle spots in WA,SA,Southern NSW (esp) & now NZ have been overexposed way too much in the couple of years.Spots that used to take years of knowledge can be worked out by a webclip & yesterdays surf report of the conditions.Spots that have 2 or 3 generations of locals that live for those rare days when the conditions line up.
I am not condoning the professional riders & film crews doing this sort of thing either for their various sponsor's marketing channels cause they invented it,but they do seem to do a much better job of keeping the footage,stills and stories under wraps till the next movie release,product campaign or print story long after the swell & the hype has passed...Something to ponder till the next swell.....
Really? Your concerned one video on Swellnet will tip off surfers that a 200 km stretch of coast being the Coromandel will have waves on a NE swell?
From what I see, the only reference to NZ is the Coromandel and not knowing the Coromandel outside of Hotwater and Whangamata, these spots could be anywhere. But hey, I assume surf2surf.co.nz & surf.co.nz and wannasurf and all these other website that a quick google search finds no mention of surf spots on the Coromandel.
Yep, go ahead and blame a vid on swellnet for crowds. Just curious, do you read forecasts on surfing or weather websites?
I doubt you're going to see an influx of FIFO surfers on the strength of this one clip.
Good to hear some discussion about this...I agree with Channel bottoms & zenagain that one web clip will probably not suddenly send a mass exodus of people to that area in NZ,but from what I have seen happen on the east coast of NSW (particularly on the Sth coast & no I wont be drawn into the spots in question out respect for the local crew...People who know the area well definitely know where...) one clip or wave of the day photo leads to another & before you know it at the hint of any favourable forecast
Spot's that used to have a small local crew & a few respected visitors on it when things lined up not 5-6 years ago,now have their carparks & access tracks full before dawn with Drones buzzing & Ski's stretching long established pecking orders to the limit,ignorant in leaving their trash in the dunes/bushlands or in one well known area's ancient indigenous middens..with both sides of the lenses all looking to get their 15 minutes,because they have a ready market to literally give away the images & footage to the masses on sites such as this which are after content.Something had to cause it and I think its pretty obvious to all where I am pointing my finger.
This generation of younger eager self promoting faux pro's & media are selling themselves short & ruining spots in the process for what ? A couple of hundred bucks at best for the filmer which might cover petrol & a couple of free wetsuits/clothes for the riders thinking they are the next big thing...There are avenues & waves to head to if your want coverage..ie go to the North Shore of Oahu in their winter or somewhere like Ours in Sydney where if you have the talent,balls & pay your dues with the local crew to earn your waves you will get your fame,Its not like there is no shortage of cameras at those spots & your not messing up a local communities chances at having a fun surf in good conditions when they arrive.Top level pros & their entourage's are usually well aware of this when filming in sensitive areas,plus they don't want the sessions leaked out with amateurs filming the talent,So they keep things hush hush & generally leave a small footprint if any of being there in the finished productions.
I am old school & the first to admit it...I generally take a look at these sites to just confirm what I think the Synoptic charts are pointing too...Wind data & the like,plus I would be lying if I said the cameras are not a godsend as indicators to how other places might be lining up for a surf away from the crowds.
There will be definitely times where if my son gets to a sponsored level in the water & wants to shoot at a spot that is fickle & sensitive to crowds,I will explain to him my views on this as I am doing now...I despise heavy & violent localism and dread the thought of him or his buddies being on the wrong side of it while travelling themselves in the future..But I have travelled through most of Polynesia & know that its not a good idea to ever film or shoot outside of the main headline breaks and Aotearoa is no exception...Why a Australian site decided to post a clip like this is beyond me...Hense my comments.
If someone sent a US based website such as Surfline or a US Magazine site a clip of outer Island Tahit'i,Kauai or even Japan during a Typhoon,it would never get shown...let alone with a intro that basically narrows down the area to a 100 miles & info about the swell..The editors would know better.
Whether your readers agree or disagree with me that's their prerogative...But I think websites should weigh up the impacts of posting local based content directly after a swell...Leave that up to the minute stuff for contests and the like.
Fair play Loose Lips, but personally I have been looking forward to footage. It's a 'want it now' generation and that's the problem.
I also look to correlate what actually gets dished up and what was forecasted and that's critical when you can't be there, (to have that footage straight away). We are viewing probably the best of the footage and making a judgement for yourself versus actually being there. It's pretty hard like cloudbreak last week making a call whether to go or not.
Personally it's important stuff for me anyway, trying to surf the very best of a break before I am too old hahaha.
Talking of Polynesia, here's one for you. Surfline has learnt their lesson when they put swell alerts up for Cortes Bank. They just lie. Its in Polynesia but it aint in Fiji.
http://www.surfline.com/surflinetv/featured-clips/wave-of-the-day-tim-st...
Haha wow wheres that;)
Fuck that's insane Mick!!! What a drop and barrel.
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Exactly mick-free....That's how to do it from that clip if you must film & post it.
Keep it short & sweet,the description's vague & trim away the footage when a landmark comes into frame of sensitive spots..Pretty simple really & everyone one wins for this generation & the next.
Nothing beats learning the knowledge of a new break from its locals or from crew that have put their time consistently in the line up..Respect always gets passed down the line to those who deserve it and nothing beats being able to visit spots & share a few quality waves with a clear conscious & no fear of your tires being slashed,gear being ripped off or worst of all,being physically intimidated & barred from spots just from too much digital attention being focussed on a area X on swell Y at exactly time Z..No one wants those consequences from overexposure but it happens & will only get worse.
We can do better than that as surfers & the media can do their bit as well to stop this oversharing/overexposing at a instant cycle with a bit of common sense...Forecasts are one thing but exposing spots with user-generated footage of various quality to validate them the day after is another.
Mick , I would hate to sound like a knob , but I feel compelled .
Fiji ain't in Polynesia , its Melanesian .
And I told Goofy that he'd want to make sure his back hand game was at its best .
okay so is Samoa Polynesia?
Yes . That's better . You'll find old mates Raoul & Wallis live near the border ! . But with greater circle path somewhere further east would have been cooking !
I kind of get your point LL but I think the genie got out of the bottle a few years back with the arrival of mobile phones. Every where I went on Monday guys were taking photos on their phones and obviously sending them to mates or whatever. Every surfer in the upper north island knows where those spots are and surfing nz was even running a comp at one of them. I couldn't believe the crowds just about everywhere and it was a rare swell event so obviously not much work got done. Personally I didn't have too much of a problem with it as those particular places are pretty well known. Like others I cant see too much FIFO stuff for a freak swell event. As far as pros rocking up and shooting photos, from what I've seen the mags are pretty discrete about actual location. All the groms at my local were stoked to have flores, dingo and noa deane and co turn up today.
I'm as keen for keeping quiet about my waves as the next pre-digital surfer but I can't help thinking that that attitude is officially dead. We've already had our waves.
MK1 I think there is a shit load of unsurfed spots out there, you just got to go search for them. Plus there were pumping spots in NZ that not many were on.
Loose Lips you would have to agree that Swellnet are pretty good at hiding headlands in there WOTD and you can only really pick it if you been there. But they have fuck all control on a video. There's many platforms to view the various clips, vimeo, gram, utube. At the end of the day SN is a media company and its audience were pretty interested in Pam and what she was going to produce.
I've been hassling for photos from the boys that were there that day, but they are saying they didn't get any haha.
Dont worry no one on here actually surfs
What about Red Bull Loose Lips...?
&sns=emPlenty of headlands in this.
A good mate had to deal with this yesterday surfing the same wave....?
Wankers, absolute wankers , fuckwits absolute fuckwits, ultimate wankerman exposing spots like that in detail, officially horrified. I would say some dunnos boys would be filthy on that vid. Fuckin cunts
That's about the sum total that " Non - Endemic" sponsors care for the workings of the surfing world.... Fuck all.
Wait to you see where Dirk Ziff and Paul Speaker take us.....
PS I have no idea where....I'm just letting it hang there whilst dramatic music plays to signify evil intent.
Shit Welly, that was fucked up. "ultimate waterman competition" these fuck stains know no limit to their self promotion and BS. Just get a fukn repping job like every other borderline contest surfer who didn't quite make it and stop blowing spots.
Yeah all fair points made by poo-man,Mk1,mick-free,wellymon..and after seeing Surfline what posted yesterday..I am eating a large piece humble pie about my thinking on their editorial stance too.
http://www.surfline.com/surf-news/gold-coast-and-new-zealand-see-days-of...
There is about a $100 difference between flights to Auckland & the Gold Coast from Sydney at this point in time...NZ is just too close to a major population base across the Tasman & too small to handle this sort of attention being thrust on it,regardless if this was a 1 in 10 year swell event.
Look at what the Mentawai's have become & lets not even begin about Bali...But thats another story which I am sure has been well trodden by many a comments page on many a website.
I guess there is just no shame anymore when it comes to keeping places lowkey,I guess the legend of how & why Puni's Farm was named that by one of NZ's first shooters has been lost on this generation of shutterbugs & the next probably will not even comprehend the concept of what Logan Murray was trying to do balancing his love of photography & protecting his subject's beauty.But that was then & this is now I guess.
Its a good story,Look it up sometime.Thats enough from me..I have said my 5cents & now going for my daily dose of saltwater therapy :)
G'Day LL,
I'm the editor and content manager on Swellnet so just about every photo or video that gets posted passes across my desk. I have final say in how things get described and I i'd like to assure you that Swellnet has a pretty tight self-enforcement policy of not naming breaks. In one sense that policy doesn't serve us well, I can look around at our competitiors and each one of them is more explicit with exposing location names. Every single one of them. It galls me, but it gets the eyeballs so I can understand why they do it.
But at the same time, all three of us at Swellnet have spent a lot of time travelling for waves, and although Ben (the owner) and I have slowed down temporarily cos of kids, there'll soon be a time when we're on the road again and I'd like to think we'd be welcome at all the places we've run photos of. In a great many cases I doubt even locals - or certainly no-one beyond locals - would be aware we've even run photos of particular waves.
For great waves I rarely go beyond regional descriptions i.e 'South Coast', 'West Coast', 'Tassie', and sometimes not even that. Plus I'll always try to remove landmarks or features (number plates) that might betray a location. I'm sitting on a shit hot photo of a secret spot in Tasmania right now, however I can't run it as in the backgound is a distinct island that would give it away. (Hope you're reading this Floyd).
The line between running a shot and not is a blurry one - what some think is cool, others don't - so it feels like a continual work in progress. But we're always open to feedback, either here in the comments or via my email (stuart@swellnet.com.au) and we're always willing to learn. The example you raised (about a vid so soon after a swell event) will absolutely be considered in future.
Hope you got a few waves today - uncrowded of course.
Stu
Pity you can't stop people pasting links with intimate details of locations. I know not many people will travel to the spot exposed by ultimate wankerman in the south island as it is spot not easily accessible unless you feel like paddLing half a kilometer around very shark water. The other way to access this spot is dodgy as fuck scramble down cliffs to a very sketchy jump off rock if big.
I spent 5 years on that coast and that wave is fickle as fuck as big north swells are not real common.
When I was shown that wave I was sworn to secrecy as it was not real well known or surfed much. It WAS a secret. Which leads me to believe the scene down there has changed dramatically sine I was there 20 years ago.it took years to learn the south coast of dunners as the locals back then weye staunchly protective of there waves. That northern dunners coast is not littered with waves like ultimate wanKerman suggests. There is only a couple of setups amongst some of the sharkiest coast in NZ. Jumbo surprise is lurking and is said to be a Solid 7 metre or bigger pointer. This coast is not for the faint hearted with bull kelp the size of trees and water that's dips to 7 degrees in winter.
It seems a great shame to us because we were raised on the leave nothing but foot prints/mystical remote sessions but looking at it another way - a wider array of people getting to enjoy the experience of surfing and bringing to it a more social attitude of group enjoyment. That's a good thing right? Right??? (echo, echo, echooo)
It's greatly appreciated the effort that Swellnet puts in to maintain the culture of discretion Stu.
It not only prevents immediate revelation of spots, it also creates an environment that says there is an alternative to the wholesale sell out of quiet locations . Which is going completely against the grain of modern surf media.
I agree regards your competitors , which is why I'll take Swellnet over the rest of them put together .