At last, the local windswells have moved aside for some proper September ground swell to start the season off!  Thanks to Conn Osborne and Gary McCall for taking photos.

Tunnel Vision at whiterocks-Photo by Gary McCall

Photo by Gary McCall

Photo by Gary McCall

Gopro frame grab

Photo by Gary McCall

Foto by Gary McCall

Photo by Conn Osborne

Living in Northern Ireland means we get every surf conditon known to man, all within a week it seems! Look at these two photos…One was taken on Monday by Conn Osborne as I went out in Katia, it looks like Hell. The other, by Gary McCall, was taken four days later and it looks like the summer we didn’t have!

Conn’s photo from Monday – Hell or High Water

Gary’s photo from Thursday – Summer we didn\’t have!

Just loaded the van and heading off a 5am to see if Katia produces anything rideable.  My gut feeling is wind is gonna be howling and blowing swell off course but if I don’t go and have a look i’ll be wondering if i’m missing something somewhere! Would be gutted if i missed good surf!

There is heavy rain, howling west wind and its less than 10 degrees outside.  It seems winter has decided to take the place of autumn.  The huricane season usually means we start to get decent surf around this time of year with light winds and groomed long period head high swell.  The weather chart i’m looking at looks more like a January chart than september with a storm tomorrow and what looks like a proper giant winter swell at the tail end of the week.

If past experience is anything to go by i would imagine most big wave surfers this week will be running around frantically trying to fix boards they thought they wouldn’t need until November, start neglected jet skis, find that 12 foot leash and everyones phone will be ringing trying to decide where is best to go. 

Last season was the best winter I remember.  Cotty and I were all over the place and it seemed every week there was another new big swell somewhere.  I surfed so much that my body wasn’t getting time to recover from all the adrenaline and exhaustion from a big day before the next one was on top of us.  At the end of March I found myself flat on my back for 10 days completely run down and exhausted!

This video is predominately footage from last season (a lot of you have probably already seen this on facebook) and you can see how many different spots and sessions we had.  Some seasons go by with only one or two big days, last year I lost count. 

For video channel click here AlMennie?feature=mhee