“Those were some of the best waves any of us have ever surfed. And maybe ever will.”
Soli Bailey has had, by all accounts, a banner year. He’s been on fire, from giant Cloudbreak to pumping Kirra to crazy Shipstern Bluff - and three very memorable O’Neill/Surfline Maps to Nowhere trips. The last of which scored the impossibly fast, powerful, barreling sand pointbreak that blew our collective minds.
Soli’s fellow surfers on that trip, Caity and Timo Simmers, both spoke about his skills afterward with some awe, and no wonder. In this, our final installment of M2N Raw, we see those skills at full stretch, and hear what Soli has to say about the score to end all scores, something only a surfer with his background, talent and experience can put into perspective.
Soli:
“It’s the longest, fastest, craziest, sand-bottom righthand point that I’ve ever surfed - just 300-meter-long, grinding-below-sea-level, spitting-out-the-back madness. And with no-one around.
“It was the sort of stuff I dreamed of as a kid. The wave seemed like a combination of all the best, gnarliest points that we have here in Australia, probably what Kirra was like in its prime in the ‘80s or ‘90s, but maybe even faster. I wasn’t really around back then, though, so the best way I can describe it would be a full-on, crazy day at low tide Greenmount with no one out. Churning below sea level, super square and consecutive sections where you’re flying down the line or hanging on for dear life, shooting out the end or getting closed out on. So, it’s similar to the points I’ve grown up on, only faster, and minus the people.
“Day One already exceeded my expectations, then to have another four days at that wave was just absurd. The bar formed and the surf slowly but surely got better and better and better to the point where it’d become mind-boggling and mesmerizing. But there were these weird little windows. The wind would go sideshore or the tide would get low or there’d be a bit of backwash - so we’d come in to chill or take a half-hour nap, but then all of a sudden we’d see a crazy one and it was all systems go again.
“Caity and Timo were already killing it right from the start, but it’s crazy how quickly they picked up all the little technical things. They were like little sponges with how much information they absorbed over the course of the trip. There was so much learning to be done throughout our sessions, and because we only had a few days of scoring it, we were learning on the fly. But then the wave kept changing. It went from crap to mental in a day, and we were constantly adjusting our surfing to what the wave was doing on the bank.
“There is no slow aspect to this wave. It’s 100% the fastest wave any of us have ever surfed in our lives. We were saying that all day. It was too fast for 85% of the surfing population, where maybe one section of four or five waves are made all day. It took us a fair while to work it out on that first day. Because you’re in the barrel for 15 seconds, coming through one section, two sections… Then you get into that third section and you just get chewed up, belted with sand, pebble stones hitting you in the head. And you’re going so fast that when you fall and hit the water, it feels like concrete.
“And not only did Caity turn up and ride the wave flawlessly, but she improved every day. And that first day Caity was like, ‘I just can't make that one section,’ and I said, ‘You almost wanna try and outrun the wave. Pump as hard as you can then put your arms in front of you to give you that extra drive.’ I used the analogy of trying to envision Joel or Dingo, who pop into my head straight away whenever talking about maintaining speed on a ridiculously fast wave. She picked that right up.
“There’s no doubt about it. Those were some of the best waves any of us have ever surfed. And maybe ever will. For the rest of our lives.”
Earlier in M2N Raw: Caity Simmers’s Unseen Brilliance www.surfline.com/surf-news/m2... | The Best Waves Of Timo’s Life www.surfline.com/surf-news/m2...
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9 июн 2024
