Al and Cotty have just returned home after a hectic week on the road. They received a call from Nelscott tow in Classic Organiser, John Forse, informing them that the contest would run on Thursday 24th October. This meant a last minute scramble on the net to book flights to the states. As luck would have it, a 5m@14 sec swell was due to hit Aileens for the day before they needed to leave so they organised the next few days like a military operation. If anything had have gone wrong then they would have missed the contest. They made it to aileens and met up with Paul Okane at 4am on tuesday 22 after an 8hour drive and rested for a few hours before launching the skis. They were joined by another 5 skis loaded with surfers and photographers. The surf was angry. It was a lumpy swell. The pair had surfed a swell of similar size and condition back in 2004 with 8 other tow surfers though the sun shone this day which made things a whole lot easier. All the boys rode bombs but after 4 each Cotty and Al decided to call it a day as one mistake could end in them missing their flights to Oregon.

They endured another days travel to Lincoln City Oregon where they surfed Nelscott Reef in the annual contest. The waves were big but not what the boys are used to. They are used to big lumpy, stormy surf for the most part but Nelscott was smooth and glassy and actually really surfable. As Al put it “Nelscott is a fun big wave, it allows you to surf it with turns on the face, we are more used to ‘run for your life’ type waves, I think we had one of the best surfs of our lives at Nelscott”.

After the contest, they left the next day back to Aileens for another swell. At this point sleep deprevation was starting to take over but when there’s surf they want to be out there. They arraived at Aileens at 3am on Tuesday 27 October. This swell turned out to be a little smaller but none the less some epic rides took place. The 7 hour drive back home for Al and the flight to Bristol, for Cotty, brought their week to a close. “It was seriously intense, we never seemed to get enough sleep and I think we had 3 full nights without a wink of sleep! but we scored loads of good waves both at home and in Nelscott. Some winters go by and we don’t see many big swells so we have to take it when we can!”

This is a video from the morning session of the third swell filmed by 15 year old causeway coast surfer Jamie Russell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8pSBPo-Mm0

Surfers Al Mennie and Andrew ‘Cotty’ Cotton have, for the second year running, received an invite to The Nelscott Reef Tow In Classic. The Nelscott Reef Tow in Classic has grown to become one of the premier big wave events in the world, attracting surfers from every continent. Al and Cotty (both ‘West’ wetsuit team riders) are again the only representatives from Europe.

The contest has a three month ‘holding period’ (Ocotber 1st – Dec 31st) to allow for the optimum conditions for the contest organiser, John Forse, to give the competitors the ‘green light’ to travel. This may result in as little as 48 hours notice for Al and Cotty to travel to Oregon.

The event will see 32 of the world’s best big wave surfers compete for the ‘King Fish Award. The winner of this title will obtain points through a combination of paddle and tow in surfing on the biggest swell of the year at Nelscott Reef. Al and Cotty finished 10th at Last years ‘APT World Tow in Championships’ in Chile.

“It’s a great honour to be invited to Nelscott again, said Mennie, anyone can see the list of competitors are superstars in the world of big wave surfing and for John to have included us again is a great opportunity!”

Cotty said “I can’t wait for the event, Nelscott Reef can produce some really big waves and I know both Al and I are looking forward to going there.”

www.nelscottreef.com
www.almennie.com
cotty3@hotmail.com