Day 3 - Contest is a GO!

Apparently the swell has picked up and there are fun waves around the 3-4ft region. The decision has been made to get some of the mens heats under way surfing Rounds 1 through 3. Which includes myself, Wattsy, Spex and Rat. Wattsy wil be in heat 11, Spex will be in heat 13, with myself in heat 19 and Ratt in heat 24. All heats are 20 mins with an 8am start. So with a little bit of calculation you can roughly work out what time we will all be surfing!

Support us and watch the Webcast by clicking on the following link: http://ibaworldtour.com/live/

The contest starts at 8am sharp so get your alarm clocks set and watch!

Day 2

So the contest has been on hold for the last 2 days due to a very predominant lack of swell! The swell has been ranging from 1-3ft and unsurprisingly still crowded! Tomorrow (17th) there should be a lil swell so the contest is on high alert and may run. The organizers are wanting to run a full day of competition so I may be surfing a heat tomorrow. I am pretty excited and ready for it so I'm just going to go out and have fun! I will keep my blog updated with the most recent happenings.

Anyway, a few pics from the past 2 days....

crowdssss

view from bromley's zone

factoryyyyy

whaaaaat?

Lights

Valentines Day

My Valentines Day was not spent spoiling my gorgous girlfriend as we are 1000's of miles apart! Instead what I got up to was the following:

Wake up early and klap a coffee:

Valentines Day Skype session with my Tash followed by a quick surf at the beach park next to Pipe:

Pipe has turned into a shallow rip bowl / sand bar

(Yes this is the Banzai)

Cruise back to the temporary home and get some fine cuisine in my stomach:

cooked by....

...your boetiiii (one guru cook!)

Head to the Pipeline Blessing(click) - this blessing was done by a local priest and what he had to say was very interesting and somewhat humbling!

inspiring

a true "Aloha" greeting

Exchange of breath

Blessing us all with Pipe sea water and Kuai salt

Get to see the heat draws and find out I am seeded into round 3 of the event. Frothing. Click HERE to see the heats...

   

Cruise to Foodland and indulge in a Toffee Nut Latte - was amazing but most likely a once off splash:

It was AMAZING

Head back to the homestead, chill and talk a bunch of rubbish that we do so well:

Decide to surf the last hour of light away and headed to the beach - we were pleasantly surprised by how good it turned out to be! We surfed well into the dark and we all got at least one good one and SEVERAL beatings! During the surf we were accompanied by 2 massive Southern Right whales, they were so close we could hear them blowing water through there blowhole! 

Head home and eat! (Cooked once again by Boeti)

Day successfully used to its fullest!

Good times

So today the IBA released the heat sheets for the trials of the Pipe comp, and none of the Saffa's are in the trials for the mens division. Spex has to surf the trials for dropknee but I'm sure he will dominate that anyway!

My afternoon was spent at the Ala Moana centre for the presentation and signing by the pros. It was super rad. The organizers had little random contests on stage for the by standers and myself, Wattsy and Brown Snake decided to through our ego's aside and go up on stage and have some fun. It turned out to be pretty cool, I won with Wattsy and Charlie coming close behind. Whats crazy is there were about 20 or more little competitions like this throughout the presentation, and each winner won a board!! Some were bottom end boards but others were amazing. I won myself a Turbo Jacob Romero. Pretty sick but a little bit small for me so its up for sale if anyone wants? Jacob signed it for me so im sure I can up the already discounted price for it!! Thanks "guy hags"! The trip home was pretty cool too, it didnt rain so myself, charlie, sam and elliot cruised the open air zone on the back.

Some pics:

Elliot, Charlie, Sam

blinded

self time classic

the board!

extra dollar?

Check-in

I am officially checked-in and I am going to be riding the Pipeline Pro. I cannot wait, this is my first major event I have entered and I am frothing at the mouth to say the least! I should be finding out all the nitty gritty details after 8 o'clock tonight(08:00 in RSA). I'll be using my blog a lot during the next few weeks, doing updates of the comp and how all the Saffa boys are doing. The main event starts on the 15th and will be screened LIVE on Redbull TV(click here), support is always appreciated, so tune in and enjoy the fine performances that are sure to go down!

my receipt!

For now though; here are a few more photo's of mine. These were taken yesterday from a swim I did at a wave called backyards. I hope you enjoy.

Life

Solitude

Self portrait

Exploration

Barrel

Time

So yesterday was the day, we dug out Waimea River. Its a crazy natural phenomenon where the river rushes into the ocean and creates these stand still waves that we are able to surf. Myself, Spex, Aden and Boetie dug for about 20mins and we let the power of nature take over. I was flabbergasted! The river went from being 10cm wide to 10m in the space of about 40mins. Ridiculous. We had a great time and I'm sure we will be able to get a video of it soon! Unluckily, good times came to an end with a few nasty cuts from submerged World War II debris.

Here's some photo's of the river.

the beginning

the boys

the wave

pure POWER

waveeee

SHOREY

Anyway, the Pipe Contest is on in less than a week and the registration is on Friday. Getting really excited for it.

Here's 2 shots from Pipe yesterday afternoon....

BP

?

And this is why I didnt paddle out....

Weekend

So over the past weekend we were blessed with some amazing waves....

mitchpearson photo

I got a couple good ones, one is pictured above, and I saw many many good ones. Some people claimed it to be the best pipe in a decade, I wont argue that fact. Never have I seen such big perfect barrels.

This morning I treated myself to a good breakfast. A tasty egg on toast with ham and a delicious cup of Vanilla Macadamia Nut coffee.