Late last week an ocean-wide storm crossed the Atlantic, slamming into the Portuguese coastline. The storm force winds blew out Nazare so surfers scattered to the north and south; places close enough to cop some ocean fury, but distant enough to escape the inclement weather.

For Ross Clarke-Jones this meant Morocco, where he joined a crew planning to surf a wild open ocean bommie - a Euro version of Cortes Bank. And for RCJ, being the glutton he is, Morocco wasn't enough so he then jetted from there to Ireland to surf maxing Mullaghmore.

From here Ross takes over the story...

I touched down last Friday in Morocco and drove to the location from there. Jerome Sahyoun and Axi Munian organised everything: boats, skis...you name it! 

We left in the dark and motored out to sea. I can't tell you if it was a harbour, river, or port - we were sworn to secrecy!

Two hours later we woke up on the boat to...god knows how big these massive barrelling peaks were. At a modest guess I'd say they were 35-to-40 foot on the old school scale. 

It was pumping. The wind was perfect.

The biggest waves broke way out the back, they weren't as steep as the inside, which had intense barrels. From out the back all the way to the inside was probably a 500 metre ride. And so much power!

There was another reef further out that was even bigger. It must have been 50 foot plus. We went went out and tried to get one but it refused to break while we were out there. The tide must have come in and or the swell dropped.

I was riding a 5'10" tow board shaped by Maurice Cole board with C-Drive fins. The board weighed 10 kilograms.

The offshore wind started increasing by the time we got into it. The chops up the face on the right were really challenging, while the left was like butter. I wished I caught more lefts. I saw a photo of Axi that looked massive and clean.

That was three days ago. Now I've just come in from a session at Mullaghmore in Ireland.

Fuck... what a wave!

Everyone was paddling and what a bummer that was for me. I wanted to tow so bad! Really only had tow boards with me , though thankfully Jerome brought a spare 9'6" from Morocco.

It was almost impossible to get into the sets - just sucking so hard off the reef. I only managed to get one shit small wave in three hours.

Then one of the safety crew offered to tow me so I went in to get my tow board. And whilst on shore the biggest sets os the day hit. Damn it!

I was frustrated but frothing so hard by this stage. Thankfully one of the locals called Barry towed me onto two waves but by this stage the swell had dropped. Nothing compared to earlier. Then it completely stopped breaking altogether and went onshore.

Right now there's more big swell hitting Europe. At the end of the conversation with Ross he weighed his options:

I'm either staying here, heading for Spain, or Morocco, or back to Nazare...Or Hawaii via Vegas.