24 JULY 2019
BIGBURY
Dave Ewer fully committed.DAVE EWER
W
ith an epic forecast brewing, I made sure my assistant
shop guy went surfing on the Friday, giving me a guilt
free trip to the beach Saturday afternoon (around
the best state of tide) that I could justify to myself.
Looking at the forecast it was looking fairly tame, 5-6
feet on Saturday and increasing 7-11 feet on the Sunday, a nice little warm
up ready for some “proper sailing” on Sunday. I sloped off to the beach
after a busy spell in the shop and got down around 3:30 p.m. As I drove
down towards Bigbury it was clear that the swell had already kicked in a bit
more than the 5-6 feet forecast. The car park was packed with vans and the
beach was super busy with excitable and some nervous looking windsurfers.
I could see Timo and Ben Page pretty far upwind with a couple of other
locals scraping to slide in to some sizeable sets. I couldn’t get past my
excitable friends in the carpark quick enough, rigged my 5.0 and stuck it on
my 89 quad (the one I fell through the deck of after a bail out the first time I
used it!). Once on the water it was clear that the majority of the sailors were
struggling to get into some waves.
When sailing in such offshore conditions, to catch a wave you either
have to wait on the inside, where there’s barely any wind, or you hope to
get a gust and plane almost straight upwind on a lump before trying to get
down it before the wind blows you out the back of the wave. It’s a bit tricky,
but worth the effort if you can snag one. At this stage I was sailing with
Timo who was sitting on the inside, taking the sets super late and charging
for a bowl ready to rocket air his aerials. Ben Page, who’s just moved to
Plymouth, was having what seemed to be the sail of his life, flying down the
line hitting sections and going into orbit! Having sailed Bigbury since I was
a teenager I was familiar with these rare epic conditions and followed Timo
and Ben’s lead and had a few epic hits myself, not that anyone may have
seen them! The late afternoon light was slowly fading and I was desperate
not to burn out after the first day as we had “Big Sunday” to look forward
to. Sunday morning dawned and I checked the webcam before dropping
my son Blue off to another beach for him to go SUP surfing before his
football match. It looked pretty similar at the beach Sunday morning, with
just a few more sailors out, maybe I’d left it a touch late? There was plenty
of new faces, Andy King (old Bigbury local), James Cox, fresh from his
Gwithian BWA win, Jamie Hancock and about 30 other guys out too.
There was some chunky sets rolling through, it was going to be a solid day.
I was soon back out on my 5.0 and 89 quad combo and had the luxury of
knowing I had a couple of spare 400 cm masts in the back of my shop guy
James’s van too. As it happened I had a mast breakage free day. These sort
of cross-offshore conditions with mast high plus sets don’t come around
that often, but when they do, it doesn’t get much better at Bigbury. You
slide into a swell that seems pretty chunky, only to charge down the line at
‘Mach 10’, hanging on for dear life till you can set up for a throwing lip to
hit. If the wave and your timing are in tune, then you just get projected up
for ever and a day so it seems. The funniest moment on Sunday was sailing
around out to catch another set, only to see 3ft of a longboard blowing out
to sea; the surfers on the peak were paying their dues. Sailing with your
mates at your local beach on the best day of the year still can’t be beaten for
me. It’ll give the local Bigbury windsurfers something to chat about for the
next few years till the next epic forecast heads our way!
“THE SURFERS ON THE PEAK
WERE PAYING THEIR DUES.”