Yesterday’s fun but a little inconsistent Cloudbreak was exciting, but when the girls woke up today they were confronted with a whole new challenge. The swell had bumped up, and Carissa Moore and a couple of other girls headed out early to sizeable Cloudbreak.
It looked sketchy to say the least and the Guinea Pigs spent some time dodging bombs, before the contest directors decided to move the event to Restaurants. For those who don’t know, Restaurants is one of the best left handers in the world, it’s just a little bit shallow.
Round 3
Stephanie Gilmore put on a masterclass of how to surf Restaurants on your backhand, calmly waiting for the sets and notching up two sick 8+ rides to take the heat. The non set waves looked so shallow, with every bottom turn there were expectations that fins would be ripped off on the coral heads.
The second heat things looked critically shallow, with smaller waves draining off the reef and going below sea level, it was looking pretty ugly. But Australian Dimity Stoyle went at it, and for once Carissa Moore came unstuck with the rookie progressing straight to the quarters, the world champ having to surf again,
The heats were then put on hold, even though bigger sets were becoming more regular, the mid size sets were pretty much dry, it was just plain ugly. When they resumed, the heat of the day kicked off. Laura Enever, so often an under achiever smashed the heat with a combined 18.84 to force Sally Fitzgibbons to surf again.
As the tide filled it became all about who could smash the lip hardest on their backhand, the tube riding dual which everyone in internet land was hoping for just hadn’t materialised. The round sort of fizzled out with Frenchwoman Johanne Defay progressing straight to the quarters.
Round 4
Should they have kept going? The jury’s out on that one, with the tide filling and the wind increasing, it looked like they just wanted to get round four out of the way. But you didn’t envy anyone competing in the increasingly windy and bumpy conditions.
In the first heat Bianca Buitendag from South Africa dealt with the increasing chop the best, advancing to the quarters. She was joined a heat later by Carissa Moore, any thoughts of her stumbling in the less than ideal conditions were vanquished.
Then they put the event on hold, they should have done it two heats previous, but the conditions, especially the wind was worsening. Now hopefully it will be back to Cloudbreak for the final day tomorrow, that’s tonight BST. Remember to tune in live here – www.aspworldtour.com