words & pictures: Sam knew what he was doing

On Wednesday morning, my brother and i met up for a surf early. we'd surfed on the Monday morning at Newcastle Beach in small waves with great shape and only a few people out. we couldn't believe that there were only about 5 people in the water on such a clean and beautiful morning when it was also the first official day of school holidays. We rode transition boards Monday morning with me on the 7'10 Dale and Trent riding a recent pick-up, a Sam Egan with a pulled in tail and nose at about 7'6. The Dale worked perfectly and the Egan was good although we both thought it could use some bigger walls.

Back to Wednesday morning... I had been watching a few breaks for a little while in the dark waiting for Trent to arrive. it looked quite small and i was bummed that i'd taken my longboard out of the car. when Trent arrived we decided to paddle out on the reef with our Egan transition boards. He was riding the same one as he rode on Monday and i had my purple Egan that is shown on a previous post. we couldn't help but comment on the boards as we got ready and walked down the beach. they are just such great shapes.

almost immediately after paddling out we started getting waves on the inside reef and they had some beautiful walls on them. the boards felt great just cruising through the bottom turn and gliding across the wall sometimes just running a trailing hand along the peeling lip of a section before leaning back on the tail to bring the board back around into the pocket after outrunning it.

gradually though, the waves started to pick up in size and we found ourselves sitting further and further out taking off on bigger and longer walls. it wasn't getting huge or anything but just really beautiful walls of a great size for the boards we were riding. again there seemed to only be a few people around given it was school holidays. we seemed to be getting wave after wave and were loving the times we reunited in the line-up to talk about the waves we had caught and the way the boards were handling them. it was just an incredible morning.

the wind was getting up, everyone in NSW is probably well aware of the winds we have had this week. but the waves were just holding up perfectly and walls we may not have made on a calm day were waiting just long enough for us to make the sections. being goofy-footers we generally prefer going left but some of the peaks were shifting wide from time to time and the rights would line up with a great long wall that was just so much fun to carve and glide on.

it was such an amazing feeling being out on the Egans with no ropes and getting heaps of waves. Sam Egan had the right idea with the shaping of these 2 boards...

the story only improves from there. we were so stoked from this experience that we spoke on the phone a couple of times during the day to revisit the experience and to check if we were both going to meet again the next morning (Thursday). each of us were full of zeal about the possibility of getting a repeat session on Thursday and we found ourselves in the carpark of the reef again that morning. it looked similar to the previous morning when we had been looking so we just suited up and got out there on the Egans again. straight away after entering the water we started getting waves. it was a little bigger than Wednesday and we were full of excitement after our first few waves.

we found that the wind, which was now stronger offshore again than Wednesday morning, was holding waves up on the take-off so we could take off quite late and get plenty of drive through the bottom turn. the Egan boards were in prime form. i can really speak mostly of the purple Egan alone as that is what i rode but Trent was getting some great rides and it was beautiful to watch him climb and fall from the back of the waves each time he went by. it was not a rare thing to get a wave from outside reef, almost at the Bucket, to the shorebreak and almost the sand.

the purple Egan felt as though it had been made for these waves. as the size increased a little and the waves had some slightly faster sections on them, it felt as though the board enjoyed being pushed that bit harder each time. it feels great to wheel it through a hard bottom turn after a fade from the take-off and then to bring it up into a high cutback and then to drop back into the bowl and shoot through the next section. sometimes you could hold back the bottom turn from a later section as the wall came up for a barrelling section and just glide through under the lip.

the whole time we surfed on Thursday morning, there were never more than 4 people in the water at a time, including us. all of whom had a pretty relaxed attitude and all of whom we either know or had seen in the water before a few times and spoken to. it was just a beautiful morning.

to sum it up, Trent and I have been just blown away by these 2 sessions which we needed to help us get over the blues we were experiencing after being away up north and getting some great long waves off the point breaks. we are back in love with our home.