Benny, Carantoc, and I headed south to Beautiful South West Rocks where a 20Knot+ WNW was predicted. Unfortunately PhilSWR had to work this day but we made sure the wind didn't go wasted!!!
Cool! Looked like great fun as sadly spent my lunch hour watching from the bank. Both you and Ben are sailing much better than the last time we had a sail. Mr Carantoc made the chop easy, some sweet gybes there too. Thanks for posting Greg
Select to expand quotesboardcrazy said..
Looks great! How choppy is it? Looks like a good angle .
It was pretty choppy. We had wind induced waves on top of the naturally gentle incoming ocean wave swell. But they are not large or breaking waves.
Nice work. Makes me miss SWR. Not too often you have a good westerly to work with there. This was SWR approx 18 years ago but had a touch more south in the wind. Barry's my father.
Cheers
Marty
Great pics Marty! South-west is a great direction hey- and a few little waves to jump also- sweet combo. And I see the greedy beach haulers scattered along the bay- nothings changed there...
Select to expand quoteOrange Whip said..
Was the video shot at Trial Bay?
Yes. SWR (South West Rocks) is Trial Bay.
Was indeed a beautiful day. 5.5 m2 all day - honking in the gusts, slogging in the lulls.
I think choppy is a relative term, I though it was pretty smooth for the wind, plenty of places around here are a lot worse. There is no bounce or backwash in the chop, it all comes from the same direction and is quite predicable.
Sunny, clear shallow warm water and a golden sand bottom means I pretty well sailed around all day just looking down. The ripples and shadows on the bottom are pretty trippy.
Long runs with sandy beach 50m downwind all the time, 4 foot water depth, just a few people out, elevated look-out in the wind shadow to watch from, grass rigging area, showers in the camp ground - it definitely is an under-rated place to sail.
Unfortunate that it isn't like that 5 days a week.
Good description of the Trail Bay, Jerry :)
Yes, westerlies are too rare, but s-west is pretty common, (as in Marty's pics) and great fun with less "chop" to deal with. But north to north-east has to be the sweetest- plenty of ramps to jump, and nice smooth waist-deep water to gybe when racing back in- bring back summer!!
So few people sail here, yet everyone who does raves about the joint. Gregs' clip is about the most I've seen sailing here in recent years- even during the Xmas break.
Back in windsurfing's boom times tons of people windsurfed at SWR. There was a windsurf/catamaran hire business. During Christmas time there could easily be over twenty to thirty out. Winter westerlies had a crew of around ten, many came down from Coffs.
The bay back then was bigger than what it is now. The pocket of the bay is silting up. The amount of silting can be visualised by looking at the boat speed signs. They cover an area that is now sand but used to be water. Well spaced NE swell wrapped around the point into the bay.
